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Keeping an Eye on Children's Worries about Hand Washing
Kate Zinsser, PhD & Elyse Shenberger, MA
Many preschool teachers have been impressed with how adaptive young children have been to living during a pandemic. Even children as young as two are successfully wearing masks and following new routines for shared materials. Their comfort in these new experiences can be attributed to their how well their caregivers have reinforced these new behaviors.
Handwashing in particular has received extra attention, and everyone from Dr. Fauci to Elmo are encouraging children's good habits. With all of this talk about handwashing, though, some children may be wondering when they are clean "enough." Teachers may have noticed that some children seem to wash their hands more than is necessary or become distressed when handwashing practice decreases.
As adults, we know that some germs are good and getting dirty is sometimes part of the fun. But lately, children have mostly been hearing about the bad germs – the ones that cause the Corona virus and can make them or their family sick. Children take their cues from their adults. The more emphasis we place on something, the more they will believe it is important.
This is normally a good thing, but it also means that children can notice adults' worries and anxieties. Watching teachers and parents frequently wiping down surfaces, disinfecting toys, and using hand sanitizer may lead some children to think a lot about germs and keeping clean. Teachers may notice that some children, especially those who are prone to worry, ask to use hand sanitizer or wash more frequently than is necessary.
There's no doubt about the fact that hand washing is the most important thing children can do to prevent the spread of many illnesses. At the same time, if a child begins to develop rituals and fixations around handwashing, adults should take notice.
Does handwashing interfere with a child's ability to engage fully in the classroom? If they cannot wash their hands at a particular time, does a child get distressed?
If a child can be re-directed easily, then there is likely no reason for concern. But if teachers are noticing that a child becomes upset when they get dirty, or tantrums when they're told they need to wait to wash, it may be time to examine how the classroom environment is contributing to their fixation.
Here are some guiding principles to consider:
1. Start by validating their feelings. Acknowledge that the child is upset and avoid shaming or minimizing their distress.
2. Consider how your language and your classroom's sanitizing procedures may be cuing children to think a lot about cleanliness. Can they be scaled back or done when children are less aware?
3. Is handwashing part of the routine in the classroom? Is it included on your daily schedule? Treating handwashing as a regular part of the routine may help deemphasize it.
4. How often is handwashing occurring? As CDC guidelines regarding frequency for handwashing evolve, consider decreasing the frequency that children are washing their hands, keeping this practice to before meals and in situations that warrant additional cleanliness.
If you have additional questions or concerns about a specific child, please contact Dr. Kelley Volpe (email@example.com), Department of Psychiatry. Contact Dr. Kate Zinsser, Director of the Social-Emotional Teaching & Learning Lab in the Department of Psychology at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:c4785554-ee39-46c2-9af7-1bff9b84a260> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.setllab.com/_files/ugd/1a138e_1f29bce1c37d45e39f196869d25bb175.pdf | 2022-05-27T22:47:22+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652663006341.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20220527205437-20220527235437-00007.warc.gz | 1,114,716,968 | 687 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.996949 | eng_Latn | 0.99712 | [
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Computing Curriculum Statement – Kilmington Primary School
The National Curriculum
The national curriculum for computing aims to ensure that all pupils:
[x] can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
[x] can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
[x] can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
[x] are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.
Curriculum Intent
A high-quality computing education should equip pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. Computing has strong cross curricular links with most subjects and particularly with mathematics, science, and design and technology. Computing can provide further insights into those subjects. Pupils are taught the principles of information and computation, how digital systems work, and how to put this knowledge to use through programming. Building on this knowledge and understanding, pupils are equipped to use information technology to create programs, systems and a range of content. Computing also ensures that pupils become digitally literate – able to use, and express themselves and develop their ideas through information and communication technology as active participants in a digital world.
Curriculum Design
Kilmington School operates with mixed age classes and follows a two year rolling programme to cover the full range of topics in each curriculum subject. Units of learning are planned to motivate and inspire pupils through meaningful and purposeful learning opportunities, using the 'Kapow' scheme of work as a foundation. These units will draw knowledge and understanding together in a coherent manner through generating and exploring 'key questions' and using a variety of equipment and activities. E=safety is not only taught as a stand-alone unit within Computing and PSHE, but also across the curriculum. Memorable experiences are often incorporated into the sequence to enhance learning and create an exciting learning environment. This might be a trip, a special visitor, an extraordinary activity or event.
There is a clear skills development pathway identified for each curriculum area which sets out expectations in each Key Phase: EYFS, KS1, LKS2 and UKS2. This enables teachers to plan a curriculum that builds on previous learning and develops skills at an appropriate level.
Nurturing lifelong learning behaviours through Computing
Evaluation
Debugging a program can be frustrating. Breaking commands down to individual steps.
Creating an algorithm requires careful thought and planning. What happens if…? I will need to use these ideas to solve this task.
Sharing equipment Giving and following instructions (an algorithm)
Using clear file names so files can be easily located Debugging a program: Why does this not work as I expected? Can I predict what this will do?
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Melissa Harville Marketing & Events Manager, History Museum of Mobile (251) 301-0273 email@example.com
HISTORY MUSEUM AND BARTON ACADEMY PARTNER ON INNOVATIVE EXHIBIT
The History Museum of Mobile is proud to announce a new partnership with Barton Academy for Advanced World Studies. This semester, Barton's eighth grade class is curating an exhibition using objects in the History Museum's collection that relate to the historic school. An example of projectbased learning, this new endeavor highlights both institutions' commitment to innovative community partnerships.
The media is invited to join Barton Academy at the History Museum of Mobile on Thursday, February 17 between 8:30am and 9:30am. The students will be examining about 40 artifacts during this period, selecting certain ones for inclusion in their exhibition. Teachers and museum curators will be available for interview at approximately 9:20am.
From the History Museum's collection of over 118,000 objects, 223 of those objects relate to Barton Academy. From graduation gowns, to fine art, to commencement programs and yearbooks, the History Museum's collection documents the 186-year history of Barton Academy.
The eighth grade class has begun learning about curation and conceptualizing their exhibition, which will be installed at Barton Academy later this semester. The students will participate in every aspect of curating an exhibition. They will decide on themes and a narrative for the exhibit, select objects to be included, write text panels and object labels, design graphics and printed materials, and practice giving tours once the exhibit is installed.
Originally founded in 1836, Barton Academy reopened in 2021 as a magnet school with a focus on global studies and entrepreneurship, taught through a project-based approach.
"The project is an example of the innovative curriculum and unique educational opportunities Barton affords its students," said Dr. Amanda Jones, principal of Barton Academy. "Project-based learning allows our students to solve problems through exploring real-world situations. Our partnership with the History Museum is a chance for our students to practice how museums analyze, interpret, and exhibit history for the public."
"Most people interested in museum work don't get to curate an exhibition until graduate school, said Melissa Motes, eight grade history teacher at Barton Academy. "I'm so glad we're able to introduce our eighth graders to the practice of public history."
"This collaboration is an example of how a school and a museum can partner in innovative, even groundbreaking, ways," said Meg McCrummen Fowler, director of the History Museum of Mobile. "Designing this project is part of the museum's commitment to serve the city and citizens of Mobile through our collection."
HISTORY MUSEUM OF MOBILE: The History Museum of Mobile is where Mobile's story begins. Over 118,000 objects weave together the rich, diverse, and often turbulent histories of Mobile and the surrounding area, from the prehistoric past to the present. Located in the heart of downtown, the History Museum of Mobile operates three campuses: The primary exhibitions are located in the Old City Hall-Southern Market building at 111 South Royal Street; Colonial Fort Condé is at 150 South Royal Street; and the Phoenix Fire Museum is at 203 South Claiborne Street. For more information, please visit: www.historymuseumofmobile.com.
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Reminders
Please check new dates in the diary at the end of the newsletter.
Friday 27 th May Non-pupil Day (start of half term).
Monday 30 th May
Half Term (30/5 to 03/6)
Monday 6 th June
Non-pupil Day
Tuesday 7 th June
Back to School
Bags 2 School
Collection Day – Thursday 9 th June
Summer Term – Edition 4 13 th May 2022
Message from Mrs Maycock
Dear Parents/Carers
Well done to our Year 6 pupils this week!
They have worked so hard at their learning all year, making sure they took every opportunity to achieve as well as they could. It was lovely to hear them chatting with each other during their 'SATs breakfasts' and to see how calm and focussed they were. Everyone tried their very best and didn't give up. We are so very proud of you all. Thank you to all the adults who worked with them – especially Miss Binks!
Have a great weekend.
Kind Regards
Liz Maycock
Headteacher
Our Awards Assembly Prayer
Dear God
As we come together to celebrate people's improvements, please help us to show reverence, to be happy for others and to be helpful. Please help us to use our achievements wisely and set goals for the week. Thank you for putting us in a lovely encouraging community, Amen.
Dear God
Thank you for what we do and have every day. Help us to encourage people to achieve and succeed in our daily lives.
Thank you for the awards we earn and help us to congratulate people when they succeed, Amen.
Prayer Corner
This week's value is trust.
Dear God,
Please help us to know who to trust and help us to be truthful and trustworthy ourselves.
Amen
I will say of the LORD, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.' Psalm 91:2
This Week's Big Question
Should we have the right to say whatever we choose?
Chestnut
No because we might say bad words or wrong thingsEdward.
No because we might say something rude and we need to remember to stop and think- Luke
Yes, but only if it's good, kind words – Lottie
Yes, but only if it's good words. If it's bad we shouldn't say
them – Florence
No because we need to stop and think in case we say the wrong things – Betty No because we might suddenly say something that is unkind to other people – Maya
Oak B
No because we might say something rude to other people and hurt their feelings. - Kelsey It depends on what you want to say – Kaiden
No because you might hurt someone's feelings –Liam
No because you might say something unkind and then you might regret it – Gracie-Rose Yes, because if people are being unfair then we might try and make things better by speaking up – Josh
No because if you say something rude or bad that will make someone unhappy and sad and they might not forget it – Lily
No because you might hurt someone, not physically but you might hurt their heart – Lolly
Elm
No because if you say unkind words and they tell an adult then you will get in trouble – Amalie
Yes, because it is our bodies – River
No because you might hurt someone's feelings and I don't want to do that – Emily
Yes, because if you are kind then you will make new friends – Kenuth
No because you might call them swear words – Jake B
No because sometimes you might say the wrong words – Sosa
Maple
No – my friends might be upset.
No – mean words have consequences
No – if you say bad things you will get told off
Oak
Yes, because we're just letting out feelings. - Liam
Yes and no because you should have to right to say what you want but you shouldn't say bad things. - Anusha
No, because there are bad words and they can be hurtful and you need to try not to be rude. - Vihaan
Yes, just as long as you are kind because if you're not then you could make people sad. Mattie
No because they can hurt feelings and cause damage and that can spread onto other people. - Tony
Yes and no. Yes, because you have the right to say your own opinion, but no because you don't want to hurt people's feelings. -Harrison
If you say nice things, yes, but if you don't, then no. - Effie
Sycamore
We should always have free speech but if we say something hurtful we should be prepared to face consequences – Joseph W
Yes, because everyone has an opinion and should be able to share that – Chrissi We should have the right to say what we want but be aware of the consequences. Saying what we want is good because sometimes it helps us to deal with criticism or deal with things we might not want to face in the world – Joseph B
God gave us free will for a reason and he's the only one who gets to decline it so we should let people speak – Caleb
| | Value Trust | Super Skill Aiming High | Catch me being good | Focus Mathematics Award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ash | Seren for helping a new member of Ash class to settle in and being very trustworthy. | Teddy for aiming high and trying really hard with his story map work. | Angelica for trying hard during phonics. | Henry for working carefully to match numbers and amounts. |
| Chestnut | Betty for being a great and trustworthy friend to all the children in Chestnut Class. | Jacob for aiming high with his speech sounds and being proud of himself. | Ragu for settling in to Chestnut Class so well and working so hard. Well done! | Shenaya for great work using coins and notes in our money lessons. |
| Elm | Thalis for being a trustworthy friend – you have been very helpful to lots of children this week! | To all the children who made a surfboard as part of homework – they look amazing! | | Kenuth for having a good understanding of the bar model and using it to find three quarters of numbers |
| Maple | Poppy for being trustworthy and always being able to get on with tasks. | Alex for always working hard and never giving up. | Joe D – for great conversations – Mrs Maycock | Henry C for some really good time work. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oak B | Henry for being a trustworthy member of the class at all times. | Kaiden for aiming high with his writing this week, | Dolly-Blu for always making such mature and thoughtful responses to worship. | Ava for some great problem solving and explaining her answers giving mathematical reasons. |
| Oak C | Vihaan - I can always trust you to be sensible, to work hard and be kind to everybody. | Luke – for aiming high with your Scratch project and challenging yourself to make your idea work. | Rhys F – for being sensible in the dinner school and at home time. | Summer – for becoming more confident with arithmetic and sharing more of our answers. |
| Sycamore | Harry L- for being someone that adults and children in school can trust. Always thoughtful and kind! | Sienna P- for excellent enthusiasm and motivation in English this week. | All of Sycamore Class for being so adaptable and giving up their classroom this week for SATs – Mrs Maycock | Nithilan J- for excellent effort and achievement in his maths homework. Great bar model and shopping list answers! |
| Willow | | | All of Willow Class for amazing resilience and a mature attitude during SATs week. Well done! Miss Binks - for being such a caring, kind and supportive teacher – Mrs Maycock | |
Non-Pupil Days
Friday 27 th May 2022
Monday 6 th June 2022
Thursday 21 st July 2022, Friday 22 nd July 2022
Thursday 1 st and Friday 2 nd September 2022
Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th December 2022
Monday 5 th June 2023
| Friday 27th May | Non-Pupil Day |
|---|---|
| Monday 30th May – Friday 3rd June | Half-Term Holiday |
| Monday 6th June | Non -Pupil Day |
| Tuesday 7th June | Back to School |
| Wednesday 8th June | Year 6 Residential to Danbury Outdoor Centre (8th – 10th June 2022) |
| Thursday 9th June | Bags to School Collection |
| Wednesday 15th June | Crucial Crew – Year 6 |
| Thursday 16th June | School Class Photographs |
| Thursday 23rd June | Sports Day followed by family picnic lunch on the school field |
| Thursday 30th June | Summer Fayre – immediately after school |
| Wednesday 13th July | Open Afternoon – immediately after school |
Please click this link to sign up to Easy fundraising
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Indigenous Peoples Day – engaging the issues through Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Discussion Guide
The following guide is designed to encourage groups to consider important themes in Alexie's book that connect with anti-racism work. Reading and discussing this or other books that tell indigenous peoples' stories and perspectives can help raise consciousness about how racism and oppression is reproduced in our society's institutions and practices and helps promote racial justice and healing.
Racial Oppression and Internalized Racism
"…books can be both mirrors and windows—mirrors in which readers can see themselves on the pages of literature and thereby know their existence in the world is valid and true, and windows into worlds they might never have imagined" (Jacqueline Woodson, from the Forward to the 10 th Anniversary Edition of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)
For White readers, this book offers a window on the experiences of native peoples and other people of color in U.S. society. How does seeing the world through the voice of Junior illuminate the operations of systemic racism? What insights does it give readers into the various ways racial oppression impacts its victims? How do racist views and actions affect those engaging in racial oppression?
For people of color reading this book—whether or not one is indigenous—this book conveys some of the common experiences those suffering racialized oppression endure. What ideas or lessons emerge from the perspective Alexie's book offers?
Can greater understanding of the experience of racial oppression help our society change some of the structures that allow it to continue? Do discussion group members have ideas of actions we can take in our community to reduce racist actions and to help reverse the damage of long-standing patterns of discrimination against indigenous peoples and other people of color? After reading this book, how do group members feel about the demands being made by some African Americans and indigenous peoples for reparations for slavery, genocide, and land theft? For a perspective on reparations, see Ta-Nahisi Coates's "The Case for Reparations". Reparations for African Americans and for Indigenous People have been discussed in an increasing number of international and national courts, and there is a growing body of law supporting such claims. This special issue of Cultural Survival examines a number of cases regarding reparations for indigenous peoples.
Education System
Early in the story, Junior throws an outdated textbook at his teacher and is suspended. The plot turns when the teacher, Mr. P, comes to Junior's home and apologizes to him. On page 35, Mr. P says:
No matter how much I don't want to, I have to forgive you. It's the only things that keeps me from smacking you with an ugly stick. When I first started teaching here, that's what we did to the rowdy ones, you know? We beat them. That's how we were taught to teach you. We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child.
Junior is shocked. "You killed Indians?"
Mr. P replies: No, no, it's just a saying. I didn't literally kill Indians. We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren't trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture.
The story of native education policies and boarding schools is not widely known. Consider some of these resources to learn more.
* http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/
* https://www.nativetimes.com/archives/46-life/commentary/14059-truth-andreconciliationkill-the-indian-and-save-the-man
* http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865
How do you think this history has shaped life on reservations and the life-chances of native people?
Life on the Rez
Read the brief chapter called "Remembering" (pp 215-218). Junior states (p. 216) that "Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear" (216).
Reservations were created as the culmination of a long policy designed to "close the frontier" and "Americanize" the Indians. Few people are familiar with the story of American Indian reservations in the West.
* http://www.ushistory.org/us/40.asp
Here are a few resources about reservations:
* http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/10/life-pine-ridge-nativeamerican-reservation-161031113119935.html
How does this history shape your reading of the book? How does it shape your thinking about the situation of indigenous people in our country today?
Do you find anything odd about the introductory article when compared with the story that follows? (The first article notes that "Both sides committed unspeakable atrocities," but the subsequent history tells a rather different story; note that the Indians only fought with US Troops, and only in response to provocations such as attacks or land grabs. Compare this with President Trump's recent comments on the racial violence initiated by neo-Nazi's and "alt-right" agitators in Charlottesville, VA.)
Negative stereotypes?
* When Alexie's book first appeared, some critics complained that it perpetuated negative stereotypes of Native Americans. But there is a tension between perpetuating "stereotypes" and commenting on grim social realities.
Read this brief article on key issues facing native peoples today: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/13-native- americanissues_us_55b7d801e4b0074ba5a6869c
How does reading this article help you think differently about recent events at Standing Rock? (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests)
How do the struggles of Native Americans connect with those of other marginalized and oppressed people in the United States?
Happy Columbus Day?
Moves to re-designate Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day are sometimes condemned by critics as "political correctness."
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Beach Ball Activities
1. Relay Races
Relay races are great to play with your family or a small group of friends outside! Have 2 people race against each other at a time. Race ideas: run with the beach ball between your knees. Have two people run with the beach ball held between their backs or their sides.
2. Hula Hoop Baskets
Create a version of basketball with hula hoops and beach balls. Have one player hold a hula hoop and the other shoot hoops with the beach ball. See how far back you can step back and still make a basket.
3. Clapping Competition
Throw your beach ball high in the air. See how many times you can clap while your beach ball is in the air. Compete against yourself or play with someone else.
4. Laundry Basket Soccer
Grab two laundry baskets and put them on either end of your play area (front driveway, nearby park, etc.). Pass the beach ball between players in the air until someone scores a goal.
5. Ice Breaker Questions
Take a sharpie and write some of these questions all over the beach ball. Throw it around a circle of people and have each person answer the question that their right thumb lands on (or close to).
* Which country do you want to visit?
* What super power do you wish you had?
* What's something you will never do again?
* What's your favorite genre of music?
* Which animal does your personality remind you of?
* What's your favorite family tradition?
* What's your favorite smell?
* What's something that always puts you in a good mood?
* What's something that really annoys you?
Beach Ball Devotion
For a beachball to be fun to play with, it first needs to be inflated. In the same way, in order for us to pour out our love to other people, we need to let God's spirit fill us up. When the Holy Spirit is inside us, we are more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and in control of ourselves. The best way to stay full of God's Spirit is to pray and read our Bibles.
If the cover to the little valve is opened on the beachball, the air will seep out and the ball will deflate. In the same way, if we allow God's spirit to seep out of our lives, we will spiritually deflate. Instead of being full of all those wonderful things that come with being full of God's Spirit, we'll let things like anger, hatred and jealousy seep in. Here's the good news: if you ever feel like you are deflating, you can ask God to fill you back up. God speaks to us in many ways—one important one is through scripture. Spend some time reading these life-giving verses:
Use these verses to answer the questions below:
Romans 15:13 2 Corinthians 3:17 2 Timothy 1:7
Luke 11:13
Galatians 6:8
Psalm 139:7-8
According to Romans 15:13, what two things does God promise to fill you with as you trust in Him?
________________ and _________________
According to 2 Corinthians 3:17, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is what?
___________________
2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that God's Spirit does NOT make us what?
____________________
In Luke 11:13, what does it say that our Father in Heaven will give to anyone who asks?
___________________________________
According to Psalm 139:7-8, is there a place that you can escape the Spirit of God?
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Photography by XXX
Copyright
©2018 Angela Eckhoff
Published by Gryphon House, Inc. P. O. Box 10, Lewisville, NC 27023 800.638.0928; 877.638.7576 (fax) www.gryphonhouse.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or technical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in XXXX. Every effort has been made to locate copyright and permission information.
Cover photograph courtesy of XXX.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [To Come]
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Contents
Introduction
Today, Lara is introducing her class to an integrated science and visualarts project that she describes as a moving painting. Her students will experiment with color dyes and substances that will resist absorbing the color dyes. For this project, Lara has mixed small containers of water with a variety of colors. She has gathered trays, pipettes, large tubs, and small containers of cooking oil and liquid soap to be used as a resisting agent. Lara invites two children at a time to work alongside her as they explore and create with the materials. As Lara carefully describes the materials available for today's experience, she emphasizes that the children should take their time so that they can observe what happens each time they add a new color or substance.
Matt begins by slowly adding drops of color to his tray. While he works, Lara asks questions about his work, "What happened when you added the red to the yellow?" "Ooh, what color will that make when you add it?"
Following his use of the droppers full of color, Matt adds a few drops of oil, and Lara describes the reaction, "The oil is resisting that color; it's not taking it on." Matt points out the areas that resist and states that they look like clear circles. Matt
goes on to add more colored liquid faster than before by pouring out the colored water in the small cups that Lara has made available. As he pours, he moves a cup around the tray, noting how quickly the colors are mixing together now. Lara continues to support Matt's observations by asking questions and pointing out reactions as they work alongside each other.
Lara and Matt were able to slow down and work alongside each other, which afforded many opportunities to talk about the transformations they were seeing after each new addition to the trays.
Art is a natural fit with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) investigations. This type of open-ended experience will allow for much discussion and will provide you with many opportunities for informal observations of children's interests and understandings. Each child's experience is going to be different, depending on the materials they choose and the order in which they use them. Open-ended exploration captures students' interests and gets them excited about what they will experience next. The inquiry-process skills in this experience include opportunities for students to make observations, explore, question, make predictions, and conduct simple science investigations.
The visual and performing arts are powerful curricular companions to early science, technology, engineering, and mathematics experiences. It is important for all early childhood educators to create an environment where the arts are a consistent and valued component of the daily life of the classroom; a classroom where the arts are embedded in the experiences of all children and teachers. Embedded arts experiences move beyond the additive approach of an arts-integration model to a more holistic view that values arts experiences that are rooted across the curriculum in meaningful ways. This holistic approach allows teachers and children to experience the visual and performing arts in a deep, meaningful way. The arts serve as a way for children to experience and express wonder, imagination, communication, and thinking. When the arts are integrated into STEM experiences, we can promote the children's abilities to communicate their knowledge and understandings through dance, song, drawing, painting, or sculpture. Guidance for the content in this book comes from the National Art Education Association (NAEA), Early Childhood Issues Group (ECAE), and the National Core Arts Standards from the National Coalition for the Core Arts Standards (NCCAS).
Creative Investigations in Early Art is designed to provide early childhood educators with pedagogical practices, arts-content knowledge, and lesson ideas to scaffold young children's experiences with integrated visual and performing arts. In this book, I present information on contemporary creativity and inquiry-based pedagogical practices that early childhood educators can use to implement arts-rich learning experiences for young children. This book will broaden your understandings of the relationships among STEM content, the role of the learning environment, and supportive pedagogical practices in early childhood classrooms.
When visual and performing arts experiences build upon student interests and understandings and connect STEM-content learning, young children are able to experience meaningful, relevant connections among each content area. This book stresses the importance of encouraging minds-on learning experiences in the early childhood classroom through both guided and independent investigations where every child is actively involved in meaningful ways. Early childhood educators have important roles in early arts-rich STEM experiences and will act as both guides and facilitators throughout the planning, implementation, and assessment of the creative, inquiry-based experiences presented throughout this book.
For young children, arts-rich STEM experiences involve using tools and a variety of arts media and materials, being creative and inventive, developing questions based on observations and firsthand experiences, exploring meaningful content, and sharing their understandings with others.
Creative Investigations in Early Art will support your development of creative experiences in the classroom by helping you to:
* • understand the links among the science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics disciplines.
* • plan cooperative arts-based STEM lessons that will engage all children in your classroom as individuals or when working in small or large groups.
* • implement classroom experiences that support children's engagement in
integrated, arts-rich learning on an everyday basis.
* • recognize the power of the visual and performing arts to support children's abilities to discover, invent, explore, question, and communicate their understandings of the world.
* • document children's knowledge development with authentic work samples and classroom artifacts.
Playful Learning Playful Learning
Play is an essential part of explorations of science in early childhood. Through play, young children learn about themselves, their environment, people, and the world around them. Playful learning encourages children to explore and experiment in situations where they feel comfortable taking risks and delving into the unknown. Children's play in the early childhood classroom can take on many different forms and functions. When children explore, experiment, and cooperate through play, they learn about how the world works. Children need teachers who are supportive of their play and who work to carefully identify play situations in which teacher guidance or involvement are welcome and needed.
Young children use their knowledge and understandings by bringing these ideas into their play to further experiment and clarify them. This process is child driven; the role of the adult is one of supporter, guide, and facilitator. The adult meets each child at his or her own stage of understanding with intentional pedagogical practices that promote questioning and exploration. Teachers can create early childhood classrooms that honor the ways in which children learn and explore by ensuring that young children have ample opportunities for playful learning and exploration. In the role of supporter, guide, and facilitator, the teacher carefully observes children's play and helps to scaffold children's thinking through questioning; providing additional, supportive materials; and offering opportunities for guided learning. The visual and performing arts encourage positive dispositions to play in the classroom because of the emphasis on discovery and invention as children explore and manipulate a wide variety of arts media.
Guided Explorations in Early Arts - Rich STEM Experiences Guided Explorations in Early Arts-Rich STEM Experiences
Understanding and applying the pedagogical practices that best support young children as they work in the visual arts is an important component to developing a comprehensive approach. Supporting young children as they observe art, explore media and techniques, and create their own works of art requires careful attention to the many facets of art making and art viewing. In her article "Three Orientations to Arts in the Primary Grades," researcher Liora Bresler points out that in a guided-exploration approach, a teacher will work alongside students during visual-arts experiences to support observation and listening skills, to encourage artistic expression, and to consider the aesthetic qualities in arts. A guided-exploration approach encourages young learners to engage deeply during arts-rich experiences, which helps to encourage creative, artistic, and aesthetic thinking while children are working.
Guided Exploration Orientation to Classroom Arts Practices
* • In the guided-exploration orientation, the teacher's responsibilities include helping children learn to observe, to listen, to communicate their sensitivities through artistic expression, and to consider the aesthetic qualities in arts.
* • The guided-exploration orientation involves intensive teaching on the part of the teacher, including providing students with personally meaningful feedback on their work and encouragement to continue to build their understandings.
* • Student engagement in arts experiences includes effort, concentration, awareness, and thought.
(Bresler, 1993)
As you plan lessons that integrate the arts and engineering and technology, consider the guidance in the Position Statement on Early
Childhood Art Education from the Early Childhood Arts Educator's Issues Group of the NAEA about the types and qualities supportive of arts experiences in early childhood.
Eight Principles for Quality Arts Education for Young Children
* • A child needs an organized, materials-rich environment that invites discovery, interaction, sensory and kinesthetic exploration, wonder, inquiry, and imagination.
* • A child needs access to a wide variety of art media that support two- and three-dimensional expression.
* • A child needs plenty of unhurried time, both structured and unstructured, to explore the sensory and kinesthetic properties of materials and to develop skills and concepts in re-presenting his or her experiences.
* • A child needs a responsive educator who values young children's diverse abilities, interests, questions, ideas, and cultural experiences, including popular culture.
* • A child needs a responsive educator who can support appropriate development of skills, use, and care of materials.
* • A child needs a responsive educator who understands and supports the unique ways that young children represent their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions through actual, virtual, and experimental media and processes.
* • A child needs a responsive educator who supports the multiple ways that young children create meaning through conversation, storytelling, sensory-kinesthetic exploration, play, dramatics, song, and art making.
* • A child needs a responsive educator who carefully observes, listens to, and reflects upon children's learning, using multiple forms of documentation and assessment.
Building Creative Arts - Rich STEM Experiences in the Classroom Building Creative Arts-Rich STEM Experiences in the Classroom
Early childhood educators have essential roles in the development of children's creative-thinking skills and in creating supportive classroom environments in which children's creative skills are nurtured. To incorporate creative learning experiences in the classroom, teachers must design lessons that include opportunities for critical thinking and reflection while also maintaining a focus on student interest. In addition, teachers must recognize that creativity is a learning process that encourages social interaction and promotes individual ownership of ideas. In the classroom, creativity is a part of a learning process based upon children's interests and involves reflection and interaction with other children and adults and requires children to document and report on their thinking and experiences. When young children are provided opportunities to personally engage with challenging, reflective learning experiences, they are building critical and creative thinking skills.
The lesson ideas and classroom vignettes shared throughout this book incorporate opportunities to build children's understandings of the visual and performing arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics while also promoting children's creative-thinking skills. Each lesson includes critical elements of inquiry and creative thinking: open-ended tasks, opportunities for social interaction, and opportunities for reflection and elaboration.
Open-ended tasks provide young learners with opportunities to experiment with new ideas and engage in inquiry. Because open-ended tasks promote idea experimentation, they encourage children to focus on the processes of learning rather than on the need to arrive at a solitary correct answer. Gaining experience with idea experimentation will help support children's acceptance of ambiguity and willingness to make mistakes, allowing them to gain confidence in their problem-solving abilities.
Providing opportunities for small-group works and social interaction is a crucial component of creative thinking. Working in pairs or small groups will help to promote brainstorming and will allow children to learn from and with each other. Such tasks will also support children's experiences with reflection and idea elaboration. These skills are important cognitive tools that allow children to learn from their own experiences and examine their own learning process. Employing these components of creativity in the classroom will help to create a rich, engaging learning environment for all students.
Recommended Practices and Content Coverage in Early Arts-Rich STEM Experiences Recommended Practices and Content Coverage in Early Arts-Rich STEM Experiences
The content of the lessons presented in each chapter of this book are based upon the guiding recommendations in the NAEA Early Childhood Issues Group's position statement and on the National Core Arts Standards from the National Coalition for the Core Arts Standards (NCCAS). Both of these guiding documents and standards are designed for use with young children, and we can use them to help us determine the types of experiences that promote meaningful engagement in the arts for our students. Every lesson presented throughout each chapter of this book is designed to encourage you to explore and implement the types of art-rich STEM learning that will build children's thinking, exploration, questioning, and documentation skills in addition to curricular content knowledge. Together, we will explore the types of lessons and approaches to pedagogy that will help your students learn much more than the conceptual facts. We will look for the opportunities that arise during your interactions with students in which you can support, extend, and encourage their thinking with conversation and questioning in a natural manner.
Every lesson you encounter in this book will ask you to carefully consider your interactions with young children as well as the classroom environment. The interplay among children, teachers, and the classroom environment are all central to the process of learning. The concept of possibility thinking encourages teachers to consider how asking questions, play, supportive classrooms, imagination, innovation, and risk taking affect the processes of thinking and learning.
Possibility Thinking—A Dynamic Interplay between Children and Teachers
* • Posing Questions: Questions from children are acknowledged and celebrated by teachers. Teachers' questions encourage inquiry
* • Play: The schedule provides opportunities for extended play periods.
* • Immersion: The children are immersed in a benign environment that is free from criticism and mockery.
* • Innovation: Teachers closely observe innovations in student thinking so that they can prompt and encourage.
* • Being imaginative: Teachers provide ample opportunities to meld imagination and curriculum content.
* • Self-determination and risk taking: Deep involvement and risk taking are encouraged by both children and teachers.
(Craft, et al., 2012)
Promoting Creative, Arts-Rich Learning in the STEM Disciplines Promoting Creative, Arts-Rich Learning in the STEM Disciplines
Organization of the Book Organization of the Book
This book is based upon broad categories for early arts-rich STEM explorations: music and movement in STEM, dramatic arts in STEM, visual arts in STEM, and artists and artworks in STEM.
Each chapter begins with a section in which you can find background information on the visual- or performing-arts content presented throughout the chapter. Each chapter also features classroom vignettes to help bring the information on content and pedagogical information to life. Woven throughout the book are arts-rich STEM lessons for young children that are built upon pedagogical practices for creative, inquirybased thinking. You will also find information on recommended children's books related to each chapter's content.
Sample Lesson Idea
Dancing Ribbons
Topic:
Force, motion, fine- and gross-motor movement, and design
Objectives:
Children will participate in the creation of a ribbon stick and will explore motion and movement with the stick as they dance and move.
Materials:
Creativity Skills:
Exploration
Visualization
Wooden sticks or dowels 12–18 inches in length (1 per child)
Various lengths of ribbon, cord, lace strips, and yarn
Hot glue gun and glue sticks (adult use only)
Overview:
For this experience, children will be creating their own ribbon sticks to use during music and movement activities. As the experience will involve the use of hot glue, its best to work with small groups of children. It can be helpful to show the children an example of a ribbon stick before beginning to create their own, if this is the first time in using ribbon sticks in your classroom.
Activity Steps:
1. Introduce the children to the various ribbons they can use to create their stick. Ask them to consider how materials of different weights and lengths will react when moved during dancing.
2. Invite each child to choose the materials she wants to use.
3. Assist them in wrapping the ribbons around the stick and hot gluing the ribbons into place.
4. Once the glue has cooled, invite the children to try various movements: fast and slow, big movements, little movements, and so on, and introduce music of varying tempos.
Documentation:
Take notes on the children's abilities to match their actions to varying movements and tempos.
Extension Lesson:
This lesson can be extended by encouraging the children to create their own movements. For example, ask, "What do happy movements look like? What do sad movements look like?" Or encourage them to match their movements to recorded songs.
INSPIRE CREATIVITY! CRAFT & imagine. . . PLAY draw, DESIGN,
Explore how art is a natural fit with science, technology, engineering, and math
(STEM) investigations! Did you know the visual and performing arts are powerful curricular companions to early STEM experiences? The arts help young learners nurture and expand their creative- and critical-thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills.
Open-ended art exploration captures students' interests and gets them excited about what they will experience next. These experiences include opportunities for students to observe, explore, question, predict, and even conduct simple science investigations.
With guidance from the National Art Education Association (NAEA) Early Childhood Issues Group (ECAE) and the National Core Arts Standards from the National Coalition for the Core Arts Standards (NCCAS), Creative Investigations in Early Art provides early childhood educators with pedagogical practices, arts-content knowledge, and lesson ideas to build young children's experiences with integrated visual and performing arts.
Teachers will learn practical ideas for intentionally fostering young children's hands-on, minds-on explorations connecting the following areas of the creative arts to STEM:
* Matter and physical properties
* Physical and chemical changes
* Conservation and sustainability
* Earth and space systems
Guide your young learners as they explore both on their own and collaboratively to develop their ability to innovate and imagine.
Angela Eckhoff, PhD, is an associate professor of teaching and learning in the Early Childhood Education program and codirector of the Virginia Early Childhood Policy Center at Old Dominion University. She holds a dual PhD from the University of Colorado–Boulder in educational psychology and cognitive science. She is a coeditor of the Growing in STEM column for Young Children, published by the National Association for the Education of
Young Children. She is the author ofCreative Investigations in Early
Science, Creative Investigations in Early Technology and
Engineering, andCreative Investigations in Early
Math, available from Gryphon House.
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BEECHWOOD JUNIOR SCHOOL
Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) Education Policy
2023 - 2024
Prepared By: Hayley Crook
Date of last review: February 2023
Date of next review: February 2024
RATIONALE AND ETHOS
As a school, we recognise the importance of in-depth, purposeful PSHE education for the children within our community in order to enable them to flourish in later life. We wholeheartedly believe in developing the whole child and the PSHE education we provide our children with reflects this. This policy aims to clarify the how, why, and what of PSHE teaching at Beechwood Junior School. This is to be used by staff to clarify expectations, highlight the resources that we have at our disposal, and to ensure that a high-quality PSHE curriculum is being taught to all.
This policy covers our approach to Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) from Years 3-6 and was created using guidance from the PSHE Association. It was written by the PSHE leader in collaboration with SLT, teachers, the wider school staff and governors. The policy also works in conjunction with the school's Relationships and Health Education (RHE) policy.
Parents and carers were consulted on the PSHE policy during Autumn 2020 and it will be reviewed on a yearly basis. The policy will remain accessible via the school website and should a copy be required in a different format, please contact the school office.
INTENDED OUTCOMES
Our PSHE programme is intended to reflect the ages and needs of the pupils and to ensure that every pupil will receive equal, appropriate access. It mirrors the school HEART values (Honesty, Effort, Achievement, Respect and Teamwork) which are embedded in daily school life.
As a result of our PSHE programme of learning, pupils will:
- be able to take care of themselves both mentally and physically
- be accepting of others and their differences
- be able to build and maintain healthy relationships
- develop the skills to be able to positively contribute to the wider society
- understand they have a responsibility to show kindness, integrity, generosity and honesty
- understand they have a right to be able to challenge something they are not happy with
- be physically and mentally safe both online and in the real world.
- question the world around them.
These intended outcomes compliment and are in conjunction with those identified in the RHE policy which can be found on the school website under the policies section or obtained from the school office.
STATUTORY REGULATIONS AND GUIDANCE
Under the current National Curriculum provision, there is no specific statutory guidance for PSHE education. However, as a school we recognise that the PSHE education children are provided with has a large impact upon the young people they become. It should contribute to promoting the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at school and within society, thus preparing them for the responsibilities and experiences of adult life. Therefore, we have utilised the expertise of the PSHE Association in order to create our PSHE curriculum and to inform this policy.
Relationships and Health Education, for which there is statutory guidance, forms part of the PSHE curriculum. Should you like to view the current statutory guidance relating in particular to the teaching of RHE, please follow this link: Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education Statutory Guidance or ask for a copy from the school office.
CURRICULUM DESIGN AND KEY AREAS OF TEACHING
All learning within our school considers pupils' starting points and adults recognise that children have a wide range of differing experiences, this is particularly true with PSHE. Pupils will bring differing levels of knowledge and understanding to any issue explored so, where possible, any new topic in PSHE education will start by determining pupils' prior knowledge. Particular consideration will be given to those children with SEND who may need further differentiation in order to access the curriculum.
The programme will be taught through a range of teaching methods to enable children to make connections between the learning they receive in PSHE education and their own previous experiences or those they may have in the future. The skill of reflection is critical to enable a depth of understanding within PSHE and one which staff will develop with those they teach. Reflection will allow for the processing of thoughts and will encourage children to question what they think or feel.
Programme of study
Our skills progression has been adapted from the PSHE Association's 2020 Programme of Study in order to fit the needs of the children in our school. Our PSHE curriculum is designed to identify the key concepts and skills to be taught through the use of a broad range of topics where these concepts and skills can be developed, expanded and rehearsed.
The curriculum design and development will allow for adaptation where appropriate to meet the needs of the children within the context of our school. In Southampton, we are aware of that the locality reports lower happiness than the national picture. We are aware that 20.1% of children in Southampton aged under 16 are in low income families, compared to the national average of 17.0%. The latest data from the January 2022 DfE school census, shows that 24.7% of all pupils in state funded schools in Southampton, were know to be eligible for free school meals, higher than the national average of 17.3% of all pupils in English state funded schools. Amongst Southampton wards, the highest percentage of children eligible for free school means is Bitterne ward with 40.7% of pupils eligible for free school meals (Southampton Data Observatory, 2020). The Marmot Review (2010) suggests there is evidence to show that childhood poverty leads to premature mortality and poor health outcomes for adults. There is also a wide variety of evidence to show that children who live in poverty are exposed to a range of risks that can have a serious impact on their mental health. Our PSHE curriculum is vital within our school to support all of our children to allow them to develop into members of the community who have the skills and knowledge to look after themselves, physically, mentally and emotionally.
To create our encompassing curriculum, Year 3-5 will explore the overarching themes: Relationships, Living in the Wider World and Health and Wellbeing consecutively. In Year 6, the themes have been mixed to correlate with the wider curriculum and to suit the needs of our children as they prepare for secondary school. Our PSHE learning is taught in weekly one hour lessons, aiming to continue building on previous knowledge and skills.
Elements of this curriculum may also be taught in other subject areas such as science, PE, RE, computing (referred to as Technology within the Beechwood Curriculum) and through Collective Worship assemblies. Where appropriate, P4C will be used in order to discuss and unpick concepts.
PSHE curriculum overview (a more in depth curriculum overview can be found in appendix 1).
| | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autumn | Relationships Families and friendships Safe Relationships Respecting Ourselves and Others | Relationships Families and friendships Safe Relationships Respecting Ourselves and Others | Relationships Families and friendships Safe Relationships Respecting Ourselves and Others |
| Spring | Living in the Wider World Belonging to a community Media Literacy Digital Resilience, Money and Work | Living in the Wider World Belonging to a community Media Literacy Digital Resilience, Money and Work | Living in the Wider World Belonging to a community Media Literacy Digital Resilience, Money and Work |
| Summer | Health and Wellbeing Physical Health and Mental Wellbeing, Growing and Changing Keeping Safe | Health and Wellbeing Physical Health and Mental Wellbeing, Growing and Changing Keeping Safe | Health and Wellbeing Physical Health and Mental Wellbeing, Growing and Changing Keeping Safe |
Our curriculum is also broken down into safety and safeguarding objectives as follows:
| | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autumn | Personal boundaries and safely responding to others Consent The impact of hurtful behaviour The importance of self- respect Recognising respectful behaviour | Positive friendships Communicating respectfully (online and in person) Responding to hurtful behaviour Safe relationships Managing confidentiality | Puberty and body changes Personal hygiene Emotional changes in puberty Managing friendships Managing peer influence Physical contact and feeling safe Responding respectfully to a wide range of people Recognising prejudice and discrimination Knowing how to safely challenge and report discrimination |
| Spring | Knowledge of human rights Understanding rights and responsibilities How to safely access information online How to report inappropriate content Challenging stereotypes in the workplace | Understanding human rights and responsibilities Belonging to a community Recognising the positive and negative impacts of money Understanding different ways to keep money safe | Assessing reliability of online information Recognising stereotypes in the workplace and how to challenge them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Summer | Identify healthy choices and habits Understanding what affects feelings Expressing feelings Fire and water safety Managing and reframing setbacks Understanding risks and hazards Understanding safety in the local environment and unfamiliar places. | Safe in the household (medicines and household) Strategies to help with mental health and wellbeing Common drug use Road safety Oral hygiene and dental care Maintaining a balanced lifestyle Personal hygiene | Sun safety Recognising healthy sleep habits Vaccinations and allergies Basic first aid Emergency responding |
Within the PSHE curriculum, there are strands of the Relationships and Health Education curriculum which will provide information that is accessible, relevant and appropriate to the age and maturity of the children. For further information on our Relationships and Health Education curriculum, please refer to our RHE policy.
As mentioned, the PSHE curriculum which is provided for the children within our school has a direct impact upon the adults they become and as such the PSHE curriculum at Beechwood extends outside of the classroom. It incorporates the school's HEART values and all aspects of school life including the playground, the dining hall and any interactions children may have. It is important then that all staff understand they have a responsibility to implement this policy and promote the aims of the school at any time they are dealing with children.
ASSESSMENT
Teachers will assess pupil's learning and progression in a number of ways. Pre-assessments may be used where appropriate to gain an understanding of existing knowledge and skills before beginning any new learning. Within PSHE lessons, assessment for learning will be built in to gauge understanding, adapt teaching and to promote and maximise learning. The majority of the PSHE curriculum learning will take place through discussion and may incorporate the school's P4C approach. Where this is the case, assessment and gauging the depth of understanding will take place in relation to these discussions.
Reflection and pupil voice will be used to develop the taught curriculum in a way which is meaningful to those it serves.
SAFE AND EFFECTIVE PRACTICE
All adults will create a safe and supportive learning environment by ensuring the following:
* ground rules for PSHE and RHE are established which will be developed with the whole class each year, referred to regularly and the pupils encouraged to follow.
* distancing techniques are used such as anonymous questions, case studies and problem pages are used to help pupils avoid personalising issues.
* creating an anonymous 'ask-it basket' within each classroom where children can ask any questions they may feel unwilling to publicly share
* with direct consideration for the children in their classes, year groups will discuss the sort of questions which they feel are appropriate to provide answers to in order to provide a consistent and age appropriate approach. If a child's question seems inappropriate, adults will agree to discuss it with the child individually later, rather than with the whole class and where necessary children will be advised to ask their parents or carers.
* training and CPD will take place regularly to ensure all adults understand this policy and best practice when teaching PSHE.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The Governing Body is responsible for:
* liaising with the PSHE leader to ensure the PSHE policy is reviewed on an annual basis and in relation to any update in statutory legislation.
The headteacher is responsible for:
* ensuring that PSHE, including the RHE elements, is taught consistently throughout the school in accordance with the Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education Statutory Guidance 2019.
* ensuring that members of staff are given sufficient training so that they can teach effectively and handle any difficult issues with sensitivity.
The PSHE leader is responsible for:
* ensuring that PSHE is taught consistently throughout the school through developing an appropriate PSHE curriculum.
* adapting the curriculum where necessary of the needs of the children in relation to local contextual issues.
* monitoring the policy on a regular basis.
* determining whether any aspects of the curriculum will be delivered by professionals outside of the school (e.g., the school nurse may deliver information about menstruation).
All staff are responsible for:
* modelling positive relationships and interactions with all children
* for delivering PSHE lessons in a sensitive way
* monitoring the progress of those they teach
* responding to the needs of individual pupils
BUILDING POSITIVE LINKS WITH PARENTS AND CARERS
The school is well aware that the primary role in children's PSHE lies with parents and carers. We wish to build a positive and supporting relationship with the parents of children at our school through mutual understanding, trust and cooperation so that we can best prepare the children for the future.
In promoting this objective we will:
* inform parents about the school's PSHE policy and practice
* answer any questions that parents may have about the PSHE learning of their child
* take seriously any issue that parents raise with teachers or governors about this policy
SAFEGUARDING
Teachers are aware that effective PSHE and RHE, which brings an understanding of what is and what is not appropriate in a relationship, can lead to a disclosure of a child protection issue. Teachers will follow the school's safeguarding policy and consult with a designated safeguarding lead. Should you wish to read the school's Child Protection and Safeguarding policy, it can be found on the school website under the policies section.
MONITORING, REPORTING AND EVALUATION
The delivery of PSHE is monitored by our PSHE leader and SLT through learning walks and lesson observations, staff and parent feedback and pupil conferencing. Teachers will critically reflect on their work in delivering PSHE by using their own assessment to recognise progress and help to inform their future teaching. At Beechwood, we encourage our pupils to reflect back on their learning and ensure that they have a say through our approach to pupil voice. Pupil voice will be influential in adapting and amending planned learning activities.
POLICY REVIEW DATE
This policy will be reviewed annually by our PSHE leader, Hayley Crook and will require approval from the Governing Body.
APPENDIX 1 - PSHE CURRICULUM COVERAGE OVERVIEW Y2 - 6
behaviour
); regulations and drug
Prepared By: Hayley Crook
Date of last review: February 2023
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THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF KYRGYZ REPUBLIC
JALALABAT STATE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF LANGUAGES AND CULTURE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF METHODS OF TEACHING ENGLISH
English Teaching Methodology Course of lectures
Рекомендовано кафедрой методики преподавания английского языка, и советом факультета иностранных языков
Утверждено учебно-методическим советом Жалалабатского государственного университета
Рецензент:_______________________________________
Кафедра методики преподавания английского языка Методика обучения английскому языку: (Курс лекций на англ. яз.) - Жалалабат: 2004 - 112с.
Предлагаемое пособие включает курс лекций по основным проблемам методики обучения английского языку. Пособие предназначено студентам, аспирантам и учителям, изучающим методику английского языка.
The present summary of the course of Methods of Teaching English in secondary schools is based primarily on the course of English Teaching Methodology delivered in the Department of Methods of Foreign languages of the Jalalabat State University.
This summary of lectures is addressed principally to three audiences:
1. to the large group of already-practicing teachers in Kyrgyzstan;
2. to the even larger group of university-level students who are studying to become English teachers;
3. to postgraduate students.
This book examines the diversity found in language teaching today, looking at three traditional approaches to language teaching, four communicative approaches, and three innovative approaches.
Each chapter of the book contains, in addition to detailed consideration of a wide variety of techniques, a number of activities that teachers can perform that tie the content of the book directly to the teachers' responsibilities in their classes. We are confident that this book will enable language teachers to increase their effectiveness while at the same time making their task an easier and more enjoyable one.
The ideas and activities suggested here are the outcome of over long years' experience in EFL teaching and teacher education. One of the purposes of the book is to provide something very practical, and indeed many of the suggestions and activities could be put into effect immediately.
The teachers prepared the following course of lectures:
Kochkorbaieva L.S., Murzaliev M.A. – "A Variety of Methods"
Jachibekova A.J.
–"Technical aids in teaching English"
Kalyeva G.T., Matkadyrova A.A. – "Teaching Pronunciation"
Mambetalieva A.B.
– "Teaching Vocabulary"
Junusbaieva A. J.
– "Teaching Grammar"
Teshebaev T.A.
– "Teaching Reading"
Orozbaieva G.A.
– "Teaching Writing"
Isabaieva I.A.
– "Teaching Listening"
Kerimberdieva A.D.
– "Teaching Speaking"
A variety of methods
1. Techniques, Approaches and Methods.
When we use the word approach we meant that an idea on theory is being applied: that whatever the teacher does, certain theoretical principles are always born in mind.
The word approach is much more general and has the implication that whatever method or techniques the teacher uses, he does not feel bound by these, but only by the theory in which he believes. If he finds new and better methods or techniques which will fit in with his approach, then he will adopt these.
Approach
It follows from this that different approaches may share the same techniques and even the same methods: and different methods may share the same techniques.
When we talk about techniques, we mean a procedure used in the classroom. The word technique is the narrowest term, meaning one single procedure.
Finally, a method is a set of procedures or a collection of techniques used in a systematic way, which it is hoped, will result in efficient learning. A method will consist of a number of techniques probably arranged in a specific order.
We will take a brief look at the following methods of language teaching which have been used at various times in the century.
To begin with it is certainly true that all (four) methods have survived and are still being used by some teachers somewhere in the world. However all these methods are classic examples -and offer a clear picture of the way language teaching has developed in the present country.
The methods are divided into:
Traditional methods:
- Grammar translation method
- Direct method
- Audio-lingual method
Communicative language teaching:
- Communicative approach]
- Total physical approach
- Natural approach
- Competency- Based approach
Innovative language teaching:
- Silent way
- Community language teaching
- Suggestopedia
The Traditional method is characterized by (1) the use of the native language for explanation, (2) deductive explanation of grammar and use of grammar exercises, (3) the development of all the language skills: hearing, speaking, reading and writing from the beginning of the course. This method is called traditional because it has been prevalent in schools for a long time. The founders of Grammar - Translation method were
B. Gumbold and G. Olendor.
The Grammar -Translation method was the oldest one which was practiced in Latin schools in the 18 and 19 centuries. The Basic Task of G. T. M was first writing and reading, then hearing and speaking. In teaching a foreign language by Grammar Translation Method attention was paid to the assimilation of grammar rules of the foreign language that pupils studied. Translation was extensively utilized both as a means of explanation of new words grammar forms, and structures, and as a means of mastering the foreign language, all exercises for assimilating the language material being limited to translation the language from the mother tongue into the foreign language and from the foreign language into the mother tongue.
The founders of textual - Translation method Zh. Zhakoto,
G. Langensheid, Sh. Tussen attracted attention to teaching reading texts.
Passages are selected from authors such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens. These passages are read and then comprehension questions are asked and answered, first orally, then in writing.
May also be used teacher-student interaction and seldom student -student exchanges.
The role of the teacher is traditionally authoritarian one and the role of the student is to obey and they do as he says so they can learn what he knows.
Principles of the Grammar-translation method
Principles of the Grammar-translation method are organized below by answering the ten questions:
1. What are the goals of teachers who use the Grammar-translation method?
According to the teachers who use the grammar-translation method, a fundamental purpose of learning a foreign language is to be able to read literature written in the target language. To do this, students need to learn about the grammar rules and vocabulary of the target language. In addition, it is believed that studying a foreign language provides students with good mental exercise, which helps develop their minds.
2. What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the students?
The roles are very traditional. The teacher is the authority in the classroom. The students do as he says so they can learn what he knows.
3. What are some characteristics of the teaching/learning process?
Students are taught to translate from one language to another. Often what they translate are readings in the target language about some aspect of the culture of the foreign language community. Students study grammar deductively; that is, they are given the grammar rules and examples, are told to memorize them, and then are asked to apply the rules to other examples. They also learn grammatical paradigms such as verb conjugations. They memorize native language equivalents for foreign language vocabulary words.
4. What is the nature of student-teacher interaction? What is the nature of student-student interaction?
Most of the interaction in the classroom is from the teacher to the students. There is little student initiation and little student-student interaction.
5. How are feelings of the students deal with? There are no principles of the method, which relate to this area.
6. How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?
Literary language is considered superior to spoken language and is therefore the language students' study. Culture is viewed as consisting of the literature and fine arts.
7. What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are
emphasized?
Vocabulary and grammar are emphasized. Reading and writing are the primary skills that the students work on. There is much less attention given to speaking and listening. Pronunciation receives little, if any, attention.
8. What is the role of the students' native language?
The meaning of the target language is made clear by translating it into the students' native language.
9. How is evaluation accomplished?
Written tests in which students are asked to translate from their native language to the target language or vice versa are often used. Questions about the foreign culture or questions that ask students to apply grammar rules are also common.
10. How does the teacher respond to students' errors?
Having the students get the correct answer is considered very important. If students make errors or don't know an answer, the teacher supplies them with the correct answer.
Direct method
Direct Method –is called direct because in teaching a foreign language an attempt is made to establish a direct connection between a foreign word and the teaching it denotes without the aid of the native language. It appeared as a reaction against the grammar-translation method at the 19 th and in the beginning of the 20 th century.
The most orthodox advocates of the direct method were F. Gouin, M. Berlitz, M. Walter, B. Eggart.
Then prominent English methodologists H. Palmer and M. West continued the methodology studies.
The primary task of the Direct Method was first speaking, then reading, writing.
The rapid development of various branches of industry and tremendous development of international trade and colonial expansion required plenty of officials who had a practical mastery of the language, people who could speak and write a foreign language and be able to communicate with foreigners. So practical mastery of a foreign language because main purpose of teaching this subject at school.
The four language skills are taught from the very beginning, but a special emphasis is placed on speaking classes start with reading aloud of a specially graded texts, which introduces the lesson's vocabulary and grammatical structure.
Practice follow with exercises such as guided conversation, where the teacher asks questions on the text and the students' answer using full sentences. Students will then ask each other similar questions. Other practice exercises include filling-in-the-blanks, dictionary, controlled composition or listening comprehension exercises.
Grammar is taught inductively that is to say, language patterns are presented and practiced, but the roles are not explicitly given.
In Direct method teacher uses mime, demonstration and visual aids to help students understand grammar and vocabulary. The teacher introduces a new target language word or phrase, he demonstrates meaning through the use of realia, pictures, or pantomime: he never translates it into the students' native language. Students speak in the target language in great deal and communicate as if they were in real situation.
The interaction goes both ways, from teacher to students and from student to teacher, although the latter is often teacher directed. Students converse with one another as well.
Language is primarily spoken, not written so students study common, everyday speech in the target language and the geography of the "countries" where the language is spoken, and information about the daily lives of the speakers of the language.
Principles of the direct method.
Now let us consider the principles of the Direct Method as they are arranged in answer to the ten questions posed earlier:
1. What are the goals of teachers who use the Direct Method?
Teachers who use the Direct Method intend that students learn how to communicate in the target language. In order to do it successfully, students should learn to think in the target language.
2. What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the students?
Although the teacher directs the class activities, the students' role is less passive than in the Grammar-Translation Method. The teacher and the students are more like partners in the teaching/learning process.
3. What are some characteristics of the teaching/learning process?
Teachers who use the Direct Method believe students need to associate meaning and the target language directly. In order to do this, when the teacher introduces a new target language word or phrase, he demonstrates it's meaning through the use of realia, pictures, or pantomime; he never translates it into the students' native language. Students speak in the target language a great deal and communicate as if they were in real situation. In fact, the syllabus used in the Direct Method is based upon situations or topics. Grammar is taught inductively; that is the students are presented with examples and they figure out the rule or generalization from the examples. An explicit grammar rule may never be given. Students practice vocabulary by using new words in complete sentences.
4. What is the nature of student-teacher interaction? What is the nature of student-student interaction?
The initiation of the interaction goes both ways, from teacher to students and from student to teacher, although the latter is often teacherdirected. Students converse with one another as well.
5. How are feelings of the students dealt with?
There are no principles of the method, which relate to this area.
6. How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?
Language is primarily spoken, not written. Therefore, students study common, everyday speech in the target language. They also study culture consisting of the history of the people who speak the target language, the geography of the country or countries where the language is spoken, and information about the daily lives of the speakers of the language.
7. What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are emphasized?
Vocabulary is emphasized over grammar. Although work on all four skills( reading, writing, speaking and listening) occurs from the start, oral communication is seen as basic. Thus the reading and writing exercises are based upon the students practice orally first. Pronunciation also receives attention right from the beginning of a course.
8. What is the role of the students' native language?
The students' native language should not be used in the classroom.
9. How is evaluation accomplished?
We didn't actually see any formed evaluation in the class we observed; however in the Direct Method, students are asked to use the language, not to demonstrate their knowledge about language. They are asked to do so using both oral and written skills. For example, students might be interviewed orally by the teacher or might be asked to write a paragraph about something they studied.
10. How does the teacher respond to students' errors?
The teacher, employing various techniques, try to get students to selfcorrect whenever possible.
Audio-lingual method
Audio-lingual method was developed in the United States during World War II. At that time there was a need for people to learn foreign languages rapidly for military purposes. As we have seen the Grammartranslation did not prepare people to use the target language while communication in the target language was the goal of the Direct Method, there were at the time exciting new ideas about the language and learning emanating from the disciplines of descriptive linguistics and behavioral psychology. These ideas led to the development of the Audio-lingual Method. Some of the principles are similar to those of the Direct Method, but many are different, having been based upon conceptions of language from these two disciplines. In the Audio-lingual method, skills are taught in the natural order of acquisition: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Audio-lingual classes begin with a dialogue, which introduces the lesson's sentence patterns. The students memorize this dialogue and then practice grammar patterns, sentence patterns again grammar patterns in drills such as listen and repeat, substitution, chain and transformation. The main basic task of Audio-lingual Method is listening and speaking comprehension. Writing is the secondary, children normally learn spoken language before they learn written language.
Principles of Audio-Lingual Method
1. Having used Audo-lingual Method teachers' goal: teachers want their students to be able to use the target language communicatively. Their students achieve this by forming new habits in the target language and overcoming the old habits of their native language.
2. The role of the teacher is like an orchestra leader, directing and controlling the language behavior of the students. She is also responsible for providing the students with a good model for imitation. Students are imitators of the teacher's model or the tapes'/the supplies of model speakers. They follow the teacher's directions and respond as accurately and as rapidly as possible.
3. Some characteristics of the teaching learning process are: new vocabulary and structures are presented through dialogues. The dialogues are learned through imitation and repetition.
Drills -such as repetition backward build-up, chain substitution, transformation and question and answer are conducted based upon the patterns present in the dialogue.
Grammar is inducted from the examples given; explicit and grammar rules are not provided. Students' reading and writing work is based after the oral work they did earlier.
4. Interaction. There is student-to-student interaction in chain drills or when students take different roles in dialogues, but the interaction is teacher -directed. Most of the interaction is between teacher and students and is initiated by the teacher.
Communicative language teaching
The late 1960s saw a shift in focus from the Audio-lingual Method and its prototypes to communicative language teaching.
This shift evolved partly as a result of studies carried out by the Counsel of Europe, which began to identify the language needed in a variety of social situations. The emphasis is placed on using the target language to accomplish a function such as complaining, advising, or asking for information. Attention is paid to the social context in which this function takes place. When we communicate, we use the language to accomplish some function, such as arguing, persuading, or promising. And we carry out these functions within a social context. A speaker will choose a particular way to express his argument not only based upon his intent and his level of emotion, but also on whom he is addressing and what his relationship with that person is. For example, he may be more direct in arguing with his friend that with his employer. All four language skills are taught from the very beginning. In speaking skills the aim is to be understood, not to speak like a native. In the sequencing of lessons, priority is given to learner interests and needs. This is in contrast to a grammar driven method, which may start with verb tenses, and work through from the present simple to the conditionals. In the Communicative Approach, if a leaner needs to know how to give advise ( If I were you, I would... ") then this conditional is taught. Interaction between speakers and listeners or readers and writers is at the root of all activities. Learners usually work in pairs or groups for the role play, information sharing, or problem solving.
Principles of Communicative Approach
1. The goal of the teacher in using Communicative Approach is to have one's students become communicatively component. While this has been the stated goal of many of the other methods, in the Communicative approach the notion of what it takes to be communicatively component is much expanded. Communicative competence involves being able to use the language appropriate to a given social context.
2. The role of the teacher /students? The teacher is a facilitator of his students' learning. He is a manager of classroom activities. During the activities he acts as an advisor, answering students' questions and monitoring their performance. At the other times he is a "Cocommunicator" -engaging in the Communicative activity along with the students. The students are in the role of communicative by communicating
3. The role of the students' native language has no particular role in the communicative approach. The target language should be used not only during communicative activities to the students or in assigning homework.
4. What language skills are emphasized from the beginning?
The teacher evaluates not only his students' accuracy, but also their fluency.
F. e In order to assess their writing skill, a teacher might ask his students to write a letter to a friend.
Total physical response (TPR) and Natural Approach
TPR is a language teaching methods build around the coordination of speech and action. It means to teach language through physical activity. The natural approach shares with TPR an emphasis on exposing the learner to hearing and understanding the language before requiring the learner to speak.
The method is an example of a new general approach to foreign language instruction which has been named the "comprehensive approach". Because it gives the importance to the listening comprehension.
In the TPR students listen and response to the spoken target language commands of their teacher. Listening, speaking, reading and writing language skills are taught. Both approaches believe that language acquired, not learned.
Both the natural approach TPR focuses on the importance of listening acquisition. The learners' mother tongue is seldom used meaning is made clear by mime, drawing.
When presenting the teacher has to be prepared to speak mime, drawer use real objects, to get your meaning actress.
Principles of Total Physical Response
1. What are the goals of teachers who use the Total Physical Response Method?
Teachers who use the Total Physical Response Method believe in the importance of having their students enjoy their experience in learning to communicate in a foreign language. In fact, the TPR Method was developed in order to reduce the stress people feel when studying foreign languages and thereby encourage students to persist in their study beyond a beginning level of proficiency.
2. What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the students?
Initially, the teacher is the director of all student behavior. The students are imitators other nonverbal model. At some point some students will be "ready to speak". At that point there will be a role reversal with individual students directing the teacher and the other students.
3. What are some characteristics of the teaching/ learning process?
The first phase of a lesson is one of modeling. The instructor issues commands to a few students, then performs the actions with them. In the second phase, these same students demonstrate that they can understand the commands by performing them alone. The observers also have an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding.
The teacher next recombines elements of the commands to have students develop flexibility in understanding unfamiliar utterances. These commands, which students perform, are often humorous. After learning to respond to some oral commands, the students learn to read and write them. When students are ready to speak, they become the ones who issue the commands. After students begin speaking, activities expand to include skits and games.
4. What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are emphasized?
Grammatical structures and vocabulary are emphasized over other language areas. These are embedded within imperatives. The imperatives are single words and multi-word chunks. One reason for the use of imperatives is their frequency of occurrence in the speech directed at
young children learning their mother tongue.
5. What is the role of the students' native language?
The method is usually introduced in the students' native language. After the introduction, rarely would the mother tongue be used. Meaning is made clear through body movements.
Competency - Based Approach
The Competency-Based Approach focuses on acquiring life coping skills. This approach is based on theories of adult learning, which state that for effective learning to take place, adults to know that what they are studying will improve their lives. The approach has been developed and applied in the United States to help immigrants and refugees learn English and life skills at the same time. It is also used in vocational training.
The learners needs dominate in the Competency -Based Approach. Language skills and grammar and vocabulary are sequenced according to the learners needs. Translation is used only if necessary for communication. Context is used as much as possible to help the learner deduce meaning. Authentic materials are used the learner is encouraged to practice the language by performing real tasks outside of the classroom, such as giving a massage to another English speaking teacher. Like the communicative approach, the competency -based approach bases its activities on interaction. Pair of work and group are used to generate communication in activities such as problem solving and filling information gaps. In one types of information gap exercise, learner is asked to find someone with the same information he or she has. In "Find your partners" the teacher hands out eleven pictures to learners and keeps the twelfth. The teacher then describes his or her picture and asks any learners who think they may have the same pictures to raise their hands. The teacher questions those who raise their hands. Through this process of asking questions it will become clear that while all the pictures in the group are similar, only one other picture is exactly the same.
Innovative Language Teaching
Innovative language Teaching consists of: Silent way, Suggestopedia and Community language learning.
Innovative language teaching different learning styles have to be taken into account.
Working together as a group is a vital part of language learning, group members support each other, and interaction between them provides real need for communication and an opportunity to practice the target language.
Silent Way -here learners are actively responsible for their own learning. Learning a language is seen not as a process of habit formation, as is advocated by the Audio-Lingual Method, but rather a process whereby the learner discovers the rules of the target language and then applies those rules to understand and use the language. In other words learning is more effective if learners discover the rules themselves, rather then just remembering and repeating what is to be learned.
A basic task of the silent way - is that the teacher should talk as little as possible and should encourage the leaner to speak as mush as possible.
After presenting the new material the teacher should divide the class into several groups and gives the task. Then he should step aside and just to observe how his students working and to help them when they need him or ask him for a help.
All four-language skills are taught from the beginning. And this approach is used with small groups. It has a lot of principles:
1. The teachers' goal of using Silent Way is: students should be able to use the language for self-expression to express their thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. In order to do this, they need to develop independence from the teacher to develop their own inner criteria for correctness. Students become independent relying on themselves.
2. The role of the teacher/students? The role of the teacher is technician or engineer. The role of the students is to make use of what they know, to free themselves of any obstacles that would interfere with giving their utmost attention to learning task.
3. Student- teacher interaction, the teacher is silent when he speaks, it is to give clues. Student-student verbal interaction is desirable.
4. How to correct student's errors? The teacher works with the students in getting them to self-correct. If the students are unable to self-correct then the teacher would supply the correct language, but only as a last resort.
5. The students' native language is used to give instructions when necessary to improve pronunciation.
Suggestopedia
Suggestopedia - The founder of Suggestopedia George Lazanov believes that language learning can be more efficient if the psychological barriers to learning are lowered. He believes that learners raise these barriers and limit themselves because of fear of failure. In order to make better use of learners' capabilities, Lasanov has developed a process of "desuggestion", which he has applied to language learning.
Suggestopedia, the application of the study of suggestion to pedagogy, has been developed to help students eliminate the feeling that that they can not be successful and thus, to help them overcome the barriers to learning.
In Suggestopedia, great attention is paid to the environment. The seating is as comfortable as possible, the lighting is not harsh, and the music plays in the background. Colorful posters and charters are pinned to the wall. The posters show attractive sights in the target language. The charts contain grammatical information, which in casual (причинный). Reading, the students will absorb without conscious effort.
In Suggestopedia teachers tone is always calm as students are reassured that language learning is easy and fun. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher briefly presents the vocabulary and grammar. The text for the day is given to the students. In the left column it is in the target language and in the right column it is in the students' mother tongue.
The teacher reads the texts while the music plays in the background.
The students relax, close their eyes and listen. For home work, the students are asked to read the text just before going to bed and on getting up in the morning. The teacher leads the class in role play, question and answer, and other activities based on the text. During these activities students are invited to use their imagination; and to take on new names and new personalities in the target language. They are encouraged to visualize themselves as successful people in their new identities, with exciting jobs and a good standing in the community.
Principles of Suggestopedia
1. What is the role of the teacher/ students?
The teacher is the authority in the classroom. In order for the method to be successful, the students must trust and respect her. Students trust the teacher, they can undergo infantilization-adopting a child like role on the teacher imitates.
2. Student-teacher/student-student interaction. The teacher initiates interactions with the whole group of students and with individuals right from the beginning of a language course. Later the students have more control of the target language and can respond more appropriately and even initiate interaction themselves. Students interact with each other from the beginning in various activities directed by the teacher.
3. Feelings of the students. A great deal of attention is given to students' feelings in this method. The psychological barriers that students bring with them be desuggested. Direct and indirect positive suggestions are made to enhance students' self-confidence and to convince them that success is obtainable. Students also choose target language names on the assumption that a new identity makes students feel more secure and thus more open to learning.
4. What areas of language are emphasized?
Vocabulary is emphasized. Students also read the target language (dialogues) and write(compositions), and speaking communicatively is emphasized.
5. Evaluation usually is conducted on students' normal in-class performance and not through formal tests,
6. The students' errors are not corrected immediately, it can be done later on during class.
Community Language Learning
Community Language Learning is to involve the learners' whole personality. The teacher is the counselor who gives assistance and support to the learners, who are clients. The teacher's role is to understand the learner's fears. The relationship between the teacher and learner and between the learners themselves, therefore take on great importance. This method advises teachers to consider their students as "whole person". Whole person learning means that teachers feelings and intellect, but also have some understanding, of the relationship among students physical reactions, and then- desire to learn.
The CLL Method takes its principle from the more general Counseling -learning approach developed by Charles A. Curran.
A. Curran studied adult learning for many years. He discovered that adults often feel threatened by on new learning situation. Curran believed that the way to deal with the fears of students is for teachers to become "language counselors ", who give assistance and support to the learners who are the clients.
The teacher by understanding the students' fears and being sensitive to them, he can help students overcome their negative feelings and turn them into positive energy to further their learning. The focus is initially on listening and speaking. Grammar rules are explained and translation are used, when necessary to give learners a sense of security and control over the situation.
CLL class goes as follows: the learners form a small circle. A learner whispers in his or her native language, what he or she wants to say to the teacher. The teacher translates and the learners repeat the teacher's translation. The learners' repetition recorded on a tape recorder.
This process is repeated with other learners in the group, until an entire group discussion, in the target language, has been recorded. This conversation is then transcribed and the teacher and learners discuss the transcription.
Principles of Community language learning
1) The goals of the teachers who use this CLL method are: teacher wants the students to learn how to use the target language communicatively. In addition, they want their students to learn about their own learning, to take increasing responsibility for it. Teacher and learner treat each other as a whole person and don't separate each other's intellect from his or her feeling.
2) The role of the teacher/student ?
The teacher's initial role is that of a counselor and the student is very dependent upon the teacher. He is a " client" of the "counselor ".
3) Interaction. The CLL method is neither student-centered, nor teacher-centered but rather teacher-student -centered with both being decision makers in the class.
Building a relationship with and among students is very important. In a trusting relationship, the thread that students feel is reduced. Students can learn from their interaction with each other as well as their interaction with the teacher.
4) Four skills are emphasized; understanding and speaking the language. Reading and writing are also worked on.
Technical Aids in Teaching English
To teach a foreign language effectively the teacher needs teaching aids and teaching materials. During the last few years important developments have taken place in this field. As a result there is a great variety of teaching aids and teaching materials at the teacher's disposal in order to arouse the interest of his students and retain it throughout the lesson which is possible only if the students are actively involved in the very process of classroom learning.
Teaching aids are various devices which can help the foreign language teacher in presenting linguistic material to his students and fixing it in their memory, in testing their knowledge of new vocabulary, grammar items, their habits and skills in using them.
Teaching aids may be grouped into:
1. non-mechanical aids;
2. mechanical aids;
Non-mechanical aids are:
A blackboard, the teacher turns to the blackboard whenever he needs to write something while explaining some new material to the students, correcting their mistakes, or arranging the class to work at some words or sentence patterns, etc. The blackboard can also be used for quick drawing to supply students with "objects" to speak about.
Unfortunately many teachers do not make full use of the blackboard or they use it badly by neglecting to take the points into consideration. The teacher should try to involve his students as much as possible. The following are just a few ways of doing this:
1. Talk to the students as you are writing and turn round frequently to face them.
2. Ask the students what to write as often as possible and get exampled from them.
3. Ask them what they think this word or picture is going to be.
4. Ask them to spell the difficult words for you.
5. When writing try standing on the right of the board as the students see it. This has the advantage of forcing you to write in straight lines: you are facing the class and what you write is revealed to the class as it goes up.
Many teachers are reluctant to try their hand at board drawing, saying that they can't draw, often without ever having tried. However, simple stick figures are not beyond even the most hopeless artists and with a little practice, every teacher can learn enough to draw simple pictures for drills or picture compositions.
A flannelboard ( a board covered with flannel or soft fabric for sticking pictures on its surface), it is used for creating vivid situations which would stimulate students' oral language. The use of flannelboard with cut-outs prepared by the teacher or students leads to active participation in the use of the target language, as each student makes his contribution to working out "a scene" on the flannelboard.
A lantern which is used for throwing pictures onto a screen.
Mechanical aids are:
Computer, is a machine that performs calculations and processes information with a high speed and precision. A computer can handle vast amounts of information and solve complicated problems. It can take thousands of individual pieces of data and turn them into more usable information - with blinding speed and accuracy. They provide businesses, governments, individuals, and institutions with an efficient way to manage large amounts of information. The value of computers lies in their ability to perform certain basic tasks extremely quickly, these tasks include:
1. solving numerical problems;
2. storing and retrieving information;
3. creating and displaying documents and pictures;
Computers help people develop and test scientific theories. A theory is a proposed explanation for how or why something happens and computers are useful in evaluating theories about things that are difficult to observe and measure.
People use computers to store unbelievably large quantities of information. Information stored in a computer is called database. Databases can be enormous- for example, a nation's entire census might be contained in a single database. A computer can search a huge database quickly to find a specific piece of information. In addition, the information can be changed easily and quickly-often in less than a second.
Computers also can be used to communicate information over long distances. They can send information to each other over telephone lines. As a result, computers keep banks, newspapers, and other institutions supplied with up-to-the-minute information. A computer network consists of vary computers in separate rooms, buildings, cities, or countries, all connected together. Computer networks allow people to communicate by using electronic mail- a document typed into one computer and "delivered" to another. Such documents generally travel in only a few seconds, even if they are being sent over a long distance.
Tape-recorders (ordinary and twin-track): the same tape may be played back as many times as it necessary, the twin-track tape-recorder allows the student to play back the tape listening to the speaker's voice and recording his own on the second track, the lower one, without erasing the first track with the voice of the speaker, the tape recorder is considered to be the most important aid in teaching and learning the foreign language. The tape-recorder has come to be an available aid to the language learner and teacher, and after the blackboard, is one of the most commonly used pieces of equipment in the classroom.
A record player is also an audio equipment available everywhere, it is the supplement to contemporary textbooks and other teaching materials as they are designed to be used with the long-playing record which accompany them.
Epidiascope used for projection or illustrations and photographs.
A filmstrip projector which can be used in a partially darkened room. It is very useful with large classes as the teacher can face the class as he writes. It is also less messy than chalk.
Television and radio equipment: television would make it possible to determine the language in increasingly varied everyday situations, students are invited to look, listen, and speak ; television and radio programs are broadcast, but it is not always easy for teachers using these programs to synchronize their lesson time with the time of the television or radio transmissions.
Teaching machines which can be utilized for presenting information to the students for drilling or testing: the teaching machine can provide an interaction between the student and the "program", the learner obtains a stimulus and a feed-back from his response, thus, favorable conditions are created for individual students to learn vocabulary, grammar reading, etc.
A language laboratory – it is a special classroom designed for language learning. It is equipped with individual private or semi-private stalls or booths. They are connected with a network of audio wiring, the nerve center of which is the monitoring console which has a switch board and tape decks, making it possible to play tapes and send the program to all or any combination of booths. The teacher at the monitoring console can listen in, or can have a two-way conversation with any student. The language laboratory keeps a full class of students working and learning for the entire period, and thus enables the teacher to teach the foreign language more effectively.
The use of teaching aids is very demanding on the teacher. He must know about each aid described above, be able to operate it, and train students to use it. He should also know what preparations must be made for classroom use of each of these teaching aids, and what teaching materials he has at his disposal.
When used in different combinations teaching aids can offer valuable help to the teacher of a foreign language in making the learning of English more effective for students.
Teaching Materials
Teaching materials are the materials which the teacher can use to help students learn a foreign language through visual or audio perception. They must be capable of contributing to the achievement of the practical, cultural, and educational aims of learning a foreign language. Good teaching materials will help greatly to reinforce the students' initial desire to learn the language and to sustain their enthusiasm throughout the course.
The following teaching materials are in use nowadays: teacher's books, students' books, visual materials, audio materials, and audio-visual materials.
A teacher's book must be comprehensive enough to be a help to the teacher. This book should provide all the recorded material, summaries of the aims and new teaching points of each lesson, a summary of all audio and visual materials required, suggestions for the conduct of the lesson and examples of how the teaching points can be developed.
Students' books must include textbooks, manuals, supplementary readers, dictionaries, programmed materials.
The textbook is one of the most important sources for obtaining knowledge. It contains the material at which students work both during class-periods under the teacher's supervision and at home independently. The textbook also determines the ways and the techniques students should use in learning the material to be able ti apply it when hearing, speaking, reading, and writing. The modern textbooks for teaching a foreign language should meet the following requirements:
1. The textbooks should provide students with the knowledge of the language sufficient for developing language skills, they must include the fundamentals of the target language.
2. They should ensure students' activity in speaking, reading, and writing, they must correspond to the aims of foreign language teaching.
3. The textbooks must extend students' horizon, the material of the textbooks should be of educational value.
4. The textbooks must arouse students' interest and excite their curiosity.
5. They should have illustrations to help students in comprehension and in speaking.
6. The textbooks must reflect the life and culture of the people whose language students study.
Each textbook consists of lessons or units, the amount of the material being determined by the stage instruction, and the material itself. The lessons may be of different structure. In all cases, they should assist students in making progress in speaking, reading, and writing. Exercises for developing pronunciation should help students to acquire correct pronunciation habits.
Special exercises should be provided for the purpose, among them those designed for developing student's skills in discriminating sounds, stress, or melody.
Exercises for assimilating vocabulary should help students to acquire habits and skills in using the words when speaking and writing, and recognizing them when hearing and reading.
The teaching of grammar may be carried on through sentence patterns, phrase or word patterns. Exercises must be suggested in connection with situations, and remind us of the real usage of grammar forms and structures in the act of communication.
Exercises for developing reading should help students to acquire all the skills necessary to read and understand a text. There should be structural information, and semantic-communicative exercises, the amount of each group being different depending on the stage of teaching.
Visual materials
A flashcard is a card with a letter, a sound symbol or a word to be used for quick showing to students and in this way for developing their skills in reading and pronunciation. Flashcards are usually made by the teacher or by the students under the teacher's direction.
Sentence cards bear sentences or sentence patterns which can be used with different aims, for reading and analyzing the sentences, for using these sentences in speaking, for compiling an oral composition using the sentence as a starting point, for writing a composition.
Posters or series of illustrations portraying a story. They are used as "props" in retelling a story read or heard. The teacher himself, or a student who can draw or paint, prepares such posters.
Album is a book of pictures or photographs which is used for developing students' language skills. It usually contains textual material to supply students with necessary information, and in this way make their work easier in describing the pictures.
Maps and plans are useful in teaching the maps of Great Britain, the USA, and other countries where English is spoken. The plans, for example, of a house, a building, a piece of land with measurements may be a help in comprehension and stimulate students' speaking.
Slide is a glass or plastic plate bearing a picture. Slides are usually colored and used in sets to illustrate a story, the teacher can utilize slides for developing hearing and speaking skills.
Magazine pictures are one of the most useful visual aids available to teachers. Firstly they provide from other visual aids, e. g. blackboard drawings, and they are often much more imaginative than commercially produced wall-charts and flashcards. The students can be presented with completely unusual situations in magazine pictures, which at the same time are stimulating and colourful.
Magazine pictures are also easily accessible to everyone- they are cheap and easy to find. As well as in magazines, pictures found in calendars, greetings cards and free pamphlets and brochures can be used. They also have the advantage that they can be used for a variety of purposes, for types of drilling as well as pair-work activities.
Something which often deters teachers from using pictures is that they only think of the pictures they need an hour or two before the lesson, and it is often impossible to find all the pictures one needs or exactly the pictures one wants in so short a time.
Often when a teacher does find the magazine pictures he wants, they get used for one lesson, put away and then forgotten about. One way of overcoming this is to build up a magazine picture library- storing and filing magazine pictures, so that one has a ready-made collection from which to draw.
Wall-charts can be used for listening comprehension, games and presenting structure. They can also be used for picture composition, and their usefulness is further increased if certain parts of them can be made to change or move. E.g. things can be masked or certain objects can be added to the picture and moved around. This is especially good for practicing prepositions. If you cut slots in the wall-charts you can even practice "behind". Things can also be stuck over other things, so a window can be broken, then mended etc.
Visual aids are essential at every stage from the introduction to reading in association with audio and visual "props", they are also important for the development of writing skills. Appropriately designed and selected these materials are needed to cover all stages from the memory writing and dictation to guided composition. Visual aids can provide a useful stimulus for writing.
Teaching materials can also be used to assist in the general development of the student's personality, and this is of great educational value.
One more problem should be touched upon in connection with teaching aids and teaching materials. It is necessary that the teacher can digest all this and use the new teaching materials. The problem solution depends on some factors:
1. To understand a system of teaching reflected in textbooks or other teaching materials the teacher should read about the system and listen to the authors when they give an interpretation of their system.
2. The teacher's ability to free himself of the methods he has become used to and acquire new ones. There are teachers who cannot give up presenting new words the way they did before. They go on with the old approach to vocabulary instruction, got accustomed to translation and liked it. And now they had to restrict the usage of translation and use instead various exercises within the English language utilizing audio-visual aids and materials as both sets of teaching materials require.
To solve the problem it is necessary:
1. to help teachers in comprehending the modern trends in foreign language teaching in general, and in assimilating the methodological credo of the authors of the textbooks they use
2. To help teachers in accepting new approaches to foreign language teaching through exchange of experience in order to show them how to apply new methods and techniques of teaching, and what results can be achieved.
3. To improve teacher's training in teachers' colleges and at refresher courses.
The sooner teachers of foreign language acquire skills in handling teaching aids and in utilizing new teaching materials, the better results in language learning may be expected.
Teaching Pronunciation The importance of teaching pronunciation
The first impact of any language comes from the spoken word. The basis of all languages is sound. Words are merely combinations of sounds. The acquisition of good pronunciation depends to a great extent on the learners' ability of listening with care and discrimination. One of the tasks of language teaching consists in devising ways to help the learner "and" the unfamiliar unsound. The hearing of a given word from which a meaning is obtained.
Therefore teaching pronunciation is of great importance in the developing of pupils hearing and speaking habits and skills.
Wrong pronunciation often leads to misunderstanding.
For example, when a speaker or a reader replaces one phoneme with another he unintentionally uses quite a different word, in this way altering the sense of what he wanted to say, for example white instead of wide, it instead of eat, pot instead of port etc.
Every teacher must understand how important the teaching of correct pronunciation is. Philologists and linguists have studied grammar and vocabulary much longer than pronunciation. For this reason, grammar and vocabulary have been much better understood by most language teachers than pronunciation, which began to be studied systematically shortly before the beginning of the twentieth century.
The field of Modern language teaching has developed two general approaches to the teaching of pronunciation:
1. an intuitive - imitative approach and
2. an analytic linguistic approach. Before the late ninetieth century only the first approach was used
An intuitive- imitative approach depends on the learner's ability to listen to and imitate the rhythms and sounds of the target language without the intervention of any explicit information, it also presupposes the availability of good models to listen to, a possibility that has been enhanced by the availability first of phonograph records, then of tape recorders and language labs (in the mid - 20th century).
An analytic - linguistic approach, on the other hand, utilizes information and tools such as a phonetic alphabet, articulate descriptions, charts of the vocal apparatus, contrastive information, and other aids to supplement listening, imitation and production.
It explicitly informs the learner of and focuses attention on the sounds and rhythms of the target language.
Pronunciation Teaching today
The primary purpose of language is communication, using language to communicate should be central in all classroom language instruction. The focus on language as communication brings renewed urgency to the teaching of pronunciation, since both empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a threshold lever of pronunciation for nonnative speakers of English. If they fall below this threshold lever, they will have oral communication problems no matter how excellent and extensive their control of English grammar and vocabulary might be.
The Difficulties of teaching pronunciation
a) sound difficulties
b) stress difficulties
c) intonation difficulties
In teaching English pronunciation the teacher should bear in mind that the difficulties he will meet with and they occur throughout the course are sounds, stress and intonation. He should know what they are and how to teach pupils to overcome these difficulties.
Any language has its specific phonic system. The sounds of English are not the same as the sounds of Russian or Kyrgyz though there are some sounds. Which occur both in English and in Russian.
There are 26 letters, 6 voiced, 20 voiceless and 46 sounds in English language.
There are many difficult sounds in English for Russian and Kyrgyz learners f. e. [w], [ð], [θ], [o:], [η ], [ou]
Kyrgyz speaking pupils find great difficulty in pronouncing words with these sounds.
For example: Theatre [θ], pupils pronounce it as [cıete].
Also pupils find great difficulty in pronouncing a word with the sounds [θs], [ð] which occurs in English at the end of a word f. e. months[mΛnðs], clothes [klousıs ].
Pupils pronounce as [mΛnsıs], [klousıs].
Instead of the sound [έə ] they pronounced [e ] e. g. Window [wındou] they pronounce [wındov].
Instead of the sound [έə ] pupils pronounce [e] e. g. Mary [mέərı] is pronounced by the pupils as [merı]. The same may be used about the sound [η ] in English, it comes in the middle or at the end of many words. F. e. English, Song, Sitting, Longer and presents a lot of trouble to produce it correctly. The sounds in English may be arranged in three groups:
Vowels, diphthongs and consonants.
There are twelve vowel sounds in English: [ı׃ ], [e ], [æ ], [o ], [u ],[ə ], [a] and etc., may be considered as short. "Some authorities", writes D. Jones, consider the state of tension of the tongue to be an important factor in the production of various vowel qualities, and they distinguish tense vowels from lax vowels the [ı׃] of [lı׃p] leap has a tenser articulation than the [lıp] of lip.
And that the [u׃ ] of [b u׃t ] boot has a tenser articulation than the[u] of [fut ] foot.
This can be tested by placing the finger against the outside of the throat about half way between the chin and the larynx.
Long sounds are fully long only when final, f. e.: far, sea, saw, two, fur; when a voiced consonant follows and the syllable is final in a sentence, f. e., feed, spoon, bird, farm, pause.
In other cases the traditionally long vowels are pronounced short by Kyrgyz pupils.
The length of vowels is determined in most cases by the phonetic context, and in few cases differences of length without accompanying differences of quality distinguish one word from another. Hence in teaching English vowels, the quality of sounds should be emphasized and not their duration.
There are double vowels and diphthongs in English. Some of these diphthongs are strange to Russian and Kyrgyz speaking pupils because they do no appear in their native language.
f. e. [ou ], [ eə], [ıə ], [oə ], [ uə]. Pupils are tempted to substitute for them English monophthongs or sounds from Kyrgyz language.
In final position voiceless consonants have strong articulation and voiced consonants weak articulation f. e: ['b׃כd ] ['b׃כt ]
['waıd ] ['waıt ]
The pupils find difficulty in pronouncing the words with the different spelling and pronunciation. Pupils can't hear differences between them and sometimes admit such words as one word. : ['b׃כd ] ['b׃כt]
In most cases they pronounce as ['waıt] or ['waıd] etc. Therefore in teaching pupils how to pronounce consonants in final position the teacher should emphasize the strength of articulation and tensity of voiceless consonants and weakness of voiced consonants.
Consonants may vary [vεərı] in length. In this connection D. Jones writes that when final they may be observed to be longer after short vowels than they are after long vowels. The [n ] in bent is much shorter than that in bend. The [l ] in gulp is shorter than that in bulb.
Sometimes when Kyrgyz speaking pupils learn to pronounce new words they use the law of "сингармонизм" from their mother language. If in Kyrgyz language the first syllable begins with the sound "a" the next syllable is always continues with the sound "a" or "ы".
f. e. жак/ын/, та/ка, ка/ра etc/
English word books [buks ] the pupils pronounce according to the "сингармонизм" [bukus ], looks [luks ], [lukus ], Kyrghyz [kə׃gz ] pupils pronounce as [kə׃guz ].
Cooks [ kuks] as [kukus ], works [wə׃ks ] as [wə׃kus ].
b) The pronunciation of words is not only a matter of sounds, but also of stress or accent. Some words have the heavier stress on the first part of the word: 'sorry, 'evening, 'morning, 'answer.
And other words have the heavier stress on the second part: be'gin, mis'take, a'bout, re'duce, re'sult, oc'cur, ef'fect etc. Stress is very important to the assimilation of English pronunciation.
Russian or Kyrgyz speaking pupils often find it difficult to understand an Englishman's speech and ask him to speak more slowly, because in quick speech the accented syllables are so strong that they almost drown the others. In Kyrgyz language mostly the last syllable is stressed. But in English mostly the first syllable is stressed, that's why our pupils find difficulty in stressing the words.
In Kyrgyz language in words with two syllable the last one is stressed. F. e. Канат, тарак, така.
In English on the contrary in such words the first one is stressed. F. e. 'mother ['mΛðə], father ['f Λðə], 'doctor ['dכktə], lesson ['lesn].
In English language is used 2 stresses in words consisting three or more syllables. Usually in such cases the primary stress is put on the third syllable. It gives some difficulties to students. F. e. University [ju:nıvə ׃sıtı]. Understand [Λndəstænd]. In Kyrgyz language prefixes and words
with prefixes unstressed f. e. бейбаш, натуура.
But in English language sometimes prefixes are stressed sometimes unstressed f. e. Unleash ['Λn'li∫] освободиться, Unjust ['Λn'dЗΛst]. F. e. Uneasy ['Λn'ı:zı] involve [ın'volv], insure [ın'∫uə].
It raises some difficulties for Kyrgyz pupils. One thing more to say is stressing numerals. In Kyrgyz language when we pronounce numerals from one to ten, the first syllable is stressed f. e. бир, эки, уч, торт, беш, алты, жети, сегиз, тогуз, он.
But in English from 13 thirteen [Өə:'tı:n] to 19 nineteen [naın'tı:n], we have two primary stresses.
c)The pronunciation of sentence patterns includes also variations of musical tones: rise and fall. English tone patterns differ from those of Russian and Kyrgyz that is why pupils find it difficult to use adequate tone patterns in conversation or while reading aloud. Sometimes Russian people speaking English use wrong intonation because of the interference of the mother tongue. Than often leads to misunderstanding and impoliteness. For example 'will you 'wait for me 'here? (Подо'ждете меня здесь?) is not only a wrong tone - pattern, but is impolite in its form.
The basic question that now needs to be answered is, which pattern for which type of utterance? There are four possible tune movements - two of them simple (moving in one direction only) and two of them compound (moving in two directions) simple - falling (moving downwards).
Falling tone is used in following sentences.
1. Simple sentences. he is a doctor.
2. In the second part of the alternative[כ:l'tənətiv] question. 'Are you a teacher or a pupil ?
3. In the second part of the Disjunctive question. You have a pen, haven't you?
4. Special questions. What is your name?
Rising tone is used in the following sentences.
1. Enumeration sentence. Asan, Akmat , Lena 'went to the \ shop.
2. General questions. 'Are you in the room?
3. In the second part of Disjunctive question. They went to London yesterday, didn't they?
4. In the first part of alternative question / 'Can she speak or not/ Hence the difficulties in intonation, f. e. learning to make right stresses, pauses and use appropriate patterns.
How to teach pronunciation
We can begin to answer the question of how to teach pronunciation by reviewing the kinds of techniques and practice materials that have traditionally been used and are still being used to teach pronunciation. The following is a fairly comprehensive list:
1. Listen and imitate: A technique used in the Direct Method in which students listen to a teacher provided model and repeat or imitate it. This technique has been increased by the use of taperecorders, language labs and video recorders.
2. Phonetic trainig: Use of clear descriptions, diagrams [daiəgræm] - схема and a phonetic alphabet.
3. Minimal pair drills: A technique introduced during the audiolingual era to help students distinguish between similar and difficult sounds in the target language through listening and spoken practice.
4. Visual aids: Simple way of explanation of how sounds are produced is the usage of visual aids as sound-color charts, wall charts, pictures, mirrors, realia etc. These devices are also used to catch production of the target sounds.
5. Tongue twisters: A technique from speech correction strategies for native speakers. (e. g: "She sells seashells by the seashore").
How to teach sounds
In teaching sounds the blackboard is easier for the teacher to explain the position of tongue, lips etc, or to draw a diagram of the mouth on it. If it is difficult and will take much time teacher can use the special published charts. Also the teacher may use the blackboard for a system of colorcoding to indicate a sound that is represented by different spellings. In the following example list of words the italic letter - курсивные буквы would be written with colored chalk (e. g red) while the rest of the word would be written in white.
Λ [ ] cut - come - cou
ntry - bl oo
d - does.
also there are some unfamiliar and difficult sounds in English like: [ð ], [Ө ], [æ ], [w ], [h ], [׃כ ], [ ŋ] and it makes difficult for Kyrgyz and Russian pupils to pronounce correctly the words containing such sounds. Pronunciation problems have a bad impact on language learning and it especially hampers - затрудняет developing listening and speaking skills.
We teachers should try to overcome this difficulty through giving our pupils sufficient practice and drills and exposing them to intensive listening activities. Every sound should be taught and practiced through the poems and proverbs, tongue - twisters. The point is that students learn poems by heart very easily.
Some sounds of English do occur in other languages sometimes learners will be able to imitate the new sound, but if they can't, then the teacher needs to be able to give some hints, which may help them to make the new sounds. [Ө] thick and [ð ] that do not occur in Kyrgyz learners will lend to substitute either [ s] or [t ] for [Ө] so thick may sound like "sick" or "tick" or will be substituted for [ð ] so "that" will sound like "rat" or "dat". In Kyrgyz language there is sound [ŋ] we meet this sound in the Kyrgyz words жањгак, дљњгљлљк so they have no problems with this sound.
Each sound is also contrasted with the foreign phonemes which come close to it and with which it is often confused. The contrast is brought out through such minimal pairs, as: it - eat, spot-sport, wide-white, cut-cart, boat-bought.
The experience of the sound contrast is reinforced audio-visually:
1. By showing the objects which the contrasting words represent. For example, ship-sheep. The teacher makes quick simple drawings of a ship and a sheep on the blackboard or shows pictures of these objects.
2. By showing actions. For example He is riding- He is writing. Situational pictures may be helpful if the teacher cannot make a sketch on the blackboard.
3. By using sound symbols [æ] - [e]; [ð] - [Ө]. Phonetic symbols do not teach the foreign sounds. They emphasize the difference in sounds and in this respect they are a valuable help. To teach pupils how to pronounce a new language correctly in a conscious way means to ensure that the pupil learns to put his organs of speech into definite positions required for the production of the speech sounds of this language.
Teaching stress
In teaching stress the great attention should pointed to words and sentences which are stressed. In English there are three degrees of word stress: stressed syllables (primary stress) half-stressed syllables (secondary stress) and weak or unstressed syllables. In Russian there are only two degrees of word stress, stressed and unstressed syllables. That is why Russian pupils must be careful not to omit secondary stress in English words.
Организация - organi'zation, демонстрация - demonstrati'on, национализация - nationali'zation.
There are several words in English with two strong stressed. These words consist of two morphemes, f. e. 're'write, four'teen.
The following groups of words have two primary stresses:
1. Polysyllables with separable prefixes: 'un'able, 'un'known, 'pre'paid, 'misunder'stand, 'inter'view, 'disap'pear etc.
2. Numerals from 13 to 19 including they might be easily mixed with such numerals as (30, 40, 50…90).
3. Compound numerals: 'twenty-'three.
4. Compound adjectives: 'well-'known, 'absent-'minded, 'kind-'hearted/
The majority of compound nouns are usually single-stresed: 'readingroom, 'writing -table, 'suitcase, 'rain-coat, 'music-hall.
This type of word stress in compound nouns differentiates compounds from word combinations in which every word has a stress:
'blackbird - дрозд
'black 'bird- черная птица.
'blackboard-доска
'black 'board-черная доска.
'goldfish-золотая
'gold 'fish-рыба золотистого цвета.
'strong-box - сейф
'strong 'box -крепкий ящик.
In order to develop their pronunciation skills the following exercises will be used: for word stress.
1. Transcribe the following sentences. Mark the stresses.
2. This book belongs to our absent-minded professor. Our professor is absent-minded and often leaves his books behind.
1. The upstairs room has an outside staircase. He lives upstairs.
2. Wash it with luke- warm water. The water is lukuwarm.
3. She is quite good-looking. There's a good looking girl over there.
Teaching intonation
As to intonation it should be taught mainly through imitation, though some explanations and gestures in particular are helpful, for example, the teacher can show the rise of the voice by moving his hand up and the fall by moving it down. He can also use the following symbols: for pause, for falling tone, for rising tone and teach pupils how to use them while listening to a text and reading it. Consequently, teaching pronunciation in school must be carried out through conscious approach to the problem and imitation of the teacher and speakers when tape - recordings and records are used. Neither the first nor the second should be underestimated (недооценивать). Since imitation can and must take place in foreign language teaching, the teacher's pronunciation should set the standard for the class and the use of native speakers whole voices are recorded on records or tapes is quite needful.
There are two functions of intonation:
1 It points grammatical meaning, in much language.
For example: (a) He lives in London
A full stop in the written language points that this is a statement. A falling intonation pattern points the same in the spoken form.
(b) He lives in London?
A question mark in the written language points that this is a question. A rising intonation pattern points the same in the spoken form.
(c) 'Do you 'come from London? Is the normal question form. These examples have clearly demonstrated the importance of intonation as a means of explaining meaning. Stress and intonation can also change meaning: hook at the following:
a) I want to see you son 'Harry. ( the son is called Harry).
b) I want to see your 'son, 'Harry. (The speaker is talking to Harry, who has a son, whose name we do not know).
a) My brother who lives in 'London has just got 'married. (I have more than one brother. It is the one who lives in London…).
b) My 'brother who lives in 'London I has just got married. (I have only one brother and he has just got married.)
2. Intonation can also indicate the speaker's attitude. Look at the following examples:
a) Really? May be an expression of great surprise or of mild puzzlement or merely a polite conversation depending on the intonation pattern.
b) 'What's your name? May who a great interest and desire to be friendly to the other person. In teaching intonation at first it should be noted to know in what sentences and questions. The intonation pattern will use:
1. Statements are most widely used with the low Fall.
Eg: It's difficult
I wanted to 'go there im mediately.
It was - not so easy.
2. Special questions are most commonly used with the low falling tone on the last stressed syllable.
'Why did you decide to do that?
-'What's the matter?
If one wants to show much interest in the other person or the sound is friendly he pronounces special questions with the low rising tone.
Where do you 'live, now?
'What's your name?
3. General questions are, most common with the low rising tone: e.g: Does he 'ever 'come to London?
- May, I try?
In short questions "Did you?", "Has she?" the low fall is used e.g: I went to the theatre last night. Did you?
4. Commands with the low fall are very powerful, serious and strong.
The speaker appears to take it for granted that his words will be needed, e. g: Try the other key.
Come and have 'dinner with, Tom.
5. Requests with the low rise sound soothing, encouraging. e.g:
- Don't 'move, come and ' stay with us a gain.
6. The most common pattern for a disjunctive question is the low fall in the first intonation group. e. g: It is quite, simple I, isn't it?
7. The most usual way of pronouncing alternative questions is to use the low Rise in the first intonation group and the low fall in the second one
e. g: 'Have you a son or a daughter?
Exercises used for developing pronunciation skills may be of two groups: recognition exercises and reproduction exercises.
Recognition exercises are designed for developing pupil's ability to discriminate sounds and sound sequences. Pupils should have quite practice in listening to be able to acquire the phonic aspect of the language.
It can be done:
a) by listening to the teacher pronouncing a sound, a sound combination and sensible sound sequences words, phrases and sentences with comprehension of what they hear.
b) By listening to the speaker from a tape recording or a record without seeing the speaker. This exercise is more difficult for
pupils as their auding is not reinforced by visual perception.
The following techniques may be recommended to check pupils' ability to discriminate sounds, stress and melody. The teacher pronounces number of English words and asks his pupils to recognize the new sound. For example the new sound is. The teacher pronounces the words: a desk, a nest, a pen, a pan, a bed, bed. When a pupil hears the new sound he raises his hand and in this way the teacher sees whether the pupil can recognize the new sound among other sounds already learned or not. If most of the pupils raise their hands, the teacher can offer exercises for the pupils to perform. Or the teacher asks the pupils to say whether there is any difference in the words he pronounces, and he pronounces [јu:z][ju:s]. If pupils are familiar with the meaning of both words the teacher can ask them which one is a verb. He pronounces the words again and pupils raise their hands when they hear [ ju:z]. If most of the pupils raise their hands it shows they can discriminate sound sequences and know the word. One more example the teacher pronounce a pair of words [ lıv][lı:v] and asks a pupil to say which is used in where questions and which one in when-questions.
The teacher pronounces the sentence. They left for Osh yesterday. And asks his pupils to say which words are stressed. If they say left, Osh, yesterday (or the second the fourth and the fifth) they hear the stressed words. The teacher pronounces English phrases with a rising or falling tone and asks pupils to raise their hands when they hear a falling tone eg: on the table -on the 'table, with my ' friend with my, friend; in his hand -in his, hand; to the South -to the South. If pupils raise their hands in the right place then it shows that they can hear fall and rise in the voice, therefore they can recognize the melody.
Reproduction exercises: are designed for developing pupil's pronunciation habits their ability to articulate English sounds correctly and to combine sounds into words, phrases and sentences easily enough to be able to speak English and to read aloud in this language. A few minutes at each lesson must be devoted to drilling the sounds which are most difficult for Kyrgyz-speaking pupils.
In studying English pupils usually make mistakes in pronunciation, often repeating the same mistakes again and again. The teacher should pay attention to this and begin the lesson with pronunciation drill. For example, pupils have made mistakes in interdental sounds while reading aloud. After the text has been read the teacher asks them to pronounce the following words both individually and in unison: this, that, with, without,
other, another, thing, think, thin, thick, thought.
The material used for pronunciation drill should be connected with the lesson pupils study. These may be sounds, words, word combinations, phrases, sentences, rhymes, poems and dialogues. The material for a lesson depends on the stage of teaching, pupil's progress in the language, their age the objectives of the lesson and other factors. For example, pupils mispronounce words with [ou ]. The teacher selects words with the sound and includes them in pronunciation drill: no, go, home, alone, don't.
Don't go home alone.
If pupils mispronounce words with [ə׃] the following words and sentences could be suggested for pronunciation drill: first, girl, word, worker, birthday, Thursday, thirteen, thirteenth. My birthday is on Thursday.
Pupils are taught how to pronounce [æ] using the following sentence: A fat black cat sat on a mat.
To teach pupils the correct pronunciations of [w ] the following rhyme can be used.
```
Why do you cry, Willy? Why do you cry, Willy? Why Willy? Why Willy? Why Willy Why?
```
If the teacher is going to introduce the Present Continuous, pupils should be taught how to pronounce [ŋ]. The sound is difficult for Russian speaking pupils so it requires special work on the part of the teacher. The pronunciation drill may include the following words: English, song, sing, drink, think, thing and pairs of words: write-writing, read-reading, sitsitting, open-opening, study-studying, play-playing.
The teacher includes all the words ending in [ŋ] his pupils need at the lesson and works at them most thoroughly while conducting pronunciation drill. The same should be done with the regular verbs in the Past Indefinite when pupils study this tense. The words are arranged into three groups in accordance with the sound each one ends in:
Pupils need the irregular verbs for speaking and reading aloud. The teacher arranges the verbs according to the sound which all of them have in the Past Indefinite, for example [כ: ], [æ ]:
buy-bought sit-sat
The teacher may select words difficult for pronunciation such as [∫uə] sure.
I am sure. I am sure he will come.
I am sure he will come soon. We are sure, He is sure. He was sure they would help him.
[juərep] Europe. There are many countries in Europe.
One part of our country is in Europe.
England is also in Europe. France is in Europe too.
The teacher may take poems for pronunciation drill to help pupils to achieve good pronunciation of English sounds, [w ], [ð].
When the weather is wet, we must not fret.
When the weather is cold, we must not scold.
When the weather is warm, we must not storm.
But be thankful together whatever the weather.
[εə] Once two little brown bears
Found a pear-tree full of pears.
But they could not climb up there
For the trunk was smooth and bare
If I only had a chair
Said the elder brown bear
I would get the biggest pears.
That is hanging in the air.
Proverbs and some useful expressions can be used as material for pronunciation drills:
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
After dinner sit a while, after supper walk a mile.
International words, proper names, geographical names, etc can also be used for pronunciation drill. Though these words are not difficult for pupils' comprehension, they require special attention on the part of the learners since phonetically they differ widely from the corresponding words of the mother tongue of the pupils, for example: culture, cosmic, cosmos, style, type, machine, pint, nerve, William Shakespeare, George Gordon Byron, Edinburgh, the Atlantic Ocean, the English Channel, Australia, Asia.
It is impossible to point the role that can be played by sounds film loops, records, tape play back devices TV-sets in teaching pronunciation. Each of these aids:
1. Allows speech to be reproduced with correct pronunciation and intonation in particular;
2. permits the same text to be repeated several times for pupils to have an opportunity to listen to it again and again.
3. makes it possible for the teacher to develop his pupils abilities to understand English spoken at various speeds
4. help the teacher in developing his pupil's ability to speak
5. gives pupils an opportunity to listen to texts read by native speakers.
When working with these aids in the classroom the teacher must be well prepared for the work. He must listen to the material himself several times in order to know the text from all points of view and first of all, from the point of view of its phonic aspect. He studies the text and marks difficulties for pupils, listening comprehension, namely, sounds, sound combinations, stress or melody. Then he writes out the difficult points from the text to draw pupil's attention to them and in this way, to help pupils to overcome the difficulties they may have in auding the text.
Now matter how pronunciation is taught pupils will make mistakes in pronunciation of sounds, stress and tones in the target language. The problem arises as to who should correct the mistakes and how they should be corrected. In the junior stage it is the teacher who corrects pupil's mistakes in pronunciation because pupil's ability to hear is not developed yet, besides they need good examples to follow which can be given either by the teacher or by the speaker. The ability to hear the difference in pronunciation of people should be developed from the very first steps. At the intermediate and senior stages pronunciation errors must be corrected both by the teacher and by the pupils themselves, though it becomes possible provided that sound producing aids are widely used since listening to tape recordings and records develops the pupil's ability to hear erroneous pronunciation when comparing the pattern pronunciation of the speaker with that of his own.
As to how mistakes must be corrected the following may be suggested:
1) the teacher explains to the pupil his mistake and asks him to pronounce the sound ; the word, or the sentence again, paying attention on the position of the organs of speech for producing the sound.
2) The teacher corrects the mistake by pronouncing the sound, the word, the phrase or the sentence in which the mistake has been made and the pupils imitates the teacher's pronunciation.
3) The teacher asks the pupil to listen to the tape-recording or the record again and pronounce the word or the sentence in the way the speaker does it.
Constant attention to pupil's pronunciation on the part of the teacher results as a rule, in good pronunciation habits and skills of pupils. Young teachers are inclined to expect immediate result and soon they stop teaching pupils correct pronunciation as a hopeless task. No doubt they do not know that pronunciation can be taught only by a long, patient effort through out the whole course of study.
The role of games in teaching pronunciation
Pronunciation card games are enjoyable and effective recourse for English teachers to use in teaching pronunciation. By playing the games students have the opportunity to learn the pronunciation of similar sounds. Students can then discover their own best ways to distinguish between the sounds. In order to overcome some difficulties in teaching pronunciation the following games may be suggested;
Bingo.
Point: discrimination of sounds
Minimum level: elementary
Game type: listen and search game fore the whole class.
Preparation: copy and cut out the sheet of cards so that there is one card for each student. There are cards for two games.
Conducting the game
1. Give out the prepared cards.
2. Read out each of these words, from one of the cards in random order. Tick off the words as you read them so as to avoid reading them twice. Ask students to cross out the words on their card as they hear them.
3. When a player completes a horizontal or vertical line on the card, he ore she should shut Bingo! Ask this player to read back the words in the line that they have already read out. This player is the winner.
4. When one player has won, continue the game to give other players an opportunity to reach second and third positions.
Find the rule
Point: awareness of sounds
Minimum –level: elementary
Game type: a guessing game for the whole class.
Time: 10 minutes.
Preparation: 1 In this game you will need to decide on a rule for accepting words suggested by students. They will then try to discover what this rule is. Here are some possible 'rules' and words that extremely them:
The words must contain two consonant sounds, eg: hat lock, apple, coat.
The word must contain only one vowel sound, eg: light, car, house, pea.
The words must contain three syllables, eg; telephone, magazine, cigarette, elephant.
The word must end with a consonant sound, eg: light, magazine, lock, house.
Two vowel jigsaw.
.
Point: pairs of written vowels.
Minimum level: elementary.
Game type: a matching puzzle for students working individually
Time: 20 minutes
Preparation:
Copy and cat out a set of cards for each pair of students in the class. Cut across the thick line and along the dotted line only. It is easiest to begin by cutting the vertical lines the cat the horizontal lines afterwards. The are two different puzzles, one with words containing the letters ea and another with words containing the letters oo and ou.
Conducting the game.
1. Divide the class into pairs give each pair a pack of cards. Explain that the idea of the game is for students to put the pieces of the puzzle together so that words are formed within.
2. While students are working on the puzzle write on the board the phonetic symbol and an example word for each of the vowel sounds in the puzzle.
3. as students finish the puzzle ask them to copy what you have written on the board and write the word from the game in column, according to the pronunciation of the vowel in the word. If they doubt advice them to consult a dictionary, you might like to point out that three of the words in the first puzzle (lead, tear, read) can be pronounced in two different lists on the board.
4. Finally check answers with the class and drill the pronunciation.
Key Puzzle (words with [ea] ):
[i:]
[e]
[εə]
[iə]
[ei]
Changeable "e".
Point vowel sounds in words spelt with a final "e" minimum Level: intermediate
Time: 20 min.
Preparation: Copy and cut out a set of cards for each group of three students in your class.
1. The vowel in one-syllable words with a final silent tends-to be pronounced as it is in the alphabet. So for example the a in rate is pronounced like the letter a when reciting the alphabet that is [ei]. To illustrate this point write the following words on the board: rat, pet, sit, cut.
Demonstrate how the pronunciation of these words changes with the addition of a final e to:
Rate [reit], Pete [pi:t], site [sait], cute [kju:t].
Show that the written vowel in the model of these words is pronounced as the letter in the alphabet:
a=[ei], e=[i:], i=[ai], o=[ou], u=[ju:].
2. Asks students to predict how the following words might be pronounced:
Kate, mace, swede, cline, splice, lode, rote, mute.
Conducting the game
1. Divide the class into groups of three and give each group a pack of cards.
2. Explain and or give out the rules.
3. During the game move around the class helping students to resolve any disputes. Ask players to pronounce the words that they have written down.
Fa – face, fade, fake, fame, fate
Ho – hole, home, hope, hose
La – lace, lake, lame, lane, late
Li – lice, like, lime, line
Ma – mace, made, make, male, mate
Ro – rode, rode, role, Rome, rope, rose
Ru – rude, rule
The – theme, these
Ti – tide, tile, time
Wi – wide, wine, wipe, wise
Tongue twisters
[a׃]
One smart fellow, he felt smart
Two smart fellows, they felt smart
Three smart fellows, they all felt smart
[∫ ]
Shy Shelly says she shall sue sheets
[ t∫]
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
[n ] [aı]
Nine nice night nurses nursing nicely.
[ æ]
Swan swam over the sea
Swim swan, swim!
Swan swam back again
Well swum, swan!
Brad's bid black bat brush broke.
[s]
Say this sharply, say this sweetly
Say this shortly, say this softly
Say this sixteen times in succession.
[æ]
Pussy cat, pussy cat, Can you catch that big fat rat
If you catch that bad fat rat
You will have some milk for that.
Teaching Vocabulary Introduction
1. There are several strong reasons for which the vocabulary component of a language course needs to be carefully planned. Several of the points raised here are dealt with in more detail in the introduces to the various sections of the book.
Firstly, because different vocabulary given greatly different returns for learning, it is important to make sure that the learners have good control of the high frequency words of the language before moving on to the less frequent vocabulary.
In addition, the focus of teaching for high frequency vocabulary is different from the focus of teaching for low frequency vocabulary. A good vocabulary learning program should there fore focus on the appropriate level of vocabulary for the learners and should do this in the appropriate way.
Secondly, most language teaching courses make vocabulary learning more difficult than it should be as a result of the way vocabulary in the course is sequenced. Grouping opposites, synonyms, and items in a lexical set together causes interference that result in confusion for the learners.
It is a simple matter to avoid this problem. Thirdly, vocabulary learning opportunities and the quality of vocabulary learning can be greatly increased through the careful design of both vocabulary and other skill activities. We use the following example.
In a detailed study of negotiation and vocabulary learning from communication activities, Newton (1993) found that all of the negotiated vocabulary in the activity and that the negotiation of the meaning of words contributed significantly to their learning. This vocabulary learning occurred even though the learners' attention was focused on the communication activity and its solution. Most of the points in the table are covered in the following parts of this introduction and in the introductions to the various sections. It has been divided into the following sections to reflect the major component of a language learning course:
1. Meeting new vocabulary for the first time.
2. Establishing previously met vocabulary.
3. Developing vocabulary strategies.
4. Developing influence with known vocabulary.
1. There are no generally accepted figures for the rate at which learners should meet new vocabulary in a language course. This is most likely the result of the widely differing conditions under English is learned throughout the word. But meeting new words through formal presentation in a language course is only one if the ways to meet new vocabulary.
2. There is no important distinction between communicating the meaning of unknown vocabulary and learning new vocabulary. Although some words may be learned after one meeting, this is exceptional.
3. In addition to learn new vocabulary, learner need to be able to use strategies to cope with unknown vocabulary met in listening or reading text, to make up for gaps in productive vocabulary in speaking and writing, to gain fluency in using known vocabulary, and to learn new words in isolation. Most of these strategies can begin to be developed in the earliest classes.
4. Vocabulary learning is not on end in itself. A rich vocabulary makes the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing easier to perform. Learners growth in vocabulary must be accompanied by opportunities to become fluent with that vocabulary.
The Importance of teaching Vocabulary
Vocabulary is one of the aspects of the language to be taught in school. The problem is what words and idioms pupils should acquire in school depends wholly on the syllabus requirements. The latter are determined by the conditions and method used. For example, experiments have proved that the use of programmed instruction for vocabulary learning allows as to increase the number of words to be learned since pupils are able to assimilate them while working independently with the programs. The vocabulary, therefore, must be carefully selected in accordance with the principles of selecting linguistic material, the conditions of teaching and learning a foreign language in school.
Scientific principles of selecting vocabulary have been worked out. The words selected should be:
1) Frequently used in the language.
2) Early combined, ex: nice room, nice girl.
3) Unlimited from the point of view of style, oral, written.
4) Included in the topics the syllabus set.
5) Valuable from the point of view of word-building, ex: use, used, useful, useless, user.
The first principle, word frequency, is on example of a purely linguistic approach to word selection. It is claimed to be the soundest criterion because it is completely objective. It is derived by counting the number of occurrences of words appearing in representative printed material comprising novels, essays, plays, poems, newspapers, textbooks, and magazines.
Modern tendency is to apply this principle depending on the language activities to be developed. For developing reading skills pupils need "reading vocabulary", thus various printed texts are analyzed from the point of view of word frequency. For developing speaking skills pupils need "speaking vocabulary". In this ease the material for analysts is the spoken language recorder. The occurrences of words are counted in it and the words more frequency used in speaking are selected. The other principles are of didactic value, they serve teaching aims. The words selected may be grouped under the following two classes.
1) Words that we talk with or form words which make up the form of the language.
2) Words that we talk about or content words. In teaching vocabulary for practical needs both structural words are of great importance. That is why they are included in the vocabulary minimum;
The number of words and phraseological units the syllabus sets for a pupil to assimilate is 1, 200. They are distributed in the following way: 800 words in the eight year school, the rest in the ten-year school. The textbooks now in use contain more word units than the syllabi set. The selection of the vocabulary although important is not the teacher's chief concern. It is only the "what" of teaching and is usually prescribed for him by textbooks and study guides he uses. The teachers concern is "how" to get his pupils to assimilate the vocabulary prescribed. This is a difficult problem and it is still in the process of being solved.
It is generally known that school learners' vocabulary is poor. They have trouble with hearing, speaking, reading and writing. One of reasons is poor teaching vocabulary.
Teacher should bear in mind that a word is considered to be learned when:
1. It is spontaneously recognized while auding and reading;
2. It is correctly used in speech, example: the right word in the right place.
Difficulties in teaching vocabulary
Learning the words of a foreign language is not an easy business since every word has its form, meaning, a usage and each of these aspects of the word may have its difficulties. Indeed some words are difficult in from: daughter, busy, bury, woman, women and easy in usage and other words are easy in form: enter, get, happen and difficult in usage. Consequently words may be classified according to the difficulties pupils find in assimilation. In methodology some attempts have been made to approach the problem. The analysis of the words with in the foreign language allows us to distinguish the following groups of words: word s are divided into the three groups.
1. Concrete words: a door, a girl, a boy, a book.
2. Abstract words: art, time, knowledge, friendship.
3. Structural words: to have a good time, to take care of, look after.
It's very important to use to direct methods when we teach than vocabulary. E. g. it's a book. The book is mine.
1) If words are concrete we can use objects of those words.
2) If new words are abstract in this case teachers should give right translation of those words.
3) When teachers give structural words in this case the teacher can use the methods of mutation or actors.
A fundamental rule follow about what choice is to avoid the artificial length words that are not familiar to you and, instead to choose the simpler, shorter words that tell it as it is. For some reason many students and people in business believe that using longer, more sophisticated words in necessary to impress others. They pore through dictionaries to find longer synonyms are very useful to the learner. They help the learner avoid repeating words and phrases that night otherwise become tiresome to the reader. Some times, synonyms allow the learner to choose the word that has the exact meaning that is intended. However, synonyms should never be used just because it is longer and has more syllables than another word.
These words are also difficult:
Precipitation- yвеличение increase.
Resuscitate- воскрещать -revive.
Conglagration- большой пожар.
Clandestine- тайный, скрытый-secret.
Acknowledgment- благодарность-gratitude.
How to teach vocabulary
The "levels of processing" theory of learning suggests that a very important factor in learn is the quality of mental activity in the brain of the learner at the moment the learning occurs.
If this activity is at a deep and thoughtful level, the learning will remain for a long time. If the activity is shallow and mechanical, little learning will occur. It is thus useful for a teacher to consider the possible depth of processing that a particular vocabulary activity could give rise to if the activity does not give rise to deep and thoughtful processing, it is worth while replacing the activity with one that does or adapting it in some way.
Deep and thoughtful processing can result from:
a)relating the new word to previous knowledge,
b)Having to create a context for the word.
c)Drawing on a range of clues to recall the word,
d)Having to appropriately relate the word to a variety of aspects.
e) Using the word in a goal directed activity like suing
Presentation of new words since every word has its form, meaning, and usage to present a word means to introduce to pupils its forms phonetic, graphic, structured, and grammatical, and to explain its meaning, end usage.,
The techniques of teaching pupils the pronunciation and spelling of a word are as follows:
1) pure or conscious imitation;
2} analogy;
3} transcription;
4) rules of reading.
Since a word consists of sounds if heard or spoken and letters if read or written the teachers shows the pupils how to pronounce, to read, and write it. However the approach may vary depending on the task set.
As for as the form is concerned the pupils have but two difficulties to overcome: to learn how to pronounce the word both separately and in speech.
And to recognize it in sentence patterns pronounced by the, s, teacher, by his classmates, or by a speaker in case the tape recorder is used. Later when pupils have learned the English alphabet and acquired some skills in speaking and reading they may be told to copy the new words into then exercise-book and read and write then independently; this work being done mainly as homework. The teacher then has his pupils perform various oral exercises during the lesson, he makes every pupil pronounce the new words in sentence patterns and use then in speech. This is the most difficult part of work in vocabulary assimilation it can and must be done during the lesson and under the teacher's supervision. There are two methods of conveying the meaning of words: direct method and transition
method.
The direct method of presenting the words of a foreign language brings the learner into direct contact with them, the mother tongue does not come in between, it establishes links between a foreign words.
The direct method of conveying the meaning of foreign word is usually used when the words denote things, objects, their qualities, sometimes gestures and movements, which can be shown to and seen by pupils. The translation method may be applied in its two variants:
1). Common translation. to sleep - спать
a flower - цветок
joy
- радость
2). Translation-interpretation
to go - exaть, идти, лететь
to come - exaть, идти
to drive
- вести машину, noeзд, aвтoбyс
education - воспитание, образование
The translation method is efficient for presenting new words: it is economical from the point of view of time, it ensures true exact comprehension of the meaning of the words presented. The methods of conveying the meaning of unfamiliar words should be used as fallows: visual presentation prevails in junior forms; verbal means prevail in intermediate and senior forms; translation in all the forms, especially in senior forms.
Whatever method of presenting a new word is used pupils should be able to pronounce the word correctly, listen to sentences with the word, repeat the word after the teacher individually and in using both as the single unit and in sentences.
For teaching vocabulary there are different kinds of exercises. There are complete the sentences, find new words from the text, find new words, make up sentences with new words, situation.
Exercises in using word combinations, phrases, sentences stored up in pupils memory in connection with situations given.
Exercises of this type are difficult since pupils should search their memory for the necessary words, word combinations, or even sentences to describe in object or a picture.
Vocabulary exercises
Aims: Developing familiarity with the whether form of known words.
The acquisition of new words is only the first step in the process of vocabulary learning. The students must subsequently learn to recognize these words in another context and learn to use them on proper occasions.
1) Recognition of the right word.
Look at the following word list. A "test word" is followed by four other words, one of which is exactly the same at the test word. Read as fast as you can and underline the word which is the some as the test word, quiet: quite, quilt, quill, quiet.
mild: mile, milk, mild, mill.
Beer: peer, beer, deer, dear.
2) Word matches
Find the words that are exactly the same in spelling in the two columns linking the pair with a pencil:
3) Recognition of the meaning of words.
Look at the following word list. A test word is following by four other words. Underline the word list is nearest in meaning to the test word. Easy: busy, lazy, simple, ready; Big: small, middle, large, title; Ship: boat, boot, sheep, bus; Sun: swim, walk, jump.
Also we use the dictionary when we doing exercises. Dictionary are usually used to find out the meaning of unknown words, learns dictionaries contain a great deal of information that learners can use to use vocabulary productively.
Vocabulary games and activities
Games and activities are played main role in teaching foreign language. They help to enrich their horizon and to improve their interest in subject. There are many valid reasons for using games in the language classroom, not least among them, the sheer enjoyment of a moments of relaxation after some arduous, drilling or as a short despite after prolonged deskwork. Reasons for including games in the language class are л
1. They focus students' attention on specific structures, grammatical patterns, and vocabulary items.
2. They can function as reinforcement, review and enrichment.
3. They involve equal participation from both slow and fast learners.
4. They can be adjusted to suit the individual ages and language levels of the students in the class.
Choosing the right game is also many problem in its way. Which game should be played, once were decided it is time for such an activity. Many factors enter into deciding the answer to this question:
1. The size of the class.
2. Whether it is a class of adults or one of children.
3. The class level- elementary, intermediate, advanced.
4. The structures being studied of the moment.
5. Equipment and materials available.
6. The time available for s game.
There are many and variety of vocabulary games which give the students an opportunity to practice many of the high- frequency words and expressions they have learned.
Now I'll write some games enriching vocabulary.
For ex: You'll never guess!
Objective: To encourage students to derive the meaning of new vocabulary terns from contextual clues.
Language level: elementary and intermediate.
Equipment and maternal: paper and pencil.
Allow the students several minutes in which to write a brief description of some object for the others in the class to guess. Objects may be confined to a specify subject category, such as plants, animals, food or clothing, or There should be four sentences in the description, bedimming with the less obvious details and moving towards those that make lazier for the others to guess: students may call out their answers as quickly as they think they know what the object is. The first students to guess correctly receives a score of one two four points.
A student receivers four points if he guesses correctly after hearing the first sentence, three points after beaming the second sentence, two after the third and one after the fourth sentence.
At the end of the game the student with the most points is the winner.
Activities about vocabulary
Teacher checks the pupils' memory. The first pupil calls out a word which he then writes down on paper. The person to his right must follow with another word beginning with the last letter of the word just named.
Similarly, the third person produces a word of the second word and so on around the class, good idea for each student to write down the word he calls out.
Ex: player: born; pl 2: nose; pl 3: every; pl 4: youth; pl 5: hand pl6:drama; pi 7: airport and others.
Choosing Up: Using a Deck of Cards to Assign Students to Groups In classes of all sizes, organizing small groups for activities can present a challenge. Students usually choose to work with the same group of friends. This doesn't allow any change in the dynamics of the small group and can slow students' progress. Also, some students are left without groups. The teacher then puts these extra students together, with mixed results. A random (without any order) method of assigning groups seems to eliminate favoritism on the part of both teachers and students.
A deck of playing cards introduces the necessary randomness, and the four suits (shapes: hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs), two colors, and 9-12 different numbers make it adaptable to a variety of arrangements. Before class, the teacher arranges the necessary number of cards into a smaller deck (all 52 cards in a pile) and shuffles (mixes) them thoroughly. If the students are to work in pairs, either the colors or the numbers, or both can be determiners. A student drawing (picking) a red two can look for another student with a red two. If four partners are needed for a group, all students drawing the same number will form a group, no matter what the color of their card is. You can remove one whole suit (the shapes) if three students are needed for each group. If you want your students to group differently during the same class period, you can have them group by number the first time, and by suit or color the second time. It's possible to group the students differently three times in one class: first by number, then by color, then by suit.
Teaching grammar The Importance of teaching grammar
Native speakers usually think of English grammar as a subject studied in school. Studying grammar teaches you how to talk and write correctly. Note the word "correctly". You already know how to talk, that having learned the language as a toddler. And you had at least the rudiments of writing well in hand before you started studying grammar. The studying grammar was sort of an embellishment and refining of something you already knew. A large part of grammar for the native speaker is learning the names for elements language-nouns, verbs, prepositions, and the like-and learning how they work together in prepositional phrases, sentences, clauses, paragraphs, and so on. This aspect of grammar can be compared to an anatomy class in which you learn how your muscles work. You have been using your muscles successfully since you were born. Now you are learning what you and your muscles actually do. Another part of grammar for the native speaker is fine tuning the language already used. Such things as exercises in which you choose the correct form of "lie" or "lay", activities teaching you to use "whom" in the right places, or instruction on identifying and eliminating dangling modifiers (example: "I saw an accident standing at my bedroom window"), are really attempts to correct tiny mistakes in your use on the language.
Grammar as Seen by the Linguist or Grammarian.
To a professional in the field of grammar—a linguist—grammar is the study of how words and phrases are arranged in the expression of thoughts and ideas. This study of the language is parallel to a biologist's study of a plant or animal. What are the various organs in this organism? How do they work? What do they do? How do they interact with one another? The linguist approaches the language in the same way. Some of the questions which a linguist might ask are:
What are the basic elements in this language? What are the words, prefixes, suffixes, etc.?
How do the basic elements work? How do they combine to communicate such things as negatives, questions, the relative time that something happened, etc.?
How do the elements interact with one another? In what order do they occur in a phrase or sentence? What combinations communicate what ideas?
Grammar in an EFL/ESL context.
From the point of view of the language learner, learning the grammar the language is closer to the linguist's position than the non-professional native speaker's. The learner needs to know what the words of the language are and what they mean. He also needs to know how to combine these words to say what he wants to say.
Example: A speaker of Japanese has to learn sooner or later that in English the verb comes in the middle of the sentence rather than at the end of the sentence as it does in Japanese:
| English statement word order | This is a book |
|---|---|
| Literal translation of Japanese | This a book is |
All approaches to teaching English and all EFL/ESL teachers, deal one way or another with a teaching of English grammar. As it is defined by the linguists -he words of English and their combinations. The important thing for you to remember is that grammar in an EFL/ESL context is quite different from the grammar you knew and loved (or didn't love) in school.
In order to understand a language and express oneself correctly one must assimilate the grammar mechanism of the language studied. Indeed one may know al the words in sentence and yet fail to understand it, if one does not see the relationship between the words in the given sentence. And 'vise' 'versa', a sentence may contain one, two and more unknown words but if one has a good knowledge on the structure of the language one can easily guess the meaning of these words at least find them in a dictionary. For instance, one can hard understand the following sentences without a knowledge, grammar even all the words are familiar:
We saw him book a ticket. It made me return home. Each of them includes some grammar difficulties for Russian speaking pupils, namely, the infinitive construction in book and make. However, if a pupil has assimilated the model of the complex object in the English language he will understand that the sentence—we saw him book a ticket—the word "book" is not a noun, it cannot be a noun since him book is complex object. In this sentence book is infinitive therefore pupil must look it up in a dictionary under v. in the second sentence the verb make is used in the meaning of 'заставлять' since there is the infinitive construction to make somebody do something which the pupil can easily recognize if he learn it.
No speaking is possible without the knowledge of grammar without the forming of a grammar mechanism. If a learner has acquired such mechanism, he can produce correct tenses in a foreign language. Paul Roberts writes "Grammar something that produced the sentences of a language. By something we mean a speaker of English grammar. In a sense you are in English grammar. You possess as essential part of your being, a very complicated apart which enables you to produce infinitely many sentences. English ones including many that you have never specially learned. Furthermore by applying your rule you can easily tell whether a sentence that you hear is a grammatical English sentence or not."
A command of English as is envisaged by the school syllabus can not be ensured without the study of grammar. Pupils need grammar to be able to and speak read and write in the target language.
The difficulties of teaching grammar
The most difficult point of English grammar is the article because it is completely strange to Russian speaking pupils. The use of the articles and other determines comes first in the list of the most frequent errors.
The chief difficulty in learning new language is that of changing from a grammatical mechanism of the native language to that of the new language. Indeed every language has its own way fitting words together to form sentence. In English word order is more important than in Russian, the inversion of subject and a finite verb in "Are you…? indicates the question form. In speaking English, Russian pupils often violate the word order which results in bad mistakes in expressing their thoughts.
The English tense system also presents a lot of trouble to Russian speaking pupils because of the difference which exists in these languages with regard to time and tense relations. For example: The people can not at first understand why he must say I have seen him today -I saw him yesterday. For him the faction is completed in both sentences and he does not associate in anyway with today or yesterday. The sequence of tenses is another difficulty point of English grammar or Russian speaking pupils because there is no such phenomenon in their mother tongue. Why should he say? She said she was busy when she was busy?
The use of modal verbs in various types of sentences is very difficult for the learner. For example: He should differentiate the use of can and may while in Russian the verb 'могу' covers them both. Then he should remember which verb must be used in answers to the questions with modal verbs. For instance, may I go home? No you must not. May I take your pen? Yes you may. Must I do it? No you needn't.
Pupils find some specific use of infinitive, participle and gerund constructions difficult. For example: I saw him run. I want you to go there. They were seen to arrive. After finishing they went home. Pupils are careless in the use of these tiny words and consider them unimportant
for their thoughts when speaking English.
English grammar must begin therefore with pupils learning the meaning of these structural words, with practice in their correct use. For example: This is a pen. The pen is red. Correct selection of grammar teaching material is the first step towards the elimination of mistakes.
How to teach grammar
Teaching grammar should be based upon the following principles:
1. Conscious approach to the teaching grammar. This means that in sentence patterns teaching points are determined so that pupils can concentrate their attention on some elements of the pattern to be able to use them as orienting points when speaking writing a target language. For example: I can see a book. I can see many books. The man asked for your telephone number. The teacher draws pupils' attention to the new element in the sentence pattern. The teaching points may be presented in the form of a rule a very short one. It is usually done in the mother tongue. The rule helps the learner to understand and assimilate the structural meaning of the elements. It ensures a conscious approach to learning. This approach provides favorable conditions for the speedy development of correct and more flexible language to use. However it does not mean that the teacher should ask pupils to say this or that rule. Rules do not ensure the mastery of the language. They only help to attain the practical goal. If a pupil recognizes and employs correctly the forms that are appropriate that is sufficient. The teacher realizes the difficulties the sentence pattern presents for your pupils. Comparative analysis of the grammar item in English and in Russian or within the English language may be helpful thing, of the shortest simple way for presentation of grammar item. Remember the more you speak about the lost time or be fit practice. And not only this more the teacher explains the less his pupils understand what he is trying to explain. This leads to the teaching giving more information than is necessary which does not help the pupils. In the usage of this particular grammar item only hinders them.
2. Practical approach to the assimilating of grammar. It means that pupils learn those grammar items which they need for immediate use either in oral or written language. Here the teacher teaches pupils correct grammar usage and not grammar knowledge.
3. Structural approach to the teaching grammar items are introduced and drilled in structures or sentence patterns. It has been provided and accepted by the majority of teachers and methodologists that were never the aim is to teach pupils the comment of the language, and speaking in particular, the structural approach meets the requirement.
Pupils are touch to understand English when spoken to and speak it from the very beginning. This is a possible provided they have learned sentence pattern and words as a pattern and they know how to adjust them to the situations they are given.
In our country the structural approach to the teaching of grammar attracted the attention of many teachers. As a result structural approach grammar has been adopted by our school since it allows the pupil to make up sentence by analogy, to use the same patterns for various situations. Pupils learn sentence pattern and how to use them in oral and written language.
Furnish pupils with words to change the lexical meaning of the sentence pattern so that pupils will be able to use it in different situations. Remember such pupils should assimilate the grammar mechanism involved in the sentence pattern.
Situational approach to teaching grammar
Pupils learn a grammar item used in situation. For example, the possessive case may be effectively introduced in classroom situation. Here the teacher selects the situations for the particular grammar item you are going to a present. Look through text book and other teaching materials and find these situations which can ensure comprehension and provide the usage of the item.
5. Different approach to the teaching of active grammar and passive grammar. Grammar items pupils need for conversation taught by the oral approach i. e. pupils and them perform various oral exercises, finally see them printed and write sentence using them.
Here the teacher if the grammar you are going to present belongs to the pupils need for conversation, select the oral approach message for teaching grammar. If pupils need grammar item for reading, start with reading and writing sentence in which grammar items occur.
While preparing for the lesson at which a new grammar item should be introduced. A teacher must be realized the difficulties pupils will meet in assimilating this new element of the English grammar.
Grammar aspects of major approaches to language teaching
This section will give examples if text books written within the three broad categories of language-teaching approaches discussed and show how grammar is dealt with in each approach. Each example is an excerpt showing only the grammar presentation aspects of the lesson. In all three examples the same grammar point is taught, the sentence pattern "This is a___ ". You will be able to see the differences in the way the three approaches teach the same feature.
Traditional Grammar Translation Description
The essence of this approach is that the grammar language is presented explicitly by rule (generally in the native language of the student), with example sentences in the target language.
The student:
[x] Learns this rule by studying the example sentences;
[x] Translates sentences exemplifying the rule into his language;
[x] Translates sentences from his language into target language;
Comments.
Students who have learned English well via this approach typically have the grammar of English down pat. In fact, they generally know Much more English grammar than native speakers do. They can read English quite well and in many cases and write it well. Such students are often weak, however, in the oral aspects of language. Their pronunciation tends to be difficult to understand, they have great difficulty understanding native speakers, and their fluency is quite low. These last two problems tend to lessen if students are in the English—speaking environment for any length of time. The solid grounding in grammar and written English allows them to establish relationships between the oral and written language. Fluency comes with practice in any circumstances.
Critics of Grammar Translation approach point out that hearing and speaking a language are what language learning is all about, and if an approach doesn't allow the student active practice in hearing and speaking, there is something dreadfully wrong with the approach. They also content that learning all that grammar is a waste of time. Just as young children learn to speak a language without benefit or grammatical instruction, the language learner can do the same.
These criticisms have been pretty much accepted throughout England and United States, and have led to the abandonment of the Grammar Translation Method in EFL/ESL teaching. However, Grammar Translation is extremely widespread in other countries, largely because the only approach that does not require the teacher to speak the target language well. Given the emergence of English as a world language, and the consequent great demand for English instruction in third world countries, it's inevitable that people who know only a little English will find themselves teaching it. These teachers will naturally opt for a language teaching approach that puts the least pressure on their English abilities. The Grammar Translation Method meets there needs. Admirably and, in addition, is probably very familiar to them as the way in which they themselves learned the English they know.
Direct Method and Audio - lingual Method Description
The essence of both the Direct Method and the Audio -lingual method is that the best way to learn a language is through habit formation. Students are exposed to model sentences that they practice in a variety of oral drills and exercises. This practice is supposed to lead than to "internalize" the grammatical structure of the sentence as a habit, after which day presumably can use the sentence type to express their thoughts,
In the audio lingual method, oral language (including careful work on pronunciation) is stressed; written practice is considerate secondary. In fact, in some audio lingual curricular, written work is postponed entirely until the student has reached and intermediate level. While grammar is never dealt with overtly in the classroom, the sequence of presentation of sentence types and vocabulary is rigidly controlled, so that the student is exposed to sentences of gradually increasing complexity. The native language of the student is not used. The teacher is expected to use only English.
Comments.
It is hard to find a student who has learned English solely through this approach. It is an "ideal" approach in the sense that even those who expose its principles augment it in the classroom with activities that are counter to those principles. In any event, students who have studied
English through this approach apparently find it hard to extend what they have learned into natural language situations. While they can do the drills well, they cannot use the language on their own without considerable additional work.
Comments.
Proponents of the various kinds of communicative language teaching argue that it improves on earlier methods because it teaches students to use the language in natural situations and therefore leads to fluency. Critics comment that it does not prepare the student for situations not covered in the text book or class, and that it is difficult to predict in advance the situations for which the student will need language.
Critics also comment that the approach requires students to memorize great deal of material without being shown systematic aspects of that material. The grammatical aspects of the phrase "you have the wrong number" may be too complex to be taught at this point in the book, but students need the phrase if they use the telephone. They are to memorize it in its entirety, without analysis of its components. While this practice saves them a lot of grammatical bother, it requires them to memorize an arbitrary set of words, which has been demonstrated to be much more difficult than remembering patterned or structure items.
Sequencing.
A nation that winds through the various approaches, and on he that you will deal with on a daily basis as you teach English, is the problem of w3hat to teach before what else. Common sense suggests that simpler things should be taught before more complex things and that if you are teaching a variation on X, it is reasonable to have taught X first.
Grammatical sequencing.
In grammar studies, some sentences are simpler, and therefore easier, than others. You dealt with this notion in your English classes in school when you studied simple vs.
Compound or complex sentences. The simple sentence "This is a book" is easier than the complex sentence "If books consisted of loose sheets stuck together any old which way with chewing gum, this would be a book."
The various approaches to teaching English deal with the problem of Sequencing (arranging items from easier to harder) in various way. Textbooks within the Grammar translation Method, Direct Method, and Audio -lingual Method determine a sequence of sentence patterns from simple to complex according to grammatical criteria alone, than arrange
lessons around that sequence.
Approaches to language teaching developed after the Audio-lingual Method reject the notion of such rigid sequencing as is illustrated above. Proponents of these newer approaches argue that more important aspects of language than grammatical structure exist, and that sequencing determined solely by grammar produces uninteresting, irrelevant lessons. These texts do not completely abandon grammatical sequencing, however. A great many post—Audio-lingual textbooks (like Express Way, Figures 7. 8—7. 10) sequence loosely according to verb tense. Such sequencing often goes as follows.
Present tense of "be" "Is this 328—7128? No it isn't" Present progressive "This bus is going downtown" Simple present "This bus goes to Westville" Imperatives
"Go down to the corner"
The sequencing of other grammatical features—nouns, prepositions, question forms, etc. –is determined by the content of the conversations.
Other parameters.
While sequencing according to grammatical complexity is of great concern to EFL/ESL textbook authors they consider other parameters as well.
Ease of explanation is another parameter; especially important in approaches (and classrooms!) where the student's native language is not used. Sentence types that are put into the first few lessons have to have meanings which can be demonstrated or pantomimed. You might explain the difference in meaning between "this" and "that" in this way.
After the first lessons, sentences must be explainable in language the student can understand. For example, the standard way to explain "must have" is to set up a context:
I went to the drugstore. I bought a paper. I paid for the paper with my wallet. I came here from the drug store. I don't have my wallet now. I must have left my wallet in the drug store.
Another parameter is a progression from things the student knows to things the student doesn't know. It is standard, practice, for example, to start out with the word "be" in simple sentences, because they are easily demonstrated and occur with alarming frequency. It is also standard practice to go from "be" sentences to the present progressive ("I am going", "you are going," etc) because, among other things that tense uses the forms of "be" the student has already learned.
Practical choice
As you can gather from the previous discussion, the sequencing of materials to be taught with a complex issue. Some teachers make up their own sequences, taking materials from several books. Others follow the sequencing of a particular text or prescribes syllabus (which means simply that they teach the lessons in the order they are given in the book or syllabus), and amplify the lessons with material from other sources. You will probably prefer the latter course, feeling that your energies are better devoted to classroom matters than to wrestling with the problems of sequencing.
The Students Who Want the Grammar
In many cases, you will be teaching from a lecture that does not present grammar and will be uncomfortable without it. Some students will be persistent in their requests for grammatical explanations. Others will simply drop out on the grounds that your class doesn't meet their needs.
There are several ways of dealing with this situation. It makes good pedagogical sense to meet your students' expectation as far as you can. If you can't you have to change their expectations one way or another, or risk your credibility.
Activity
1. Changing in ones life.
Use of past to describe Personal experiences: free compositions of sentences oral and written: discussion.
Procedure:
Ask the students to think of an event on their life that made a big differences to them, start the ball rolling by describing a change in your own life: encourage them to ask for a student volunteer to describe a similar experience, helping with vocabulary where needed, other students. Contribute further, until the class has had enough. Then ask them all to write down descriptions of their change experiences home work. If you wish and if your students agree, some of them resulting essays can be read out later.
2. Story behind a photo.
Use of past for narrative: also past interrogative, free discussion, with written composition follow up.
Materials: In a previous session ask the student to bring to the classroom photographs of themselves or someone, they know, taken some ago: and bring one yourselves.
Procedure: Show the students your photographs and tell them about the circumstances in which it was taken or any other interesting facts connected other interesting facts connected with each other. Encourage them to ask questions. Then invite another student to display his or her photograph and talk about it. And so on round and class.
Variation: The activity may be based on questions may be in the past about the photograph. The owner of the photograph simple sates full the subject is and from then on all information is given in answer to questions.
Where was this taken?
Did you live there long?
For homework, ask students to write a brief composition based on a similar Photograph.
Teaching Reading Introduction
Reading is one of the main skills that a pupil must acquire in the e process of mastering a foreign language in school. The syllabus for foreign languages lists reading alone of the leading language activities to be developed. It runs: "to read, without dictionary, text containing familiar grammar material and no more then 4-6 unfamiliar words per 100 words of the text the meaning of which, as a rule, should be clear from the text the meaning of which, as a rule, should be clear from the context familiar word-building elements (in the eight-years cool). "Therefore reading is one of the practical aims of teaching a foreign language in schools".
Reading is of great educational importance, as reading is a means of communication, people get information they need from books, journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. Through reading in a foreign language the pupil enriches his knowledge of the world around him. He gets acquainted with the countries where the target language is spoken.
Reading develops pupils' intelligence. It helps to develop their memory, will, imagination. Pupils become accustomed to working with books, which in its turn facilitates unaided practice in further reading. The content of text, their ideological and political spirit influence pupils. We must develop in soviet pupils such. Qualities as haunts, devotion to and love for our people and the working people of other countries, the text our pupils are to read must meet these requirements. Reading ability is, therefore, not only of great practical, but educational, and social importance, too.
Reading is not only an aim in itself, it is also a means of learning a foreign language. When reading a text the pupil reviews sounds and letters, vocabulary and grammar, memorizes the spelling of words, the meaning of words and, in this way, he perfect his command of the target language. The more the pupil reads, the better his retention of the linguistic material is. If the teacher instructs his pupils in good reading and they can read with sufficient fluency and complete comprehension he helps them to acquire speaking and writing skills as well. Reading is, therefore, both an end to be attained and a means to achieve that end.
The content of teaching reading
Reading is complex process of language activity. As it is closely connected with comprehension of what is read, reading is a complicated intellectual work. It requires the ability on the part of the reader to carry out as number of mental operations: analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, comparison.
Reading as process is connected it with the work of visual, kinesthetic, aural analyzers, and thinking. The visual analyzer is at work when the reader sees a text. While seeing the text he "sounds " it silently, therefore the kinesthetic analyzer is involved. When hi sounds the text he hears what he pronounces in his inner speech so it chows that the aural analyzer is not passive, it also works and, finally, due to the work of all the analyzers the reader can understand thoughts, in learning to read one of the aims is to minimize the activities of kinetic and aural analyzers so that the reader can associate what he sees with the thought expressed in reading material, since inner speech hinders the process of reading making it very slow. Thus the speed of reading depends on ability to establish a direct connection between what he sees and what it means.
There are two ways of reading: aloud or orally, and silently. People usually start learning to read orally. In teaching a foreign in school both ways should be developed. Pupils assimilate the graphic system of the target languages a means which is used for conveying information in print. They develop this skill through oral reading and silent reading.
When one says that that one can read, it means that one can focus one's attention on the meaning and not on the form; the pupil treats the text as a familiar form of discourse and not a task of deciphering. "The aim of the teacher is to get his pupils as quickly as possible over the period in which each printed symbol is looked at for its shape and to arrive at the stage when the pupil looks at words and phrases, for their meaning, almost without noticing the shapes of the separate letters". A good reader does not look at letters, nor even at words, one by one, however quickly, he takes in the meaning of two, three, or four words at a time, in a single moment. The eyes of a very good reader move quickly, taking long "reading perse ". Reading perse in the end is to be attained. It is possible provided:
(1) the reader can associate the graphic system the language with the phonic system of that language;
(2) the reader can find the logical subject and the logical predicate of the sentences: The man there is my neighbour. There were many people in the hall. It was difficult for me to come in June.
(3) the reader can get information from the text (as a whole).
These are the three constituent parts of reading as a process.
As a means of teaching reading a system of exercises is widely used in school, which includes:
1. graphemic- phonemic exercises which help pupils to assimilate graphemic- phonemic correspondence in the English language;
2. structural - information exercises which help pupils to carry out lexical and grammar analysis to find the logical subject and predicate in the sentences following the structural signals;
3. semantic -communicative exercises which help pupils to get information from the text .
The actions which pupils reform while doing these exercises constitute the content of teaching and learning reading in a foreign language.
Some difficulties pupils have in learning to read in the English language
Reading in the English language is one of the most difficult things because there are 26 letters and 146 graphemes which represent 46 phonemes. Indeed the English alphabet presents many difficulties to Russian -speaking pupils because the Russian alphabet differs greatly from that of the English language. A comparison of the two languages shows that of the 26 pairs of printed letters (52 - if we consider capital and small letters as different symbols) only 4 are more or less similar to those of the Russian alphabet, both in print and in meaning. These are K, k; Mm; T, t; 31 letters are completely new to pupils, these are: B, b; D, d; F, f; G, g; H, h; L, l; I, i; J, j; N, n; Q, q; R, r; S, s; T, t; U, u; V, v; W, w; Z, z. The letters A, a B, b с, с E, e, H, 0, о, P, p, Y, y, X, x, occur in both languages, but they are read differently. They are, therefore, the most difficult letters for the pupil to retain. Obviously in teaching a pupil to read English words, much more attention should be given to those letters which occur in both languages but symbolism entirely different sounds. For example: H, p... Pupils often read How as [nau]. Therefore, in presenting a new letter to pupils the teacher should stress its peculiarity not only from the standpoint of the English language but from the point of view of the Russian language as well.
It is not sufficient to know English letters. It is necessary theta pupils should know graphemes, how this or that vowel, vowel combination, consonant, or consonant combination is read in different positions in the worlds (window, down).
The teacher cannot teach pupils all the existing rules and exemptions for reading English words. Nor is it necessary to do so. When learning English pupils are expected to assimilate the following rules of reading: how to read stressed vowels in open and closed syllables and before r; how to read ay, oo, ou, ow; the consonants c, s, k, g; sh, th, ng, ck and tion, ssion, ous. The rules are not numerous, but they are important to the development of reading.
Pupils should learn the reading of some monosyllable words which are homophones. For example: son-sun; tail-tale; too-two; write-right:, eye-I, etc.
At the very beginning, the pupil is completed to look at each printed letter separately in order to be sure of its shape. He often sees words and not sense units. For instance, he reads: the book is on the desk and not (the
book} (on the desk}.
The most difficult thing in learning to read is to get information from a sentence or a paragraph on the basis of the knowledge of structural signals and not only the meaning of words. Pupils often ignore grammar and try to understand what they read relying on their knowledge of autonomous words. And, of course, they often fail, e. g., the sentence he was asked to help the old woman is understood as "Он попросил помочь старушке", in which the word he becomes the subject and is not the object of the action. Pupils sometimes find it difficult to pick out topical sentences in the text which express the main ideas.
To make the process of reading easier new words, phrases and sentence patterns should be learnt orally before pupils are asked to read them. So when pupils start reading they know how to pronounce the words, the phrases, and the sentences, and are familiar with their meaning.
Consequently, in order to find the most effective ways of teaching the teacher should know the difficulties pupils may have.
When teaching reading the teacher needs a set of flash cards at hand. If the teacher uses the blackboard instead he can write printed letters on it and pupils can recollect the words they have learnt orally which have this or that letter, compose a word, etc.
The same devices are applied for teaching pupils to read words, the task being different, however:
a. pupils choose words which are not read according to the rule, for example: lake, plane, have, Mike, give, nine;
b. pupils are invited to read the words which they usually misread:
yet - let cold - could
form - from called - cold
come - some wood - would
does - goes walk - work
c. pupils are invited to look at the words and name the letter which makes the words different:
d. pupils in turn read a column of words following the key word;
e. pupils are invited to pick out the words with the graphemes oo, ou, ea, th,...
though - thought
since - science
through - though
with - which
hear - near content - context
hear - hare country - county
In teaching to read transcription is also utilized. It helps the reader to
read a word in the cases where the same grapheme stands for different sounds: build, suit, or words which are not read according to the rule: aunt, colonel.
In modem textbooks for the 5 th form transcription is not used. It is given in the textbooks for the 6 th and the 7 th forms. Beginning with the 6 th and 7 th forms pupils learn the phonic symbols so that they are able to read unfamiliar words which they look up in the word-list or a dictionary.
All the exercises mentioned above are designed to develop pupils' ability to associate the graphic symbols with the phonic ones.
The structural-information exercises are done both in reading aloud and in silent reading. Pupils are taught how to read sentences, paragraphs, texts correctly. Special attention is given to intonation since it is of great importance to the actual division of sentences, to stressing the logical predicate in them. Marking the text occasionally may be helpful.
At an early stage of teaching reading the teacher should read a sentence or a passage to the class himself. When he is sure the pupils understand the passage, he can set individuals and the class to repeat the sentences after him, reading again himself if the pupils' reading is poor. The pupils look into the textbook. In symbols it can be expressed like this: T-C-T-Pi-T-P2-T-Pn-T-C (T-teacher; C-Class; P-Pupil).
This kind of elementary reading practice should be carried on for limited number of lessons only. When a class has advanced far enough to be ready for more independent reading, reading in chorus might be decreased, but not eliminated:
T-C-PiPaPn.
When the pupils have learned to associate written symbols with the sounds they stand for they should read a sentence or a passage by themselves. In this way they get a. chance to make use of their knowledge of the rules of reading. It gives the teacher an opportunity to see whether each of his pupils can read. Symbolically it looks like this: Pi ?2 Pn T(S) С (S-speaker, if tape recorder is used).
Reading as a method of teaching and learning the language should take place in all the forms. This is done with the aim of improving pupils' reading skills.
The teacher determines what text (or paragraph ) and exercises pupils are to read aloud.
In reading aloud, therefore, the teacher uses:
(a) diagnostic reading (pupils read and can see their weak points in reading);
(b) instructive reading (pupils follow the pattern read by the teacher or the speaker);
(c) control reading or test reading ( pupils read the text trying to keep close to the pattern as possible).
Mistakes and how to correct them
In teaching pupils to read the teacher must do his best to prevent mistakes.. We may, however, be certain that in spite of much work done by the teacher, pupils will make mistakes in reading. The question is who corrects their mistakes, how they should be corrected, when they must be corrected.
Our opinion is that the pupil who has made a mistake must try to correct it himself. If he cannot do it, his classmates correct his mistake. If they cannot do so the teacher corrects the mistake. The following techniques may be suggested:
1. The teacher writes a word on the blackboard. He underlines ck in it and asks the pupil to say what sound these two letters convey. If the pupil cannot answer the question, the teacher asks some of his classmates. They help the pupil to correct his mistake and he reads the word.
2. One of the pupils asks: What is the English/or "черный"? If the pupil repeats the mistake, the "corrector" pronounces the word properly and explains the rule the pupil has forgotten. The pupil now reads the word correctly.
3. The teacher or one of the pupils says: Find the word "черный" and read it. The pupil finds the word and reads it either without any mistake if his first mistake if his mistake was due to his carelessness, or he repeats the mistake. The teacher then tells him to recollect the rule and read the word correctly.
4. The teacher corrects the mistake himself. The pupil reads the word correctly. The teacher asks pupil to explain to the class how to read ck.
5. The teacher tells the pupil to write the word black and underline ck. Then he says how the word is read.
There are some other ways of correcting pupils' mistakes. The teacher should use them reasonably and choose the most suitable for the case.
Another question arises: whether we should correct a mistake in the process of reading a passage or after finishing it. Both ways are possible. The mistake should be corrected at one's while the pupils read the text if they have made it in a word which will occur two or more times in the text. If the word does not appear again, it is better to let the pupil read the paragraph to the end. Then the mistake is corrected.
A teacher should be on the alert for the pupils mistakes, follow their reading and mark their mistakes in pencil.
Silent reading. In learning to read pupils widen their eyespan. They can see more than a board, a phrase, a sentence. The eye can move faster than the reader is able to pronounce what he sees. Thus reading aloud becomes an obstacle for perception. It hinders the pupil's comprehension of the text. It is necessary that the pupil should read silently. Special exercises may suggested to develop pupils' skills in silent reading. For instance, "Look and say, read and look up. " To perform this type of exercises pupils should read a sentence silently, grasp it, and reproduce it without looking the text. At first they perform such exercises slowly. Gradually the teacher limits the time for the pupils' doing the exercises. It makes them read faster and faster. All this lead to widening their eyespan.
Teaching silent reading is closely connected with two problem:
1. Instructing pupils in finding in sentences what is new in the information following some structural signals. The later is possible provided pupils have a certain knowledge of grammar and vocabulary and they can perform lexical and grammar analyses;
2. Developing pupils' ability in guessing.
Pupils should be taught how to find the logical predicate in a sentence. The teacher may ask his pupil to read a text silently and find the words conveying the new information in the text according to their position. There are some signals which may be helpful in this respect. These areThe Passive Voice (the doctor was sent for): the indefinite article (a man came up to me), the construction "It is / was" (It was not difficult for him to finish his work in time), etc. Grammar and lexical analyses help pupils to assimilate structural words, a determiner the meaning of a word proceeding from its position in the sentence, to find the meaning of unfamiliar words, and those which seem to be familiar but do not correspond to the Structure of the sentence (e. g., I saw him book a ticket). Pupils' poor comprehension often results from their poor knowledge of grammar. The teacher should instruct pupils how to work with a dictionary and a reference book so that they can overcome some difficulties independently. Although in school the teacher often applies grammar and lexical analyses, however, he often does it not with the aim of the "actual division" or parsing of the sentence and better comprehension of the sentence or of the text, but with the aim of checking or revision of his pupils' knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. This vocabulary analyses for revision. However, much more attention should be given to teaching pupils how to carry out the actual division of sentences to get information from the text. Here are a few examples of structural- information exercises:
- Read the following sentences and guess the meaning of the words you don't know.
- Read the sentence An idea struck me and explain the use of the indefinite article.
- Find the logical predicates in the sentences with the words alone, even, so.
- Read the text. Stress the words conveying new information in each sentence. E. g., I have a bag. The bag is black.
It is a new bag. I like my new bag.
- These sentences are too complicated. Break them into shorter sentences.
- Find the sentences, which summarize the paragraph.
- By what words is the reader carried from sentence in this paragraph?
- What is the significance of the tense difference?
- What is the effect of the series of repetitions in the paragraph?
To read a text the pupil must possess the ability to grasp the contents of the text. The pupil is to be taught to compare, to contrast, to guess, and to foresee events.
One of the most frequently used methods by which children attack new words is through the use of picture clues.
The use of context clues is another word-getting technique. The pupil discovers what a new word is when that particular word is needed to complete the meaning of sentence.
In teaching pupils to read much attention should be given to the development of their ability to guess. One of the best ways to develop this skill is to give the pupil the text for acquaintance either during the lesson or as his homework. He can read it again and again. "Before questions" may be helpful. They direct the pupil's thought when he reads the text. If the work is done during the lesson, the teacher can direct his pupils in guessing new words.
The teacher instructs pupils how to get information from the text. Semantic-communicative exercises are recommended. They all connected with silent reading. They may be:
- Read and say why Jack does not take the apple.
- Read. Find answers to the following questions.
- Read the text. Find the word which describe the room.
- Read the text. Say what made the Prime-Minister leave the country.
- There are two causes of the strike. Find them in the text.
- There are three main features of the substance mentioned in the text below. Find them.
- They author describes his hero with great sympathy. Find in what words the expresses his attitude.
- Read the text and prove that... is a kind woman.
- Read the text and find arguments to prove that...
The three types of exercises are distributed differently depending on the stage of teaching. In the 5 - 6 th forms graphemic-phonemic and structural-information exercises should prevail. In the 7-10' forms structural-information and semantic-communicative must be mostly used; the latter should prevail.
Pupils perform graphemic-phonemic exercises reading them aloud. The teacher uses individual, group, and full class reading. He checks pupil's reading by making him read aloud.
Pupils perform structural-information exercises by reading them aloud and silently. The teacher uses individual group, and full class reading when pupils read sentences, paragraphs of the text aloud, and when the aim is to teach pupils correct intonation, in connection with the actual division of sentences. He checks the pupil's reading asking him to read aloud.
The teacher uses mass reading when pupils read the sentences, paragraphs of the text silently; the objective may be different: either to reading their eyespan or to find new information. The teacher checks the pupil's silent reading by asking him to reproduce a sentence or a paragraph; through partial reading sentence or a clause; through the pupil's interpreting the text; by utilizing true-and-false statements, questions and answers, and, finally translation.
Pupils perform semantic-communicative exercises reading the text silently. If the work is done during the lesson the teacher uses mass reading. He checks his pupils' comprehension by asking the pupils individually. The choice depends on the stage of teaching; on the material used; on pupils' progress.
In junior stage the following techniques may be suggested: Read and draw.
Here are the questions. Find the answers in the text.
Find the following sentences in the text.
Correct the following the statements which are not true to fact.
Translate the sentences beginning with the words..........
Recite the text.
Read the sentences you find most important in the text.
Some of the assignments may be done in writing.
In the intermediate and senior stages the following techniques may be recommended.
Answer the questions. (All the type of questions may be used. However, why-questions are desirable. )
Tell your classmates what (who, when, where, why ).
Read the words to prove or to illustrate what you say.
Find the words from which you have got some new information for yourself.
Read the paragraph you like best, and say why you like it,
Translate the paragraph when (where, why ).
Translate the text. ( This may be done orally or in written form. )
Write a short annotation of the text. ( This may be done both in Russian or in English. )
The choice depends on the material used.
If the text is easy, i. e., if it does not contain unfamiliar words and grammar items the teacher uses those techniques which are connected with speaking,. With active use of vocabulary and sentence pattern. Similar techniques may be used in intermediate and senior stages if the text is not difficult for the class. The teacher asks his pupils a few test their understanding. The interrogation should be carried out bricking if a particular pupil has not got his answer ready. For the most profitable results of this work speed is essential. It ensures that all get a chance to answer. With books open one of the pupils asks a question or a number of questions and another answers. The teacher asks the pupils to retell the text. One pupil begins retelling the text, another continues. Each says a few sentences. The teacher asks the first group of pupils to be ready to say everything they know about X, the second group -everything they know about J, the third group about Y, and so on. The teacher arranges a discussion on the text read by pupils in class or at home.
The work must be carried out in a way which will be of interest to pupils and develop not only their reading ability but their aural
comprehension and speaking abilities as well.
If the text is difficult, i. e., if it contains unfamiliar words and grammar items, and pupils must consult dictionary or a reference book to understand it the techniques the teacher uses should be different, as the pupils read the text not only to get information but to improve their knowledge of the language and intensive work may be connected with:
(a) lexical work which helps pupils to deepen and enrich their vocabulary knowledge;
(b) grammar work which helps pupils to review and systematize their grammar knowledge and enrich it through grammar analyses;
(c) stylistic work which helps pupils to become acquainted with stylistic use of words and grammar forms;
(d) content analyses which helps pupils to learn new concepts quite strange to Russian- speaking pupils. For instance, the Houses of Parliament, public schools, etc.
The exercises are mostly connected with recognition on the part of the learners, namely, find... and read; find... and analyze... ; find... and translate; read those sentences which you think contain the main information; answer the questions, etc. The choice also depends on pupils' progress. If pupils are orally skilful, the techniques the teacher uses are to be those connected with conversation. If pupils are poor in speaking the techniques the teacher uses should be those of recognition, translation, retelling in the mother tongue, etc.
Unfortunately, some teachers have a tendency to teat instead of teach during classroom work and they often continue themselves to reading and translating the text. This is a bad practice. Pupils are tested and not taught. Moreover, the procedure becomes monotonous, and the work is ineffective. A pupil who has been called on to read and received a mark will not usually listen to his classmates.
The methods and techniques suggested above will help the teacher to teach pupils reading as the syllabus requires.
Teaching writing The Importance of teaching writing
When we learn a second language, we learn to communicate with people: to understand them to talk to them read what they have written and write to them. But in fact that people frequently have to communicate with each other in writing is not the only reason to include writing as a part of our second language syllabus. There is an additional and very important reason writing helps our students learn. First writing reinforce the grammatical structures and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students. Second, when our students write they also have a chance to be adventurous with the language to go beyond what they have just leaned to say to take risks. Third when they necessarily become very involved with the new language; the effort to express idea and the constant use of eye, hand, brain, is unique way to reinforce learning. The close relationship between writing and thinking makes writing a valuable part of any language course. There are as many answers as there are teachers and teaching styles or learners and learning styles.
Some teachers and researchers have stressed quantity of writing rather than quality. They have, that is approached the teaching of writing by assigning vast amounts of free writing on given topics, with only minimal correction of error.
Writing as a skill is very important in teaching and learning a foreign language; it helps pupil to assimilate letters and sounds of the English language, its vocabulary and grammar, and to develop habits and skills in pronunciation, speaking and reading. Writing's practical value can fix patterns of all kinds (words, phrase and sentence) in pupil's memory. The school syllabus reads; "writing is a mighty means of teaching a foreign language.
Writing includes penmanship spelling and composition.
Since writing is a complicated skill it should be developed through the formation of habits such as:
1. The habit of writing letters of the English alphabet.
2. The habit of converting speech sounds in to their symbols-letters and letter combinations.
3. The habit of correct spelling of words, phrase and sentences.
4. The habit of writing various exercises that lead pupils to expressing their thoughts in connection with the task set
. In order to form writing habits the following factors are important.
1. Auditory perception of sound, a word, a phrase, a sentence.
2. Articulation of a sound and a pronunciation of a word, a phrase, a sentence by the pupil who writes.
3. Visual perception of letters or letter combinations, which stand for sounds. In writing there participate our ears, eyes, nerves, throat, tongue, the movements of the muscles of the hand participate.
Some methodologists are sure that a conscious approach to teaching and learning a foreign language, can ensure pupils' progress in writing.
Difficulties in teaching writing
When the pupils are taught spelling composition and penmanship, its necessary to know the difficulties Kyrgyz pupils find in learning to write English. The writing of the English letters doesn't present much trouble, because there are a lot of similar letters in both languages, only several letters may seem strange (r, r, q, q, j, t, h, x, f).
Pupils find difficult to make each stroke continuous when the body of the letter occupies one space, the stem one more space above, the tail one more space below. Pupils should know that the small letters are all made with an unbroken movement of the pen. The most difficult thing for pupils in learning is to write in English spelling. The spelling system of a language may be based upon the following principles.
1. Historical or conservative principle when spelling reflects the pronunciation of earlier periods in the history of the language.
Fe: Russian English bought, easy.
2. Morphological principle. In writing a word the morphemic composition of the word is taken into account.
Fe: In Russian. The morpheme is. In English suffered learned, the affixal morpheme is ed.
3. Phonetic principle spelling reflects the pronunciation Russian English leg, pot.
In Russian and German the morphological principle prevails. In French and English the historical principle dominates. The modern English spelling originated as early as the 15 th century has not been changed. The same letters in different words are read in the differently fe; fat, fale
Different letters or letter combinations in different words are read in the same way I eye, meet-meat.
Many letters are pronounced in some words and are mute in other words.
Hour-[aue] brought [br׃כt] laugh[lΛf]
The differences that exist in the English language between pronunciation and spelling may be explained that there are more sounds. There are 23 vowel sounds in English and 6 letters to convey them.
In teaching English spelling special attention should be given to the words.
Fe: daughter, beautiful, foreign must be assimilated through manifold repetition in their writing pupils should know.
1. How to add s-to words ending in y -day-days
ed to words stayed
ing - to verbs -study-studying
er, est - to adjectives in the comparative and the superlative degrees clean-cleaner-cleanest
2. When the consonant should be wobbled sit-sitting, fit-fitting.
3. The main word building suffixes
ful- beauty-beautiful.
Writing a composition or a letter, which is a kind of composition where the pupil has to write down his own thoughts. The pupil often does not know what to write, he wants good and plentiful ideas, which will be within his vocabulary and grammar.
How to teach writing
They usually write in the way the teacher does, so he be careful while writing on the blackboard, because pupils copy what is written and how its written. The teacher should bear in mind that pupils are taught to write only those letters of the English alphabet, which really present some difficulties. They probably forget that the difficulty is not in writing but in memorizing the name of the letter.
In spelling instruction the teacher should know the difficulties of English spelling and instruct pupils how to over come these difficulties.
1. Copying. The aim of this exercise is to allow the pupils to practice what has been taught in listening and speaking. Writing does this because the movements of the muscles of the hand are now called in to hold the ear, the eye and the muscles and nerves of the throat and tongue. The look and the feel of the word are used to help the memory.
For the better assimilation of the spelling of words, it is recommended that various associations should be established, such as
a. Associations by similarity in spelling.
Room-spoon-moon; thought-bought-brought; night-right-light
b. Associations by contrast in spelling
two - too sea - see
Pupils should be also asked to spell words by themselves. Much care should be given to the words whose spelling doesn't follow the rules. For example: daughter, busy, sure. Pupils master the spelling of such words by means of repetition in writing them.
The teacher shows his pupils how to rely on grammar in spelling the word. The more the pupils get acquainted with grammar, the more will they rely on in their spelling.
For example: the pupils have learned the plural of nouns in the English language. Now they know that the ending S is added, though it sounds either [S] as adjective forming suffix. In the words dislike, disadvantage it is necessary to write I, and not E as the negative prefix is dis.
Copying applies equally well to the phrase pattern & the sentence pattern with the same purpose to help the memory, for pupils shouldn't be asked to write at least in the first two years, any thing that they don't already know thoroughly through speech and reading. Copying, after it has been thoroughly learnt, should practice every new word, phrase or sentence pattern. Copying may be carried out both in class and at home.
In copying at home the pupils must be given some additional task preventing them from performing the work mechanically. The following tasks may be suggested.
a) Underline a given letter or letter combination for a certain sound.
b) Underline a certain grammar item.
c) Underline a certain words depicting For example: The names of school things.
The additional work the pupil must perform in copying a text or an exercise makes him pay attention is a good way of ensuring the retention of the material. It must be extensively applied in the junior and in the intermediate stages.
2. Dictation. This kind of writing exercises is much more difficult than copying. Some methodologies think that it should never be given as a test to young beginners. Dictation is the valuable exercises because it trains the ear and the hand as well as the eye; it fixes in the pupils mind the division by division. Dictation can vary in forms and in the way they are conducted.
a) Visual dictation: As the type of written work is intermediate between copying and dictation. The teacher writes a word, or a word combination, or a sentence on the blackboard. The pupils are told to read it and memorize its spelling. Then rubbed out and the pupils write it from memory.
b) Dictation drill: aims at consolidating linguistic material and preparing pupils for spelling tests. The teacher dictates a sentence. A word with a difficult spelling either is written on the blackboard, or is spelt by one of the pupils. Then the pupils are told to write a sentence. The teacher walks about the class and watches them writing. He asks one of the pupils who has written correctly to go to the blackboard and write a sentence for the other pupils to correct their mistakes. The dictation drill may be given for 10-20 minutes.
c) Self-dictation: Pupils are given a text to learn by heart. After they have learnt the text at home the teacher asks them to recite it. Then they are told to write it in their copy-book from memory. This type of written work may be given at junior and intermediate stages.
3. Writing sentence on a given pattern. This kind of writing exercises is more difficult because pupils choose words. They are to use themselves. The following exercises may be suggested.
a) Substitution. I've a little dog. The pupils should use other words instead of dog.
b) Completion. Did you… home task? Pupils should complete.
c) Extension. He gave me… roses (pupils should use adjective before roses.)
Practice of this kind can lead pupils to long sentences.
4. Writing answers to given questions. The question helps the pupils with the words and pattern required the answer. The object of written exercise mentioned to pupils spelling in target language and to fix the linguistic material in their memory and in this way to provide favorable conditions for developing their skills in writing compositions.
Progress in writing a foreign language is possible on condition that pupils have adequate preparation for writing. Writing compositions will not help much in the learning of a new language without careful preparation.
Preparation may include:
a) Oral questions with the aim of giving the pupil practice in presenting facts and ideas in the target language.
b) The use of pictures and other visual aids to provide information for written work.
c) Auding an extract or a story, which can stimulate pupils, thought, after auding there should always be some on the content.
d) Silent reading, which can be used as a source of information for pupils to speak about, then for writing.
In teaching composition the following exercises may be suggested.
1. A written reproduction of a story, either heard or read with blackboard classes most of the words that are habitually misspell must be written on the blackboard.
2. a description of a picture, an object, situation.
3. a description paragraph about a text on certain subject. Pupils may be given concrete assignments.
For example: Write what you have learned about.
4. an annotation on the text read
For example: Pick out sentence, which express the main idea in the text, write the contents of the text in 3-5 sentences.
5. a composition on a suggested topic. "My family". "The book I like best". Pupils should be taught to write a plan first, then to write the story following the plan.
6. Letter writing
Fe: Write a letter for your friend who lives in another city interesting pupils skills in writing the teacher should use. Those kinds of work pupils get used for and which they can do because. They must be will – prepared before they are given a lest, in teaching writing the following test may be recommended to measure pupils achievements in penmanship, spelling, composition.
1. The teacher measures his pupils' achievements in making English letters in the right way by asking individuals to write some letters on the blackboard.
2. The teacher measures pupils achievements in penmanship, spelling by giving dictation, tests.
Writing is much like ice skating: the mare you practice, the better you get, if you are free to make mistakes, you'll want to practice, and you'll look for ward to new writing challenges. Writing is both a process and a product. The writer imagines, organizes, drafts, edits, reads and is reads. This process of writing is often cyclical and sometimes disorderly ultimately, what the audience sees, whether it is an instructor or a wider audience is a product- ones say, letter, story or research report.
Freewriting. – is a method many writers use to warm up and get ideas on paper. For five or fen full minutes, students write without stopping about any thing that comes into their head. Student shouldn't worry grammar or about writing complete sentences. After ward, they read what they have written and under line any parts you like. Freewriting is a wonderful way to let ideas pour on to paper without getting stuck by worrying to soon about correctness or good writing. Sometimes freewriting produces nonsense, but often it provides interesting ideas for further thinking and writing.
Brainstorming– means freely jotting ideas about a topic. As in freewriting, the purpose of Brainstorming is to get as many ideas as possible on to paper, so you will have something to work with later. Students lust write down every thing that comes to mind about a topic – words, phrases, ideas, details, examples, little stories afterward, students underline ideas they might want to develop further.
Clustering- or mapping an effective way to get ideas on paper, to begin clustering, students should write one idea or topic – usually one word in the center. Then they let their mind make associations, and write those ideas down, branching out examples, students should jot these around it in a cluster.
Other word for cluster is word wed – is more visual form of brain storming that help students think of and think about what they want to use in their writing assignment. This activity can be done individually on in pairs or groups of students. They think of related ideas or words and draw relationship with a series of boxes, circles and arrows. They should work quickly and without much planning from their "web of words" they can choose which ones they are most interested in writing about.
Teaching listening The importance of listening
Without actually having been taught to listen a student may be able to express himself orally, but he will be never be able to communicate with speakers of English if he is unable to understand what is said to him.
Often speakers arriving in England find the listening skill the most difficult, yet in a lot of cases it isn't actually taught because it is a passive skill, many teachers seem to assume that it's quite easy. However, as listening is the most varied medium over which the student has no control, it would seem logical that it should be actually taught along with speaking, and the learner should be exposed, quite early on, to as many different types of listening as possible.
Intensive listening
Two possible types of intensive listening, exercises can be distinguished.
1. Exercises which focus on detailed comprehension of meaning
a) Comprehension questions. As with reading comprehension questions, these can be:
1. factual (where the answer is clearly stated somewhere in the passage.
2. personal (where the questions related to the student's own experience on opinion).
3. Summary questions where the s-t listens to a passage and then has to summarize. What he has heard. One possibility is that the student takes notes as he listens. The summary could be written up in the form of a letter or a newspaper report.
4. Logical problems, "All Frenchman speak French but not everybody that speaks French is a Frenchman"
Questions based on sentences such as the above should encourage very careful intensive listening. Intensive listening for language. Teachers often do more detailed work on language once the students can understand what they are listening to. It is usually more effective if the linguistic exercises are somehow related to each other and to the passage and are not just unconnected bits and pieces.
Extensive listening- here the student is not reinforcing a structure or practicing a grammar point, which is linked to the rest of the course work. Extensive listening exercises are those where a student is primarily concerned with following a story, or finding something out from the passage he is listening to as student can sometimes be overawed by the prospect of doing extensive listening, the teacher can prepare the students for listening to a passage by telling them something about the topic of the listening text on by giving them key words.
Isolating the listening skill.
Exercises designed to practice listening nearly involve the other skills as well. e. g. Students listen and respond in writing; the teacher asks questions and sentences respond orally etc.
We have seen from other sections that it is not always easy on desirable to separate one skill from another.
However in some cases it is difficult to see whether or not students have understood and listening passage without isolating the listening factor. For example, some students may have understood but get stuck over formulating a connect answer; others understood but can't remember; a few students may be just too lazy or apathetic to put their hands up to answer. In many cases students, level of understanding is ahead of their writing or oral ability. One way of practicing only listening is by asking students to answer to what they hear in new linguistic ways.
An example, at elementary level might be:
Example: 1. Sentences listen to teacher reading or on tape.
Jane isn't as tall as Mary
Put a circle around Jane.
Example 2
Activities Example 2.
A similar task like wise relying on visuals is "identify and number".
Students near on tape or the teacher reads:
N:1. It's got four legs. It's quite big you can ride it.
N:2. It's got four legs. It's small. It likes cheese.
Activities. Construct a similar exercise but instead of animals use different sorts of clothes. F. E. They are made of wool. They are usually two of them. We wear them on our hands.
Exercises. Another useful exercise which does not involve reading, writing and speaking is picture dictation.
Here the teacher dictates a passage and the students draw what the teacher dictates.
F. E. It is a room. It is big, light and clean. It has two windows a door. There are flowers on the windows. There is a map of England on the wall. There is a blackboard on the wall etc.
Example 6.
Another related activity is to give students a partially completed picture to which they have to add details as they hear a description, e. g. students are provided with pictures of an empty street and they hear details of what is happening in the street, which they must then draw in.
This example is "listen and do" activity.
Authentic Listening Materials
Generally speaking, listening materials can be selected which does include structures and vocabulary beyond the ability level of students, providing the task the students have to perform after the listening is within their capabilities. In other words, the activity and not the material is graded. Authentic material can be used even at the beginner stages. The activity however be graded for example the teacher can play extracts from different types of radio programs to the students who have to identify what type of program (news, sports, commentary they are listening too) Listening to the news, students can be asked to identify the main new items. Students can only to identify where the conversations took place, and what is happening on the attitudes as a motivating device. Students get real satisfaction from having made some sense out of real –life language at the early stages. If the teachers can show students how easy it is to understand something from authentic material rather than how difficult it is to understand everything, then students are more likely to want to understand more.
Dialogues- improve listening comprehension.
As well as presenting the dialogue on tape, shorter dialogues can be presented orally by the teacher. Presenting the dialogue on tape however, has obvious advantages. The teacher has a constant and unvarying model and can focus attention not only on structural and lexical points, which wed clarifying, but also on points of phonology. Having the dialogue on tape has the further advantage that the teacher can stop the tape where necessary. e.g. If he wants to check comprehension of small details. Reading, writing and speaking work can also arise naturally out of listening comprehension dialogues.
Why teach listening?
One of the main reasons for getting students to listen to spoken English is to let them hear different varieties and accents - rather than just the voice of their teacher with its own idiosyncrasies. In today's world, they need to be exposed not only to one variety of English (British English, for example) but also to varieties such as American English, Australian English, Caribbean English, Indian English or West African English. When people of different nationalities speak to each other, they often use English too, so that a Swiss flight attendant might well have to understand a Japanese woman's English variety, just as an Argentinean might need to be able to cope with a Russian's version. There are, of course, problems associated with the issue of language variety. Within British English, for example, there are many different dialects and accents. The differences are not only in the pronunciation of sounds ('bath' like 'laugh' vs. 'bath' like 'cat') but also In grammar (the use of 'shall' in northern varieties compared with its use in 'Standard English' — the southern, BBC-type variety; the grammatically coherent use of 'done', e. g. 'I done it' in nonstandard English). The same is of course true for American, Indian or West African English.
Despite the desirability of exposing students to many varieties of English, however, common sense is called for. The number of different varieties (and the degree to which they are different from the one students are learning) will be a matter for the teacher to judge, based on the students' level, where the classes are taking place etc. But even if they only hear occasional (and very mild) varieties of English which are different from the teacher's, it will give them a better idea of the world language which English has become.
The main method of exposing students to spoken English (after the teacher) is through the use of taped material which can exemplify a wide range of topics such as advertisements, news broadcasts, poetry reading, plays, (pop) songs with lyrics, speeches, telephone conversations and all manner of spoken exchanges. Teachers can imitate these, but good tapes are far more powerful.
The second major reason for teaching listening is because it helps students to acquire language subconsciously even if teachers do not draw attention to its special features. As we have said, exposure to language is a fundamental requirement for anyone wanting to learn it. Listening to appropriate tapes provides such exposure and students get vital information not only about grammar and vocabulary but also about pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch and stress.
Lastly, just as with reading, students get better at listening the more they do It! Listening is a skill and any help we can give students in performing that skill will help them to be better listeners,
What kind of listening should students do?
The debate about the use of authentic listening material is just as fierce in listening as it is in reading. If, for example, we play a tape of a political speech to complete beginners, they won't understand a word. You could argue that such a tape would at least give them a feel for the sound of the language, but beyond that it is difficult to see what they would get out of it. If, on the other hand, we give them a realistic (though not authentic) tape of a telephone conversation, they may learn much more about the language and start to gain confidence as a result.
Listening demands listener engagement, too. Long tapes on subjects which students are not interested in at all will not only be demotivating, but students might well 'switch off - and once they do that it becomes difficult for them to tune back into the tape. Comprehension is lost and the listening becomes valueless.
Everything depends on level, and the kind of tasks that go with a tape.
There may well be some authentic material which is usable by beginners such as pre-recorded announcements, telephone messages etc. More difficult material may be appropriate for elementary students provided that the questions they are asked do not demand detailed understanding. Advanced students may benefit from scripted material provided that it is interesting and subtle enough - and provided the tasks that go with it are appropriate for their level.
Since, as we have said, listening to tapes is a way of bringing different kinds of speaking into the classroom, we will want to play different kinds of tape to them, e. g. announcements, conversations, telephone exchanges, lectures, 'plays', news broadcasts, interviews, other radio programmers, stories read aloud etc.
It is perhaps this relentlessness of taped material "which accounts for the feeling of panic which many students experience during listening activities. If they fail to recognize a word or phrase they haven't understood - and If, therefore, they stop to think about it - they often miss the next part of the tape and are soon falling behind in terms of comprehension. It is especially for this reason that students have to be encouraged to listen for general understanding first rather than trying to pick out details immediately. They must get into the habit of letting the whole tape 'wash over them' on first hearing, thus achieving general comprehension before returning to listen for specific detail.
Listening is special too because spoken language, especially when it is informal, has a number of unique features including the use of incomplete utterances (e. g. 'Dinner?' serving as a perfectly functional way of asking 'Is dinner ready?'), repetitions (e. g. 'I'm absolutely sure, absolutely sure you know that she's right'), hesitations ('Yes, well, ump, yes, possibly, but, er. etc). Experience of informal spoken English together with an appreciation of other spoken factors — the tone of the voice, the intonation the speakers use, rhythm, and background noise - will help students to tease meaning out of such speech phenomena.
Because of its special characteristics, teachers need to ensure that students are well prepared for listening and that they are clearly able to hear what they listen to. These and other concerns are summarized in the following six principles.
What are the principles behind the teaching of listening?
Principle 1: The tape recorder is just as important as the tape.
However good your tape is, it will be useless if the tape recorder has a poor speaker or if the motor speed keeps changing and the tape goes faster or slower. You need to be sure that the tape recorder can be heard all round the classroom.
Another vital feature is a tape counter that is easy to see. When you find the right place on the tape, you can either remember the number which the counter is showing or press the counter at that point so that it now shows 000. In both cases, you can find your way back when you want to "play the tape for the second or third time — instead of going backwards and forwards all the time trying to find the right place. With longer tapes, you can also note the counter number for each part or section you may need to return to.
Remember too that if you want to use your tape recorder for music as well as speech you may need a better machine.
Principle 2: Preparation is vital.
Teachers and students need to be prepared for listening because of the special features we discussed above.
Teachers need to listen to the tape all the way through before they take it into class. That way, they will be prepared for any problems, noises, accents etc., that come up. That way, they can Judge whether students will be able to cope with the tape and the tasks that go with it.
Students need to be made ready to listen. This means that they will need to look at pictures, discuss the topic, or read the questions first, for example, to be in a position to predict what is coming. Teachers will do their best to get students Engaged with the topic and the task so that they really want to listen.
Principle 3: Once will not be enough.
There are almost no occasions when the teacher will play a tape only once. Students will want to hear it again to pick up the things they missed the first time. You may well want them to have a chance to study some of the language features on the tape.
The first listening is often used just to give students an idea of what the listening material sounds like (see Principle 5) so that subsequent listening are easier for students. Once students have listened to a tape two or three times, however, they will probably not want to hear it too many times more.
Principle 4: Students should be encouraged to respond to the content of a listening, not just to the language.
As with reading, the most important part of listening practice is to draw out the meaning, what is intended, what impression it makes on the students. Questions like 'Do you agree?' are just as important as questions like 'What language did she use to invite him?'
Principle 5: Different listening stages demand different listening tasks.
Because there are different things we want to do with a listening text, we need to set different tasks for different listening stages. This means that, for a first listening, the task needs to be fairly straightforward and general (and almost certainly of the Activate type). That way, the students' general understanding and response can be successful ~ and the stress associated with listening can be neutralized.
Later listening, however, may focus in on detail - of information, language use, pronunciation etc.
Principle 6: Good teachers exploit listening texts to the full.
If teachers ask students to invest time and emotional energy in a listening task - and if they themselves have spent time choosing and preparing the listening — then it makes sense to use the tape for as many different applications as possible. Thus, after an initial play of a tape, the teacher can play it again for various kinds of Study before using the subject matter, situation or tape script for a new activity. The listening then becomes an important event in a teaching sequence rather than just an exercise by itself.
In the following four examples, we are going to look at listening activities from beginner to upper intermediate levels. Although the tapescnpts are all different, the sequences have one thing in common: they Engage the students, before preparing them with a brief Study phase to face the listening phase.
Example 1 (beginners)
Before the listening takes place, the students have been introduced to (and practiced saying) words like 'coffee', 'tea', 'breakfast' etc. They have done a quick question-and-answer drill with 'What do you have for breakfast?'
They now look at three photographs: a woman at the counter of a cafe giving her order, 0a woman in an office holding a coffee pot and (apparently) offering coffee to a man, and a woman at a restaurant table being attended to by a waiter.
The students look at the pictures and say what they are (a cafe, an office and a restaurant). They are then asked to listen to three conversations. All they have to do is match the conversations to the pictures (e. g. 'Conversation 1 is m... '). When the teacher has made sure they understand the task, she plays them these tapes.
Conversation 1
WAITER: Good morning, madam.
WOMAN; Good morning. An English breakfast, please.
WAITER: Tea or coffee?
WOMAN: Tea, please.
Conversation 2
WOMAN: Cup of coffee?
CLIENT Oh yes, please. That'd be lovely.
WOMAN: Sugar?
CLIENT: Just one, please.
Conversation 3
CUSTOMER: A tea, 2 black coffees and an orange juice, please. WAITER: Anything else? CUSTOMER: No, thank you.
The role listening in language learning.
The majority of Americans are monolingual. But you are now working in a country where the majority of your students may speak two, three, or even four languages. And they didn't necessarily learn these languages at school. If you ask them how they learned, they will probably shrug their shoulders and say they just picked them up. Ask a little more about this process of picking up a language and you will find two common features. One, your students were exposed to the language by people who were using it as they went about their daily lives. Two, at some point your students were required to do something which necessitated understanding and responding to meaningful messages in this language. Someone might have shouted at them to get out of the way, they may have been asked to pay for a bus fare, they may have to ask the price of food. And though your students may not have understood ever word that was said to them, context made the meaning perfectly clear.
Exposure
You are working in a more formal environment, either in a classroom or giving lessons at someone's work place. But this does not mean that you should ignore the features that go into successful informal language learning. The first feature to consider is exposure to the language. Babies and young children are exposed to massive amounts of talk in their acquisition of a language. In both these approaches, learners are allowed large blocks of time to listen before they are asked to speak. Learners' brains are allowed to assimilate, store and process aural information with the learners hardly being aware of what is going on. Think back to your first few days in country. If you didn't know the language which was being spoken all around you, you probably couldn't even tell where one word ended and another began. But after a week or so, while still not understanding most of what was being said, you had probably started to recognize units of sound as individual words. Your brain had been registering, sorting, and classifying thousands of impressions without your realizing it. When teaching English, provide your students with similar opportunities to absorb the sounds of English and to accumulate understanding.
Provide plenty to listen to
What this means is that you have to be prepared to include in your lessons segments where you talk a lot to your class. Talk about yourself and your family; talk about the Peace Corps, its goals and 'its different programs; talk about the United States, its educational system, its demography, its diverse agricultural practices. Obviously you will not want to abuse your position by sounding forth on topics which might embarrass or offend your students. It would be almost unnatural not to have some complaints and negative feelings about your host country, but the classroom is not the place for you to vent your feelings.
Lower stress.
Stress can and does block learning. By making sure that your lessons are motivating you can relieve your students of the stress and boredom that often blocks learning. A teacher can be very informed, meticulously organized, and professionally conscientious, but much of this counts for nothing if her lessons are boring or are inappropriately difficult. Your energy and the pleasure you take in your job can transform a dull textbook and put life into a deadening syllabus, and at the same time lower your students' stress level. Your planning and awareness can ensure that your classes are pitched to promote progress and successful learning for your students.
Let your students' brains work while they are doing something else. Playing a cassette of songs with English words while you are working with your students on a project not related to English language learning gives your students' exposure to the language. For example, if you have a secondary project running the school's home economics club and your students are sewing or cooking, play one of your favorite tapes. Without paying attention to the music, your students will almost inadvertently learn the words and intonation of the song as they get on with their other work.
Meaningful "Real life" Messages
The second feature of successful informal language learning to consider is meaningful messages. In the first step your students were exposed to the language, but were not necessarily expected to speak. In this second phase, your students were expected to respond. The people who spoke to your students had a reason for doing so. The cyclist wanted room to pass, the bus conductor wanted a fare, the vendor in the market gave a price. The speakers' purposes were clear. The responses expected of the listeners were equally clear. Your students had to get out of the way, give the correct fare, or pay for food. Unfortunately many listening exercises in the classroom do not possess the reality of meaningful messages. The give and take of real life communication is removed from exercises in which students are asked to "listen and repeat, " or asked to complete listening exercises without any preparation on the content and situation of the listening passage. In order to promote listening for meaningful messages you will need to include a number of real life features when developing your listening activities.
Build in response time
Many listening exercises are transformed into memory exercises because the listeners' responses come only after long stretches of speech. You can avoid this by requiring short active responses occurring during or between parts of the listening passage rather than at the end. For instance you could develop an exercise called "Detecting Mistakes, " in which you tell a short story about the school in which you have included some informational mistakes. Your students are required to listen to your story and to raise their hands if, they hear a mistake, or to mark on a paper the number of mistakes they hear, and then to check that they have marked down the correct number of mistakes. Here is an example of a "Detecting Mistakes" story.
Yesterday was Tuesday (mistake # 1, it was Wednesday) and I decided to go and visit my friend Mr. Ngugui, the history teacher (mistake # 2, Mr. Ngugui teaches geography), I walked out of the staff room and turned right down the corridor past the art room and the science laboratory (mistake # 3, the science laboratory is in another building), etc.
In an exercise of this sort you should include approximately ten informational mistakes. Do not include grammatical mistakes in this exercise. Your only aim is to teach your students to listen for information. Your story should not be more than about twelve sentences long.
Resources for teaching listening comprehension
Students have access to three main resources for practicing listening comprehension: the teacher, other speakers of English, and tapes.
The Teacher
You, as the teacher, are clearly the most important resource. Develop an awareness of yourself as the primary source of English for your students and tailor your teacher talk to meet their needs. This involves monitoring your vocabulary choice, your sentence structure, your speed and volume of voice, and your speech characteristics.
Your vocabulary choice should be appropriate. Ask yourself if you are choosing words which are too abstract or too slangy. Try recording yourself as you teach, then listen to the recording to see if your vocabulary is appropriate. Check your sentence structure, too. Allow for redundancies, but as a general rule of thumb keep to straightforward structures.
Sometimes it may be necessary to slow down your rate of speech. Be careful not to fall into the trap of making your speech sound unnatural when you slow down. Pause between phrases, not after each word. Make sure that your pronunciation is distinct and that you project your voice so that it carries to the back of the class.
Tapes
Your third resource for listening comprehension is tapes. Unless you are teaching a very specialized group of learners such as air traffic controllers or international telephone operators, your use of tapes should be carefully limited. In many cases this limitation will happen naturally.
You will not have access to recorders, which can be heard by large classes, nor to commercially produced tapes suitable for your students. So unless your students have specific need to be able to listen to but not see the speaker, do not worry about not having tapes. Frequently the use of tapes imposes a difficult task with insufficient reward to show for a lot of effort.
However, you may find some use for tapes in a multilevel class. You could give work to do with a tape to the advanced section (preferably no more than seven students), while you work with the rest of the class on another project.
Listening Activities
Chain Stories: Students invent a story using a story card as the opening line. The first student reads the first story card and makes up a sentence to follow the story card opening line. The next student continues that story with another sentence and so on until each student in the group has added one sentence to the story chain. This activity can be done in groups of three or more, or as a whole class activity with a small class. However, if students have to wait too long for their turn to speak, they may lose interest in the activity. The teacher cal ls "time to finish" after three to five minutes. Then another student begins a new chain story with a new story card. Some suggestions;
One day I decided to take a bus as far as it went. One night I just couldn't fall asleep
... I had a big argument with my best friend.... I thought I saw a ghost.
. „ I decided to take a trip.... I decided to go exploring.
... I decided to buy something that was alive.... I heard a loud explosion.
... I woke up and realized I was in love.... the neighbor's dog began barking,
... I decided to do something I have always wanted.... I decided to change my life.... I lost my voice, my mother/ son didn't come home.
... I woke up late,... I couldn't find my dog/cow/horse.
„. I decided to lie to everyone.... I decided to quit my job.
... I realized I was the only person alive in the world.
Variation: Each student gets a card-with the same situation on it. When the students add their part of the story, they must stay close to the situation card.
It's raining and cold. Your shoes are full of water,
Every car that passed has splashed you with muddy water. You are cold and wet. And you're alone in a strange city, but you have no money.
Variations:
a. The teacher says a sentence to the students («I got up at seven o'clock this morning. ")
* First student repeats this sentence and add his/her own appropriate sentence in the same tense.
* The second student will do the same, repeating the first two sentences and adding his/her own
sentence in the same verb tense. This continues until all the students have taken part.
b. A student who makes a mistake repeating what has been said before is out of the game. The winner is the student who can repeat the entire story most accurately.
Variations from; Galya Koroleva, Mordovia State University, Saransk, Mordovia, Russia koroigvagalya(J^maii. ru
Using Dialogues for Listening Comprehension: The teacher and one student volunteer read a dialogue that the teacher has prepared. Students listen for words that have the "S" sound (or vocabulary words, grammar formations, specific information, etc) and take notes of examples. After reading the dialogue once or twice, students list on the board the words they heard with "S". Note: The "S" sound may occur in the beginning, medial or final position in English words.
Word Play: The first student in the circle says a word and the second student must say another word beginning with the last letter of the word given by the first student. For example, the first student says gun, the second never, the third river, etc. Each student must say a word before the count of five. Those who fail are out of the game. The student who stays in the longest wins.
Word Lightening: Students sit or stand in a circle. One student stands in the middle of the circle. S/he points to one of the students in the circle and calls "s". The student pointed to immediately begins saying words that begin with "s". When s/he repeats a word or runs out of "s" words, the student in the center points to another student and calls out another letter. But if the student called on can say at least 10 different words beginning with a particular letter, s/he gets to come to the center of the circle.
Telephone Line: Students sit in a circle and pretend to talk on the telephone to the next student. The phone conversation begins with a sentence the teacher gives. For example: "John' s brother Tom is meeting
Mary's mother at the Chinese food restaurant tomorrow night at 8:00" once the phone conversation has begun, the students repeat exactly what they here from the student who "telephones" to the students whom they "telephone". The last students in the circle repeats what she or he heard and it is compared with the original sentence. The original message usually changes a little with each phone call.
Gossip: Instead of using telephone call, students whisper to each other the beginning information. As the information is whispered around the circle, it will change.
Gossip Relay Race: Arrange students in two rows of chairs. The teacher writes the same sentence on two pieces of paper and gives one to the first student in each row. These students read sentence and give the paper back to the teacher. At a signal the sentence is whispered from student to student. When the last student in the row hears it, she or he runs to the teacher and whispers the sentence. The winning row is the one whose sentence is most nearly like the original sentence. In a time, the team finishing first wins.
Rumors: This activity can be used with any level student because the information given to the student uses only grammar and vocabulary are already familiar with. As each student tells the story the audience is carefully marking each student for a) additions to the original story, b) deletions, c) pronunciation.
Four students leave the room. The teacher writes a short narrative paragraph on the board while students copy it on a piece of paper. One of the four students comes in and reads the story. The teacher erases the board. Student #2 comes in and Student #1 tells Student #2 the story as s/he remembers it. Student #3 comes in and Student #2 tells #3; then #3 tells #4, The last student tells the story to the class while a student who stayed in the class writes this version on the board. A student who stayed in the room re-writes the original version on the board and the last story telling is compared to the original.
Story Building; Students stand in a circle. The teacher begins by pointing and saying, "Look at that!" Class repeats with the same gesture and tone of voice. Student to the right repeats with gesture (pointing) and same tone of voice, and adds his/her own sentence to the story like, "It's a mouse. " or "What is it?" The whole class then repeats, "Look at that! It's a mouse? /What is it?" The activity continues until all students have added a sentence to the story.
Continued Story: One student starts an original story and talks for one minute. Then the next student immediately continues the story from the point where the first student was stopped. The story continues with each student adding to it. When it is the last student's turn, the story is concluded;
Colors Recognition: Students stand in a circle each one holding a card of different colors: red, yellow, blue, white, black, green. Be sure students know the word and the color it represents. Students listen carefully as the teacher reads the following story. When the name of their color is read, they walk across the circle holding up the colored card. More than one student may have the same color.
A Spring Day
The door opens wide. It is Sasha who comes to my house every morning at 6 o'clock. We walk to work together. Today is such a beautiful, warm day. The YELLOW sun shines through the GREEN trees. It is spring. There are flowers in the gardens- RED flowers, BLUE flowers, WHITE flowers. Sasha and I see a man in the street. He is riding a BLUE bicycle. He is wearing BLACK boots and a YELLOW hat. He stops riding and asks us, "Have you seen my dog? He's BLACK and WHITE, mostly BLACK. "
"No, we haven't seen your BLACK and WHITE dog, " I tell the man. The man with the YELLOW hat looks very worried. He gets back on his BLUE bicycle and starts to ride away, "Wait", Sasha yells, "I see something there. " He points to the CREEN grass behind us. Behind some tall RED flowers we see something moving. The man rides his BLUE bicycle back to us. Sasha picks up a little BLACK and WHITE dog and hands it to the man in the YELLOW hat. "Oh, thank you so very much!" exclaims the man. " My little girl will be very happy. "
Two Truths and a Lie. This activity is best near the beginning of the semester before students know each other very well. Students introduce themselves and tell the class three things about themselves, one of which must be a lie. The rest of the class asks questions to try to guess which of the three things is the lie. OR - Students could work in pairs, interviewing each other. The student introduces his/her partner and tells the class three things about his/her partner, one of which is a lie.
Twenty Questions: (students pick a card with a job): animal trainer in a circus, banker, baker, animal doctor, librarian, fanner, musician, taxi driver, farmer, Olympic athlete, king/queen, movie star, airplane pilot.
Your classmates will ask you questions that require a YES or NO answer only. You answer their questions with only a YES or NO. Do not
give them any other information. They will try to guess your profession in twenty questions or less.
LOGIC-WORD PROBLEMS: The answers to the following problems are in the problems. Listen to the words carefully. Check the logic of the problem.
1. Eight birds are sitting on a fence. If you shoot one of them, how many birds will be left?
2. How much dirt is there is a hole that is one meter deep, one-half meter long, and two meters wide?
3. A salesman said that two fathers and two sons came into his shop and each bought watch. None of them bought the same watch, but only three watches were sold. How can this be?
4. As I was going to Saint Ives (St. Ives- a town in southern England) I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sacks. Every sack had seven cats. Every cat had seven kits* (*kittens) Kits, cats, sacks, wives, How many were going to Saint Ives?
5. Can you tell me quickly? I need to know which weight more, a kilo of gold or a kilo of feathers?
6. The roof of my house has an equal pitch on each side. At the bottom of one side is my swimming pool, and on the other side I park my car. If my pet rooster laid an egg on the peak of the roof, will it hit my car or my swimming pool? ase help me with a grammar problem. Is it more correct to say the yolk of eggs, white, or the yolk of eggs are white? ____ A private airplane crashed along the border between the U. S. and Canada. Half of the bodies fell on the American side and half of the bodies landed on the Canadian side. Where should the survivors be buried?
7. A research scientist came to my office today with a bottle of liquid that he has offered to sell me. He says it could make me very rich. He says the bottle contains a new chemical he has discovered that will dissolve anything. Should I buy his chemical? Why?
Answers: 1. "None. They will all fly away. 2. A hole has no dirt. 3. One grandfather, one father, one son. 4. One. 5. Both weigh one kilo. 6. Roosters are male and don't lay eggs. 7. Egg yolks are yellow not white. 8. Survivors are not dead. 9. No. If it will really dissolve anything, it would have dissolved the bottle he is carrying it in.
A. RIDDLES
1. What time is it when the elephant sits on the fence?
2. What is worse than finding a worm in your apple?
3. Why do birds fly south?_
4. What goes up when the rain comes down?
5. Why do white sheep eat more than black sheep?
Answers to В Riddles: find the correct answer-
A horse in the summertime.
One. After that the cage is not empty.
Any old five-dollar bill ($5. ) is better than a new one (dollar bill).
When it's not raining.
The other half of a loaf of bread.
В. RIDDLES
1. Which is better, an old five-dollar bill or a new one?
2. What looks just like a half a loaf of bread?
3. How many lions can you put in an empty cage?
4. When can three large women walk under one umbrella and not get wet?
5. What has four legs and flies?
Answers to A Riddles: find the correct answer-
Because It is too far to walk.
Time to buy a new fence.
Because there are so many more white sheep.
An umbrella
Finding half a worm.
Teaching speaking Introduction
Language came into life as a means of communication. It exists and is alive only through speech. When we speak about teaching a foreign language, we first of all have in mind teaching it as a means of communication. Speech is bilateral process. It includes bearing, on the one hand, and speaking, on the other. When we say hearing we mean auding or listening and comprehension. Speaking exists in two forms: dialogue and monologue.
The requirements for oral language are as follows:
1. To understand the language spoken
2. To carry on a conversation and to speak a foreign language within the topics.
This is the practical aim in teaching oral language. But oral language is not only an aim in itself, it is also a mighty means of foreign language instruction. It is a means of presenting linguistic material: sounds, words and grammar items. It is also a means of practicing sentence patterns and vocabulary assimilation. Finally, it is used for developing pronunciation habits and skills and, therefore for reading and writing since they are closely connected with pupils' ability to pronounce what they read and write. Thus speaking is the most important part of the work during the lesson. The development of speaking follows the same pattern both in the mother tongue and in a foreign language from reception to production as psychologists say, and from hearing to speaking if we express it in terms of methodology.
Oral language as compared to written language is more flexible. It is relatively free and is characterized by some peculiarities in vocabulary and grammar. Taking into consideration, however, the conditions in which the foreign language is taught in schools, we can not teach pupils colloquial English. We teach them standard English as spoken on the radio, TV, etc. Oral language taught in schools is close to written language standards and especially its monologic form. It must be emphasized that a pupil should use short sentences in monologue, sentence patterns which are characteristic of oral language. We need not teach pupils to use long sentences while describing a picture. For example: The boy has a long blue pencil in his left hand. The child may use for sentences instead of one: The boy has a pencil. It's in his left hand. The pencil is long. It is blue.
Difficulties in teaching speaking
Auding or listening and comprehension are difficult for learners because they should discriminate speech sounds quickly, retain them while hearing a word, phrase or a sentence and recognize this in their own language and they can not do this in a foreign language when they start learning. Pupils are very slow in grasping what they hear because they are conscious of the linguistic forms they perceive by the ear. This results in misunderstanding or a complete failure of understanding. When auding a foreign language, pupils should be very attentive and think hard. They should strain their memory and will power to keep the sequence of sounds they hear and to decode it. Not all the pupils can cope with the difficulties entailed. The teacher should help them by making them easier and more interesting. This is possible on condition that he will take into consideration the following three main factors which can ensure success in developing pupils' skills in auding:
1. linguistic material for auding
2. the content of the material suggested for listening and
comprehension
3. conditions in which the material is presented
Pupils need practice in listening and comprehension in the target language to be able to overcome three kinds of difficulties: phonetic, lexical, and grammatical. Phonetic difficulties appear because the phonic system of English and Russian differ greatly. The hearer often interprets the sounds of a foreign language as if they were of his own language which usually results in misunderstanding. The following opposites present much trouble to beginners in learning English:
Sounds
Pupils also find it difficult to discriminate such opposites as:
They can hardly differentiate the following words by ear: workedwalked, first-fast, lion-line, tired-tide
Lexical difficulties are closely connected with the phonetic ones. Pupils often misunderstand words because they hear them wrong. For example: The horse is slipping. The horse is sleeping. The worked till night. They walked till night.
The opposites are often misunderstood, for the learners often take one word for another. For example: east –west, take-put, ask-answer.
The most difficult words for auding are verbs with postpositions, such as: put on, put off, put down, take off, see off, go in for.
Grammatical difficulties are mostly connected with the analytic structure of the English language, and with the extensive use of infinitive and participle constructions. Besides English is rich in grammatical homonyms, for example: to work –work, to answer-answer, -ed as the suffix of the Past Indefinite and The Past Participle.
Speaking a foreign language is the most difficult part in language learning because pupils need ample practice in speaking to be able to say a few words of their own in connection with a situation. This work is time-consuming and pupils rarely feel real necessity to make themselves understood during the whole period of learning a new language in school. Another factor of no less importance is a psycho-linguistic one; the pupil needs words, phrases, sentence patterns, and grammatical forms and structures stored up in his memory ready to be used for expressing any thought he wants to. In teaching speaking, therefore, the teacher should stimulate his pupils' speech by supplying them with the subject and by teaching the words and grammar they need to speak about the suggested topic or situation. The teacher should lead his pupils to unprepared speaking through prepared speaking.
How to teach speaking
In teaching the teacher has to cope with two tasks. They are: to teach his pupils to understand the foreign language spoken and to teach them to speak the language.
It's easy to think that a conversation class is successful if students are kept busy talking. With this in mind, teachers may find themselves in a continual search for the types of topics that their students will have an intrinsic interest in discussing. However while keeping students talking is a worthwhile aim, it may not constitute what should be the top priority. Talking alone may not suffice to prepare students for speaking situations beyond the classroom, where they will be expected to interact on a wide variety of topics, some interesting, some mundane and some about which they have little prior knowledge.
In teaching speaking the teacher should follow the following principles:
Principle#1.Create a classroom environment where all students want to speak
A.safe, non-threatening.
1. Increase teamwork and cooperation. 2. Reduce the competition ( for attention, grades etc)
B. Low-stress low anxiety. 1. Making a mistake. 2. don't know a correct answer 3. Getting a low grade 4. Appearing stupid 5. Didn't do homework
C. Provide many opportunities to speak 1. Reduce "teacher talk 2. Increase learner participation. A. Pair work b. group activities 3. Use the target language in the classroom 4. It is natural for certain people to dominate a discussion and for others to remain silent. The skillful teacher will assure that everyone has the opportunity to express his/ her opinion.
D. Provide a variety of activities. 1. Transactions=communication to get something done with someone for social purposes.
2. interactions=communicating with someone for social purposes.
E. Start from something simple
Principle #2. Students talk about what they want to talk about. A. Use material that is relevant to the learners' real life. Motivation to understand is higher when talking about topics of interest to the learner; comprehension increases with increased interest in the topic.
Principle #3. Students talk about what they are able to talk about A. Class brainstorms/ reviews, necessary vocabulary and information B. Teacher supplies necessary vocabulary, information, ideas. C. Teacher guides students through a controlled practice activity, then students practice similar activity.
Principle #4.Provide appropriate feedback A. Encouragement ( verbal and non verbal) 1. Smile, nod your head. 2. Brief response: "good", "yes". 3. Longer response: "That is a good idea/ point". B. Error correction:
1) Making mistakes is a natural part of learning a new language.
2) Accuracy = how closely learner speech matches what native speakers actually say.
3) Fluency = how quickly and confidently language learner speak the target language.
Principle#5. Combine speaking with listening and reading.
Types of exercises
Oral exercises are used for the pupils to assimilate phonetics, grammar and vocabulary. They are mostly drill exercises and the teacher turns to them whenever he works at enriching pupils' knowledge in vocabulary and grammar, at improving pupils' pronunciation. For example, reciting a rhyme or a poem is considered to be an excellent oral exercise for drilling pronunciation and for developing speech habits. Making up sentences following the model is an excellent oral exercise for fixing a sentence pattern and words which fit the pattern in the pupils mind. Making statements with the words or phrases the teacher gives is another valuable oral exercise which memory through manifold repetitions. Oral exercises are quite indispensable to developing speech. However, they only prepare pupils for speaking and cannot be considered to be "speech" as some teachers are apt to think and who are often satisfied with oral exercises which pupils perform following the model; they seldom use stimuli for developing pupils' auding and speaking in the target language.
The following drill exercises are suggested for developing the speech of pupils.
Repetition drills. Students are asked to repeat the teacher's model as accurately and as quickly as possible. This drill is often used to teach the lines of the dialogue.
Chain drill.
A chain drill gets its name from the chain of conversation that forms around the room as students, one-by-one, ask and answer questions of each other. The teacher begins the chain by greeting a particular student, or asking him a question. That student responds, and then turns to the next student. The first student greets or asks a question of the second student and the chain continues. A chain drill allows some controlled communication even though it is limited. A chain drill also gives the teacher an opportunity to check each student's speech.
Single-slot substitution drill
The teacher says a line, usually from the dialogue. Next, the teacher says a word, or a phrase-called the cue. The students repeat the line the teacher has given them, substituting the cue into the line in its proper place. The major purpose of this drill is to give the students' practice in finding and filling in the slots of a sentence.
Forming student groups
In teaching speaking forming student groups plays an important role. In all classes of all size, organizing small groups for activities can present a challenge. Students usually choose to work with the same group of friends. This doesn't allow any change in the dynamics of the small group and can slow students' progress. Also, some students are left without groups. The teacher then puts these extra students together, with the mixed results. A random (without any order) method of assigning group seems to eliminate favoritism on the part of both teachers and students. The teacher can form student groups so that there are some strong students and some weak students, but in the real world, we don't get to pick who will be on our "working team". By forming groups randomly (without any order), students a better idea of how to work with many different people. The are many ways to group students randomly. Below are a few suggestions;
Letters \ Numbers:
Give each student a card with a letter or number on it (i. e. A, B, C. 1, 2, 3). The letters or numbers represent tables in the classroom that have letters or numbers.
After the students pick a card, they go to the table with the same letter or number and work with the other students at that table.
Colored paper:
The students are given a small piece of colored paper and must sit at the table marked with the same colored paper.
Puzzle pieces:
The teacher can create puzzle pieces of different pictures, words or letters make sure there are four or five pieces to each puzzle. The teacher can cut up a postcard picture or a picture of something related to a lesson. Making the puzzles can be a class activity that involves interaction between the students.
Vocabulary words from a lesson may be divided and written on separate cards. Students will pick a card, and then find the rest of their word to find their partner for the next activity.
Ace-King-Queen-Jack
By using playing cards students can be organized into groups. Since there are only four of each cards in a deck, there will be only four group members. The teacher may use two identical decks of cards so that the fifth card can make a group of five.
The students can also be used (hearts, spades, diamond, clubs) or the colors red and black. There must be no more than five students to a group.
Activities
It is possible to design speaking activities that help students hone their skills so that these challenges are addressed more directly. More over, students gain the maximum benefit from these activities when they are given appropriate feed back. In fact, giving feedback can make the difference between the teaching a class with a lackadaisical attitude and a class that is focused and on task.
In keeping with the communicate trend of the times, we began to use pair and group activities. Observing our students' interact, we began to notice that there tended to be one or two exceptional students in any typical class. These students were always actively involved, regardless of what the topic was or who their partners were; this often would be in contrast to others on the class who would skim the surface of activities and finish quickly. Asking follow-up questions soon became a strategy that we recommended to the whole class as a way to reach a deeper and more meaningful level in their interaction.
Further analysis of what the "good" students were doing resulted in a list of conversation strategies that eventually included asking for clarification (Did you say?…), using comprehension checks (Do you understand?…), soliciting information (What do you mean?…) and giving understanding responses (I see).
Role - Plays are considered to be an excellent activity for speaking. Students will act the role using their speech. The following role plays are
suggested.
1. You are waiting in line to buy a movie ticket and the person standing beside you is smoking. The smoke is bothering you.
2. You are at a party. Another guest at the party, who left 20 minutes, has taken you coat by mistake.
3. You have just left the stadium where you saw a music concert. You look for money to take the bus home and your wallet has been stolen.
4. You meet an American at a party and make plans to meet again for lunch on Tuesday. On Tuesday you arrive forty minutes late.
"Tiny Talks"
1. Make list of topics that would be of interest to your students write one topic per card to create a classroom set of cards. Popular topics include: travel, money, love, smoking, drinking, marriage, he place I most want to visit.
2. Place the cards face up on teacher's desk.
3. Have students choose a partner to practice with.
4. Students are come to your desk one at a time to choose a topic they will speak about for one minute.
5. After choosing topics, students talk about their topics with their partners for about 10 minutes.
6. Students then move their desks into a friendly circle.
7. Ask for a volunteer to speak first. Each student will speak for one minute use a timer if you like. Allow students to speak longer if there is enough time.
8. The class should applaud after each "Tiny Talk"
9. The teacher should give some positive feedback or ask question after each speaker.
Two Truth and a lie.
This activity is best near the beginning of the semester, before students know each other very well. Students introduce themselves and tell the class three things about themselves, one of which must be a lie. The rest of the class asks questions to try to guess which of the three things is the lie. Students can work in pairs, interviewing each other. The student introduces his/her partner, one of which is a lie.
Twenty questions.
Students pick a card with a job: animal trainer in a circus, banker, baker.
You are a __________
Your classmates will ask you questions that require a "yes" or "no" answer only. You answer their questions with only a "yes" or "no". Do not give them any other information. They will try to guess your profession in twenty questions or less.
Games.
Games are considered to be one of the most interesting methods in teaching speaking. Pupils feel motivated and free in playing games, because each of them wants to be a winner. The teacher may give to his/her students prizes. Who won in the game? The following games are suggested to play in teaching speaking.
The game of truth.
Make a lot of small cards with interesting topics written on them, such as: LOVE, JEALOSY, PIRACY, MONGY, SMOKING, DRINKING etc. Look for topics that make students speak. Every student in the class will take turns in taking a card. He or she will talk a little about the topic in the card he or she selected. For example: Money: for me money is very important, but not the most important thing. It's only a way to read thing. Success is not measure by the money you get. Allow students to express their feelings even if it is not their turn. Remember the main, point of his game is to make student speak. However don't lose the control of class. If there is a good selection of topics, everybody will try to speak even it is not their turn.
Time indicators.
Students practice using different subject pronouns verb tenses, and the time words an phrases that go with them. They must also be able to recognize different forms of the same verb, especially irregular verbs.
One student says a time word or phrase (e. g. next year, a few days ago). A second must complete a sentence using the proper verb tense. That student then says a different time word or phrase. A third student uses it to form a sentence, but may not use the same verb or subject pronoun the second student used.
Verb tenses may be repeated of necessary, but verbs may not, and subject pronouns may be repeated only after they have all been used once.
Example:
```
First student: "At the moment…" Second student: "… I am sitting in a classroom" Second student: "Last year…" Third student: "… they went to Europe" Third student: "Every day …" Forth student: "… she takes the bus to work"
```
Discussion also plays an important role developing pupils speaking. The following kind of discussion is suggested to the teachers to use in their classes. It is called "To evaluate the discussion". It can be used after reading the text for consolidation. The teacher divided the class in two groups. The first group will be the participants of the discussion. The second group will be evaluators. Each evaluator has to evaluate one participant. The teacher gives them a question to discuss. Each evaluator has a paper written points of evaluating the discussion. It has following points:
1. To give the main information (+2)
2. To say one's own point of view (+1)
3. To comment on the given information (+2)
4. To pay attention to the mistakes (+1)
5. To begin the discussion (+1)
6. To continue the discussion (+1)
7. To miss the point (-1)
8. To make others be interested in the discussion (+1)
9. Not to be able to give one's point of view shortly (-3)
10. To oppose others to say point of view (-2)
11. To criticize others (-3)
During the discussion they should have on ability of discussion without quarrelling. At the end each evaluator tells his or her points to participant whom her or she evaluated. As a result of the points of pupils can know who is the winner of the discussion.
Recommended Literature:
1. Программы восьмилетней школы. Иностранные языки (Чтение) М., «Просвещение», 1967
2. Хегболдт П. Изучение иностранных языков. М., 1963, с. 92-109.
3. Уест М. Обучение английскому языку в трудных условиях. М., 1966. с. 30-40
4. Кузменко О. Д., Рогова Г. В. Учебное чтение, его содержание и формы. -«Иностранные языки в школе», 1970, №5.
5. Рогова Г. В., Мануэльян Ж. И. Методики работы над иноязычным текстом в старших классах средней школы. «Иностранные языки в школе», 1973, №5; Методическое содержание работы иноязычным текстом различного характера в старших классах средней школы. - «Иностранные языки в школе», 1974, №5.
6. Клычникова З. И. Психология чтения. - «Иностранные языки в школе», 1970, №6.
7. Слободчиков А. А. О развитии навыков чтения научнопопулярных и общетехнических текстов в старших классах. «Иностранные языки в школе», 1970, №6.
8. Общая методика обучения иностранным языкам в средней школе. Под. ред. А. А. Миролюбова, И. В. Рахманова, В. И. Цетлин. М., 1967.
9. Вайсбурд. М. Л. Синтетическое чтение на английском языке в V-VIII классах средней школы. М., 1969.
10. Avery P. & S. Ehlich "Teaching American English pronunciation". Oxford 1992.
11. Bronstein A. "The Pronunciation of American English". Tokyo: Obunsha.
12. Cronin J. "Pointers of teaching English stress patterns". The language Teacher. 1996 pp 16-17.
13. Celce-Murcia, M. P. Brinston "Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other Languages".
14. Essam H. W. "Teaching pronunciation-why?". Forum №3 JulySeptember 1998-pp 32-33.
15. Harmer J. "How to teach English: An introduction to the practice of English language teaching" 1998.
16. P. Habbard, J. Hywel, B. Thornton, R. Wheller "A trainig course for TOEFL". 1994 Oxford University Press.
17. Hancock M. "Pronunciation Games". 1995 - Oxford.
18. G. V Rogova "Methods of teaching English". Leningrad. 1996
19. Z. B. Jailobaeva, B. T. Eralieva "Methods of teaching English" Jalalabat. 2001
19. A. Liss " Методика обучение английскому языку в средней школе». Ош. 1993
20. Верещагина В. А. « Организация работы над английским диалогом»
21. David and Peggy Kehe "Conversation class: More than "Just Talking" ESL magazine. 2003
22. М. А. Соколова, К. П. Гинтовт, Л.А. Кантер, Н. И. Крылова, И.С. Тихонова, Г.А. Шабадаш «Практическая грамматика английского языка» М. 1997
23. "Index card games for ESL" Raymond C. Clark USA 1995
24. Wong R. "Pronunciation myths and facts English teaching forum" 314 pp. 45-46, 1993
25. Kочкорбаева Л. С. Вестник ЖАГУ « Студенттердин сщйлёё речин ёнщктщрщщдёгщ ыкмалар», Жалалабат 2000
26. Richard A. Arend "Learning to teach" New York 1991
27. Jack C. Richards "New ways in teaching vocabulary" New York 1994
28. Joan Davenport "Success with words", the USA 1994
29. "Techniques and principles in language teaching" Diane Larsen –
Free man Oxford university press 1996
30. "Approaches and methods in language teaching" Jack C. Richards, Theodor S. Ronders Cambridge university press
31. "Innovative approaches and language teaching" Robert Blair, Newbary house publishers Inc. 1982
Content
Chapter –I. A Variety of Methods
1.Techniques, approaches and methods
2. Traditional method. The principles of the Grammar-translation method
3. Direct method. The principles of the direct method.
4.Audio-lingual method. The principles of the Audio-lingual method.
5. Communicative language teaching. Principles of the Communicative Approach.
6. Total Physical response and Natural approach. Principles of Total
Physical response. Competency Based approach.
7.Innovative Language teaching. Suggestopedia. Principles of Suggestopedia.
8. Community language learning. Principles of Community language learning.
Chapter-II. Technical aids in teaching English.
1.
Technical aids in teaching English.
2. Teaching materials.
3. Visual materials.
Chapter-III. Teaching Pronunciation.
1. The Importance of teaching pronunciation. Pronunciation teaching today.
2. Difficulties in teaching pronunciation.
3. How to teach pronunciation. How to teach sounds.
4. Teaching stress. Teaching intonation.
5. The role of games in teaching pronunciation.
6. Tongue twisters.
Chapter-IV. Teaching Vocabulary.
1. Introduction
2.
The Importance of teaching vocabulary.
3. Difficulties in teaching vocabulary.
4. How to teach vocabulary.
5. Vocabulary exercises
6.
Vocabulary games and activities.
Chapter-V. Teaching Grammar
1. The Importance of teaching grammar
2. The difficulties of teaching grammar.
3. How to teach grammar
Situational approach to teaching. Grammar aspects of major
4. approaches to language teaching.
5. Traditional Grammar Translation. Description.
6. Direct method and Audio-lingual Method. Description.
7. Activity.
Chapter-VI. Teaching Reading
1. Introduction
2. The Content of teaching reading
3. Some difficulties pupils have in learning to read in the English language.
4. Mistakes and how to correct them.
5. Silent reading.
Chapter-VII. Teaching Writing
1. The importance of teaching writing
2. Difficulties in teaching writing
3. How to teach writing.
4.
Activities in teaching in writing
Chapter-VIII. Teaching listening
1. The Importance of teaching listening. Why teach listening?
2. What kind of listening should students do?
3.
What are the principles behind the teaching of listening?
4. The role of listening in language learning
5. Resources for teaching listening comprehension.
6. Listening activities.
Chapter-IX. Teaching Speaking
1. Introduction
2. Difficulties in teaching speaking
3. How to teach speaking
4.
Types of exercises.
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Larry Gray
Interview Summary
Interviewee: Larry Gray
Interviewers: Gabe Thomas and Randell Bronte-Tinkew
Interview Date: Wednesday, November 22, 2012
Location: Newport News, Virginia
THE INTERVIEWEE. Larry Gray was born in the small town of Lawton, West Virginia, in 1952. At the age of seven, Gray and his family moved to Virginia Beach, where he went to elementary and high school. His upbringing was filled with church and sports. He began working at the age of twelve by helping the school janitor. Although he encountered segregation of public facilities, he did not encounter much violent racism or discrimination. After graduating from First Colonial High School, Gray attended Norfolk State for a short period. In an effort to save up money to attend Virginia Tech, he joined the Army and fell in love with aviation. Gray did tours in Korea, Germany and eventually retired from the army after a distinguished service. As a supporter of civil rights, Gray hopes to end racism and discrimination, which he recognizes as on-going.
THE INTERVIEWERS: Gabe Thomas and Randell Bronte-Tinkew are both undergraduate students at Christopher Newport University. They are currently enrolled in Dr. Laura Puaca's civil rights history class, which is working to document the impact of the civil rights movement on Hampton Roads residents. .
CONTENT OF THE INTERVIEW: The overall goal of the interview was to record the impact of the civil rights movement on Larry Gray's life and experiences. The interview itself was held by posing questions in a free flowing manner and in chronological order. Questions covered such subjects as Gray's childhood, education, employment, view of the civil rights movement, and thoughts on the status of African Americans today.
TRANSCRIPT –LARRY GRAY
Interviewee: Larry Gray
Interviewers: Gabe Thomas and Randell Bronte-Tinkew
Interview Date: November 21, 2012
Location: Newport News, Virginia
Length: 1 audio file, MP3 format, approximately 103 minutes
START OF RECORDING
GT: So I guess we will go ahead and introduce ourselves. I'm Gabe Thomas.
RBT: I'm Randell Bronte-Tinkew. We are both history majors at CNU and we're conducting this oral interview project about the civil rights movement and the impact it had on your life
here in the Hampton Roads area. Alright, so we just have a couple questions and want to start off by asking, where and when were you born?
GT: I was born in a little town in West Virginia. It was Lawton, West Virginia. That's because my father was in the military at the time and we kind of moved around. I was born
there and, shortly after that, we moved into Virginia Beach. And that's my hometown where
I grew up.
RBT: Ok.
LG: That's where it all started.
GT: Ok.
RBT: What year did you move to Virginia Beach?
LG: We moved to Virginia Beach from the little town of Lawton, West Virginia in 1959. I remember I was in the second grade.
2
GT: Oh, whoa!
RBT: Ok.
LG: Second grade, yeah.
RBT: And how old were you then?
LG: Seven or eight years old if I can recall, roughly. At that time you had to be at least seven years old to start first grade. I was in the second grade so I had to be no older than eight years old.
GT: And at that time classes weren't integrated yet, or?
LG: Yes. Now mind me, when I started school in West Virginia, the elementary school that I
went to in the first grade was integrated at the time. We're talking about two different locations, also. The first grade was black and white kids. When I moved to Virginia Beach, I
went to a predominantly black school. It was all black. So that was different to me. I
remember my very first friend in life. It was this little white kid. His name was Steve Cox. I
still remember him today. I was eight years old then. When I went to Virginia Beach and went to an all-black school, I was too young for it to be a culture shock or anything like that.
But it was different. You look around and you are like, "Hey, everybody here is the same."
But you didn't think anything of it because you were just too young to even realize it. So it started right there and then. Later on, five or six years later, is when everything started to
change. You got older and you started realizing the changes that were taking place.
RBT: Just to take it back a little bit, I don't know if you can recall too much about when you were in West Virginia, but how was that different? I know you said it wasn’t a culture shock
because you were a little young, but did it have any impact on you at all?
LG: No.
3
RBT: No?
LG: No. Simply because you went to school and you got along and that was it. As I said, it probably had a whole lot to do with age and being so young. I remember you went outside for—at that time it wasn't physical education, it was called recess—and you would go outside and everyone would play together. In other words, it wasn't--. Everybody got along just fine. It wasn't racism ( ), or you over here and you over there. No, it was none of those kinds of things. Now, outside of school that was pretty much it. If you went to activities and churches and stuff like that it was black churches and white churches and so on and so forth. And then when you went to a doctor's office--. I remember going to the doctor's office in West Virginia where it was totally different from in Virginia. Here in Virginia, if you got sick you went to the doctor's office and, when you went into the office, on the door here it said "Negroes" and then on the other side it said "White." Those were the doors that you went in and then the receptionist who was on the inside sat on the side where the whites were. But everyone got to see the same doctor.
GT: Okay, yeah that's definitely something I was wondering, if you guys would be seeing the same doctor. Did the doctor treat you all differently or was he--?
LG: As far as we know, the doctors always treated us nice. You go in there as a little kid and, especially when you're getting a shot or something, you're standing there hollering and screaming so you could see your lungs. But the doctor would give you a sucker and talk to you, like an adult talking to a kid. He'd give you a sucker and all the same time giving you a needle. So it was pretty cool.
RBT: What were your family dynamics, like your parents, before you moved to Virginia Beach? Did they like that the schools were integrated in West Virginia?
LG: I don't think it was as big of an issue then as it is now in that state. My mom worked. She was a housekeeper and she worked for this white family. She worked there eight hours a day and then she came home and she took care of her kids. I have three other siblings, two older sisters and a younger brother. Incidentally, the family who she was doing housekeeping for, their little boy was my best friend. Mind me, I never saw him at the house. I always met up with him at school. But we were the best of friends. I remember when we moved from that area in 1959. I never ever saw him again. So no, to answer your question, no! In other words, you went about your way but we knew pretty much our limitations. In other words, it was there but it wasn't a source of say violence or people couldn't get along so on and so forth. It was mild compared to later on in the sixties.
RBT: Elaborating more on the family, you said you had three siblings right?
LG: Yes, I have three siblings. Two older sisters and a younger brother. He is three years younger than I am. My oldest sister was quite a ways further along in school than we were. I never was in the same school as my older sister at any point in time. In West Virginia, she went to integrated schools then. Now, when we moved to Virginia Beach, we could look out the front door and you could see the high school right here. But my sister was bussed. She would have to have passed like three high schools to get to the all-black high school. And we had high schools right around us in Virginia Beach but she just wasn't allowed to go. At that time, myself, along with my sister and brother, we were in elementary school. And my younger sister is two years older than I, so she was two grades ahead of me. When she graduated from elementary, she went to high school. I know it sounds kind of strange but back then they didn't have junior high. There wasn't any junior high at all. You had first through the seventh and then the eighth through twelfth was high school. So when she left
elementary she now went to the all-black high school. That left my brother and I and we were the ones who, later on down the road, got caught up in integration.
GT: So how far was the black high school actually from your house?
LG: I don't know how familiar you are with the Virginia Beach area, but we lived probably about two miles from the ocean front. And if you know where—at the time it was Union Kempsville High School. I would have to say that it was about twenty-seven miles away or it may be further.
GT: So you guys were really having to go out of your way to go over there?
LG: Yes. Like I said, if you've gone to Virginia Beach, and you have passed Witchduck Road, that's the high school. The high school was right off of Witchduck Road. If you've driven down Virginia Beach and you've seen that, you start clocking your miles from there all the way to the ocean front. That's how far she was bussed. So she would have to have passed, at that time, one, two, three high schools. Those were all the schools in that area. I know you [Randell] went to high school around here. I don't know what high school you [Gabe] went to, but if you look now there's quite a bit of high schools in the Virginia Beach area.
GT: Just passing three high schools trying to get to school must have been incredible.
LG: When integration came along, the same high school that we could look out our front door and see--. I walked to that school in the morning.
RBT: Let's talk a little bit more about integration. When the Brown v. Board of Education ruling came out, what were your initial reactions? Were you influenced by it? What were your parents' reactions? And how did it affect you overall? The ruling specifically.
LG: I don't know how much it affected me then. When we were getting ready to come out of high school, or we knew people that were graduating and they wanted to continue their education, they knew they wanted to go on to better schools and better colleges. But their chances were slim to none. There were a whole lot of cases where they were just flat denied. Stuff like that.
RBT: So basically the ruling didn't really affect you in any adverse ways?
LG: No. I graduated from high school in 1970 and pretty much you could go to any college or school that you wanted to. Doctor, lawyer, or anything like that was pretty much opened up.
RBT: Just a little bit more on your childhood. Were there any individuals that helped you significantly in your childhood? Like to get through rough times or--?
LG: Yes, compared to today, and I'm talking about blacks here. When you went to your allblack elementary and your all-black high schools, it was all-black teachers, including males. You had just as many male teachers as you had female. When I tell people these stories, they laugh because it's kind of humorous and I think I have mentioned it to you also. So, when I was in the third grade, it was nothing to have a kid in the third grade who was my size. The size I am now. Imagine somebody walking around like this [gestures] and who had facial hair and who had a wallet in their pocket. But black teachers didn't bash you. If you didn't learn, you didn't pass. You come back, you come back, you continue to come back and you come back. They didn't care if you were thirteen or fourteen years old in the third grade. It happened, it was there.
GT: So they made sure you got the proper education before you were able to move on?
LG: Yes. Otherwise you didn't move on. That the only you move on. Or you say "hey" and you just quit. And eventually some of the people did.
RBT: A lot of people did.
LG: Absolutely. Very seldom is a high school kid at the age of eighteen and eligible to vote.
Back then it could have very well happened. But when you talking about voting, that's a totally different thing because, if it was before 1964, 1965, and the Civil Rights Act, we weren't going to vote anyway. Period, bottom line. But I'm just saying there were kids who were held back for so long and for so many years that--. The black teachers made sure that you learned. And it was close knit between the teachers and the parents. I think it's different now than it was back then because it was more of a family environment. The family was very, very close knit. But today it is the opposite.
GT: Would you say there were any teachers that specifically stood out to you that really helped?
LG: Oh yeah, absolutely, especially the male teachers. It's because--. You know, guys. In other words, when there is a man in your life you are kind of like hmm. You sit there and you didn't mess up.
RBT: Yeah.
LG: You sit there and you were quiet and, whatever he said, that went. And that's not taking anything away from female teachers because they were instrumental also. But, when you had that male species in there, it almost like he put the fear of God in you.
GT: It was a different type of respect.
LG: Absolutely. It's what the male species needed at the time and you don't see that anymore. The majority of the time now, in my opinion, if you have a male in your life
anywhere, he is probably involved in sports. Basketball, football, the big time sports. That's it. You hear it all the time in the news how the athlete looked up at the coach as a father figure. I don't blame them because the majority of them don't have father figures in their life. RBT: That leads us into our next question. Did you have any interest in sports or different clubs in the community?
LG: Oh yeah, absolutely. Back then, we went to school. We learned. We had no choice. That back. There was no hiding. There wasn't any hiding at all. And sports--. We were involved in report card came home and it was signed and it was looked at by the parents and it went it just as much as the kids are today. We had baseball, football, and basketball after school. You did it after school and then homework. You don't go in the classroom the next day without your homework. But all the male teachers at the time, whether it was the third grade, fourth grade, or fifth grade, they took you out for recess and that male was out there with the guys and showing then how to do this and do that. So yes, absolutely.
RBT: So specifically when you were here in the Virginia Beach or Hampton Roads area, did you experience any segregation or racism within sports? And, if you did, how did that affect you?
LG: Well, it had an impact on integration in 1965. It was fall of 1965, because the Civil Rights Act was passed right around '64 or '65, somewhere around that time frame. And going back to school, you now had athletes. Some of the black athletes, because they were in the immediate area, chose to go to an integrated school. That changed sports altogether. White high schools that weren't that good in sports now came to a point of being dynamic. I mean just totally off the hook. Like in Virginia Beach, you only had Virginia Beach High School. So you had quite a number of blacks that lived in Virginia Beach who had been
bussed. But now they said, "Hey, I'm going to Virginia Beach High School" and they were great athletes. It had one heck of an impact as far as the schools that were in the areas that didn't have as many blacks or no blacks to support their programs. You could really see the difference. When I was in elementary school and I played sports, not one time, from the first to the seventh grade, of all the sports that I played, especially summer sports, did you ever play against an all-white team. It never happened, never. From the time that I went from the second grade up until the eighth, not one point in time did a black and a white school play each other. It just didn't happen. Never.
GT: So there were usually also, going back to sports, separate championships?
LG: Yes. It was only one black high school now, which was Union Kempsville. They played against Booker T., which was in Norfolk. That was the only black school in Norfolk. That was where all the kids over in Norfolk went. Over here on the Peninsula, that school that exists down there, right down in Hampton, that was the only school that they had to go to. Like in Portsmouth, there was I.C. Norcom. If you go to Williamsburg, up there was James Blair, which was the only high school that blacks went to. So, pretty much when they competed against each other they traveled some distance to play each other because you just didn't play the white schools. They considered that a death wish. It wouldn't happen at all. GT: Now with having such little black high schools, were they over-populated? LG: No, because if you look at Virginia Beach at the time, the population of blacks was only three percent. And I think the majority of the kids were in elementary school. But the high schools weren't over-populated and the elementary was quite big. It wasn't like the classrooms were all jammed up and you might have had five or six first grade classes. They say the larger the classes, the less the kids learn. But that wasn’t the case because, going back
to what I was telling you from the beginning, teachers spent time with the students. And if you didn't, you get to see them a second time, you get to see them a third time. And back then the kids were disciplined also. Discipline went away in elementary schools when integration came in, for whatever reason. Shortly after that, you couldn't touch a kid. A kid got a spanking in elementary school. But shortly after that, that was pretty much it because when integration came along, now you had black teachers in white elementary schools. The elementary school that I went to which was Seatack [in Virginia Beach, Virginia]. It was not vice-versa. You hardly ever saw a white teacher go to an all-black school even though that school had to be integrated. Very seldom did you see kids go to it, not even the white teachers go over there or attempt to teach. That's the way it was.
RBT: I think that's a pretty huge statement there, that with integration you lost discipline in the schools.
LG: Yes.
RBT: That's a pretty big statement. Were you involved in any church, as far as in the community?
LG: Oh, yes.
RBT: Did that have an effect?
LG: One thing about blacks and church, those two go together. For myself, I grew up in the church. From the time I was in West Virginia, I was in Sunday school in the morning and church in the evening. It was all day long in church. Going all the way through school, I was in church with my mother. And then you have all these aunts who would say, "Hey Larry, ready to go?" Even up to when I graduated high school, I used to go up to Washington D.C to visit my aunt and the first thing she'd ask when I walked in there on Saturday, was "Did you bring your clothes to go to church?" [laughter] So I'm still going to church. I'm sitting in church now with my little cousin sitting here and he's about this tall [gestures about four feet high]. So he's sitting there and I'm still in church at nineteen. Even when I was in the army, she'd say, "Larry, are you going to church with me this morning?" So yes, church life was instrumental in the lives of all blacks because that dates all the way back to the days of slavery. When times were hard, when times were rough, the only thing that you had was the Bible and prayer. That was it.
GT: So it jus was like a big huge family?
LG: Absolutely.
RBT: Now moving along on the chronological timeline of life, what was your first job?
LG: My first job in life?
RBT: Yes.
LG: My first job in life? I'll tell you that my first time ever working, I was in the sixth grade.
That will get you right around twelve years old. And what happened is that I met this friend, a guy named Frank Owens, and he was a grade ahead of me. He was in the seventh grade. He used to stay after school and work with the janitor. He was mopping floors and buffing floors and so on. I got to know him and started hanging out around him and just helping him. And then, remember he was in the seventh grade, so he was going to high school. But I was there for another year. So the janitor kept me after school and I started working with him. Quite naturally you can't pay any taxes [laughter] at twelve years old. I worked out there the whole time that I was in the seventh grade. It was probably about two hours after school everyday, religiously, that I was there. I lived right across the street from the elementary school and that distance he used to take me home. He always made sure that I made it home. So that was my first job in life. My other job where I started paying taxes, I think I was in the eighth grade. You had to be like fifteen years and six months and so on and you had to have a workers permit. I was working at a restaurant and I think, at that time, the hourly wage was probably about a dollar twenty-five cents per hour. You had to work daytime hours and you couldn't work nights and stuff like that, but it was spending money during the summer.
GT: Do you remember what kind of job you had at the restaurant? Were you a server, busboy--?
LG: Dishwasher.
GT: Oh, okay.
LG: And at that time, mostly all the kids, whether they were white kid or black kids, if you had a job at that age, you worked and that was pretty much it. This was in the eighth grade. This was in a restaurant that was located on Atlantic Avenue. So this was eighth grade and integration had come about. But trying to get this job and work this job before integration or the civil rights of 1964 and 1965, I would have never been able to work that job. It was on Atlantic Avenue and, the majority of the time, that's where blacks couldn't go. Being on Atlantic Avenue, swimming in the ocean, walking on the boardwalk, forget that.
RBT: So the Civil Rights Act, from what you're telling me, really had a huge impact on your life as far as getting a job, as far as going places that you probably wouldn't be able to go before that time?
LG: Oh sure, absolutely. Fort Story, as you well know, is located in Virginia Beach. There were a lot of kids, black kids and white kids, who were kids of soldiers. Talking about Dam Neck Oceana Naval Base, there is a lot of income that it generates for the city of Virginia Beach. Those Navy guys, all the sailors, and all the soldiers have kids. Now, those black kids from Fort Story, the majority of the time they went to a high school far away. I'm sure you are familiar with Cox [High School]. Now Cox is nowhere from Fort Story, but the black kids couldn't go to Cox. These were military kids who had to be bussed from Fort Story to Seatack Elementary School, which was a good little ways.
RBT: Now these were black kids in the military that couldn't go to—
LG: Yes, they couldn't go to the white schools. The military was still having problems with racism and prejudice in the military and stuff like that, but they didn't segregate. This was because it was mission-oriented. But when it comes to kids, they are not the ones wearing the uniform so they're told, "You're going to have to go to that school," or "Sorry, you can't go here." It was one of those things. If it had been a DOD elementary school that was located on Fort Story or even Oceania [Naval Base], they could have very easily have gone to that school. That wasn't the case.
RBT: DOD as the Department of Defense?
LG: Yes, Department of Defense, but that wasn't the case. When they came there, they fell right in line with the way things were.
RBT: On the outside.
GT: Going back to finally being able to walk along Atlantic Avenue, before that do you ever remember going up there or having friends trying to go up there and what happened? LG: No, because you knew the rules, bottom line. Like I said, I was young and the only time
I could go up there was because they had a theater up there. You had the Beach and the Band [theaters]. At the Band Theater, blacks went upstairs and the whites sat downstairs. Now for popcorn, drinks and stuff like that, you had to go in buy your drinks or your popcorn inside, you come back out outside and go through this door and you go upstairs. That's where youGT: Sat down.
LG: Bottom line. The only other theater was Beach Theater, which was located on Atlantic Avenue also. You just couldn't go in that theater at all. The beach--. We couldn't swim in the ocean. We used to swim at what used to be Seaview Beach, that's on Shore Drive.
Everywhere we went, we traveled some miles. Twenty-plus miles, twenty-five, thirty miles.
This beach was located on the Chesapeake Bay. There was a fence line. We had about two hundred yards and the fence ran all the way down in the water on both sides. Don’t get
caught on the other side of those fence lines.
GT: So you only had a real small area and the rest of it was for whites?
LG: Yes. That was Seaview Beach. If you were a military dependent and you lived on Fort Story then sure, you could go in the water on Fort Story. But don't get caught outside of Fort Story or don't get caught outside of Seaview Beach. On this side it was Buckroe [Beach Hampton, Virginia]. I'm sure you all are familiar with Buckroe. That was the only beach that blacks could go to over here.
GT: Going back to specific unsaid rules about where you could go and could not go, around Virginia Beach was it just really anywhere?
LG: Sure, you could pretty much drive and go anywhere you wanted to. It's just when you try to go into certain places like buildings and stuff like that. Then it just didn't happen.
Grocery stores, no problem. But along Atlantic Avenue and strips like that, no. Sure, you had blacks who worked up there in hotels as housekeepers. I shouldn't say housekeepers because they cleaned it up. The terminology now is housekeeper. Back then it was maids. So that's the term. Maids worked up there in hotels but they couldn't stay in them at all. If you tried to go into a hotel, no, forget that. Certain times during the day or night, you just couldn't go up there.
RBT: Getting back to employment and how this affected you, what would you say is your career job? What is, or what was, your career job, or career field?
LG: As far as when I coming out from—
RBT: After you graduated high school?
LG: When I first graduated high school, I went to Norfolk State [University] and I was going to major in industrial arts. That's where I started. I graduated from high school in 1970.
RBT: In 1970, so you wanted to be in industrial arts?
LG: Industrial arts, because I had a love for automotive and so on and so forth. So that's where I was headed until I got a job. I started working for the state and I started working for Sea Shore State Park [Virginia Beach, Virginia]. All the people I was working with were really nice folks, and they were graduates what is now Virginia Tech. Then it was Polytechnical Institute. Everyone who was working at the park was a lot of fun. We were outdoors in the woods all the time so you're meeting people. And I started meeting people who were majors in forestry and horticulture and so on. And I said I like this. At that time Virginia Tech was very, very expensive and said I need financial backing for this. So, my next move was when I joined the military. I changed my mind and wanted to go into forestry but once I got into the army and got into aviation I fell in love with that and that's the tale of the tape.
RBT: Were there any reasons, like did racism play a part in you switching your career path and joining the army?
LG: No, because when I was working for the State Park, working for the state of Virginia, it wasn't anything but nice guys there. Real, real nice guys. I was working the graveyard shift, from twelve to eight in the morning.
RBT: The demographics were black and white?
LG: No, I was the only black there.
RBT: You were the only black?
LG: I was the only black. There was this one guy who was a white guy. He worked there. He went to Cox and graduated the same year I did so we talked sports. First Colonial [High School] is here and Cox is just a couple of miles away so, when we got on the job, that's all we talked. He'd say, "Hey Larry." His name was Ernie, and we'd go back and forth. The rest of the guys were from Virginia Tech, so they were really, really nice. I didn't have a problem.
RBT: So, prejudice didn't have a part in you switching your career paths?
LG: No.
RBT: Was gaining employment ever difficult because of your race? Because you were black?
LG: No, I would have to say that being at a young age no. As far as going out and getting the little jobs and stuff like that, it wasn't a problem because all they're looking for is a laborer and a laborer is doesn't get a lot. They just want somebody to do the job regardless. But I never ran into the problem where, once you got the job, you were treated badly or anything like that. I've been to jobs where I had a supervisor—I worked at Sears also while I was going to [Norfolk] State—who we kind of thought was that way. But we tried to stay clear of all that, because that does cause problems.
GT: Going back to talk about Norfolk State a little bit, how was your college experience? Some things that you enjoyed, some things that weren't as great?
LG: At Norfolk State, it's not like it is now because that was segregated also. It was allblack. That's where the majority of students went. If you went to school in Virginia Beach and Norfolk or any place like that, then you went to Norfolk State, Virginia Union, or Hampton [University]. Hampton was one of the prestige schools because they are expensive now and they were expensive then. There were a lot of people that came from out of state to go to Hampton. Just like you have a lot of folks that night go to Morehouse [College], down in Atlanta. That was your so-called upper echelon of schools among the predominantly black colleges. I got along, for the short period of time that I went there, just as well as I did when I went through elementary because it was all blacks. Now, after integration, Norfolk State did play Old Dominion University in basketball. Quite naturally, they didn't have a football team at the time, but they played them in basketball. The conference that Norfolk State is in is the CIAA. And Old Dominion, in basketball at that time, was still a powerhouse. So that was a big time rival. Right there in the [Norfolk] Scope, you couldn't get enough people in there. It was whites and blacks who were in the Scope and it was just a battle. And nothing ever happened, everybody got along.
GT: So the atmosphere with sports was very well and just people enjoying the sport? LG: Yes. I think the hardest times of my life in high school were in '67, '68. I remember that very well because that's when Martin Luther King was assassinated. That was chaos. It was nothing I don't think anybody would want to live again, in high school. That's how violent it was. It was like somebody had lit a fuse to a stick of dynamite. There were fights and you could walk down the hallway and could just cut it with a knife. And you're talking about kids that were sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen years old. They knew what was going on. It's not like you were coming out of elementary school when you went to school, you went back home, you played and did all the little things that kids do. Now, when you go to school in the eighth grade you start learning your history and you start putting this stuff together and you say "hmm." So by the time you reach the tenth grade--. I was in the tenth grade at the time and then this happened. So you had pretty much seen it all. In the spring of '63, I remember going to D.C and visiting the White House. Kennedy was president. In the fall of 1963, I was out of school looking at a funeral. '68 came around and then we see Martin Luther King was assassinated. And just before that, or right around the same time, we lose another civil rights leader, which was Robert Kennedy. So you start putting these things together and you say well, first it was Lincoln and it was all about slavery, abolishing slavery. Then we lose a President, who most people admired, especially blacks, then you seeing his brother being slain, then you see another civil rights leader and it goes on and on. And you say everything that happens here in this country, when it's bad bad, it has something to do with civil rights. But that's what you start putting together from the time you get to the eighth grade through high school then you witnessed all of this and you say, "Ah man," and start putting it all together. It had a huge impact.
RBT: Who personally influenced you, or whom did you look to as leader of the civil rights movement? Whose views—MLK, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, JFK, Robert Kennedy, all those guys—how do you remember viewing those guys and what influence, if any, did they have on you?
LG: I doubt "if any," because we visualized and we saw these people as leaders. I can only speak for my family and how my parents brought us up. My mom, in looking at the news if there was an accident or something like that or somebody got killed, my mom would sit there and say, "God, that's somebody's child." It didn't matter if they were black or white. It was somebody's child. My mom felt for that person. So that's pretty much the way that we were brought up. We never wanted to see anybody hurt, and we weren't ever violent. We weren't told to turn the other cheek or anything like that. We were told just to stay away from stuff like that. Just try to avoid it. We saw these people like Carmichael and Malcolm and the Jesse Jacksons and so on as leaders because they weren't violent. I think the most violent people that we saw take up arms, as you well know, were the [Black] Panthers. They had just had enough. They said, "Hey I'm tired of being beat down and turning the other cheek. I'm not going to do it. I'm human just like anybody else and that's it." All the kids who I grew up with--. There was never violence in it. We learned from it so I would say all those people were instrumental. And the one who stood out the most to me would have to be Martin Luther King, undoubtedly, because he started at such an early age. This man was young when he started, I believe he was whatGT: About twenty-one.
LG: Yeah, absolutely. So he was very, very young compared to today. As Martin Luther King said, "You march today, you march tomorrow, and you continue to march." Well, you don't have to march but you can get out there and you can keep the civil rights movement going. Now I say that for a certain reason simply because the Voting Right Acts--. As you remember, they just signed the Voting Rights Act again a couple years ago. I sit there and say, "I want what you got." I don't want to have this thing to come to somebody voting on it every ten or twenty years. The Constitution says that I can vote. I don't want anything else to go along with it. All I want to do is go to the poll and vote. And they say, "Well, this goes on like this because of the southern states." In others words, if that wasn't in place they could say, "Hey, we'll bring back making you have to tell someone how many marbles are in the jar, and so on and so forth, before you vote." But I would have to say Martin Luther King, although all of those leaders were instrumental in our lives. ( )
GT: Talking about violence, I know in that the deep south, Mississippi, Alabama, there was lots of violence dealing with the civil rights. How did you feel or how did you think about that during those times?
LG: You know we had-- you got what you read and stuff like that. Especially with the guys that went from up north down to Mississippi. Do you remember?
GT: The three workers.
RBT: From SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], I believe.
LG: I was young then, so young that you weren't into all this until you started to learn history and tying all this stuff together. As a young kid, you just didn't know and you didn't know things were different until integration. Like I said, the only thing that I found different was when I left Lawton, West Virginia and went to an elementary school where I didn't see whites. Now it was all blacks. That was the biggest difference I saw as a young kid. The next biggest thing that I saw was integration. It was a big time because we stayed in our world, they stayed in theirs and, as a kid, it didn't matter. Sure, your mom and adults and parents talked about it. They knew what was going on. But the thing of it is is that they had their hands full just trying to keep us straight and keeping us out of trouble. I had never had any problems with the southern states such as Mississippi or Alabama until I joined the military. And believe me, I had a lot of run-ins down in that part of the country. I can give you one example. My best friend was a white guy named Mike Thompson. We were in the army
together. Both of us were sergeants and we went fishing one day. We were in a boat bass fishing, and he caught this big fish, the size of a fish like that [gestures]. He said, "Larry, do you know what kind of a fish this is?" And I said, "Mike I don't know what kind of fish that is." And there were two white guys on a boat and he said, "Hey guys, do you know what kind of a fish this is?" They drove on over and said, "Yeah man that's a carp." He said, "Do people eat them?" Using the "N" word, he said, "Yeah, they do." I'm standing there looking on and, myself and Mike just looked at each other. And it was laughable. We just looked at them and didn't even say thanks. We just went about our way. That was in 1983.
GT: So, there were still lots of racism still in the Deep South in to the 1980s?
LG: Oh yeah. It's down there alive and well. I can take you to places right now where, if you go there, signs are still up. The same guy was my assistant with softball. I took a team up there and never ever saw racism like that until that particular day. Myself, my wife, and another guy showed up at the softball field. We get out of the car and see this white gentleman walking up and motioning to Mike, my assistant coach, to come here. He had that smile on his face and Mike had it on his face. We knew what was coming and we started looking around and you see all these signs—and this was 1984—that said "No Blacks allowed." So I had to pack up. The rest of the team was white. We had come from Georgia and went to Yemassee, South Carolina. And I had to pack that team up and go all the way back. The paperwork I had to do because we were the military. I had to file paperwork with the military. What they do is to put these places off limits to all military personnel because it's a dangerous place to go into for soldiers and stuff like that.
GT: That's incredible, especially with it being 1984.
RBT: I want to get back to that, so let's not forget about that because I want to talk about it a little more. But first, did you ever attend any political or civil rights rallies or events? LG: No.
RBT: Was there anything going on in the community at the time do you remember? In Virginia Beach?
LG: No, I think the only--. I think the first political thing I got into was right around when I started working a little bit, but I had to watch what I was doing. That's when [Jesse] Jackson was running for President. Some of my classmates were asking me to do a little bit of work as far getting people registered to vote and stuff like that. That I could do because I know, when I turned eighteen, my mom said, "Whatever you do, you make sure you register." So that's why I was on the phone this year. Get out there and vote. It's not who you vote for. You just register. You make sure because it is a right and you have a right to do so. Who you vote for is totally up to you.
RBT: What were your feelings about the NAACP, SNCC, or any of those civil rights groups like that? What was your take on that?
LG: Well, any kind of organization, as long as it wasn't violent and was organized so that it would help minorities—and when I say that, I mean blacks and stuff like that—then we were for it. The bottom line is that we needed all the help that we could get. Buying a house, buying a car, or anything you had to have financial backing to get wasn't going to happen. Even when all those avenues were opened up and when the civil rights act said, "Hey you will not be [discriminated against]. Go in and ask for a loan or something like that," you weren't looked down on but it still happened. Any kind of organization that was out fighting for your rights, in other words, we said, "Hey go for it." But the NAACP is primarily it. It's one of the oldest organizations in this country. It's lost some of its luster now, simply because the younger generation has not stepped up to the plate yet. I'm one of those political guys. I sit around and I try not to talk about it in public, but I do have a friend and we talk in the afternoons and we talk in the morning and so on and so forth. If I sit down and look at the younger generation right now, you don't see Jesse Jackson. Even though a whole lot of people don't like him, I don't have a problem with him because he was instrumental in my life. Sure, everybody had their faults, but the thing is when you look at the younger generation of blacks, I can't come up with one who's out there involved in a civil rights movement. A lot of people would say, "Well, why would you want a civil rights movement?" Well, in my opinion, everything is not okay and it goes right back to the Martin Luther Kings who say, "Hey, what you do today, you do tomorrow, and you continue to do it." It's because--. You saw what happened in this election. When you look at the demographics and you look at Romney and you look at Obama, you say, "When are those southern states going to change?" The light bulb ought to come on for everybody in this country and say, "Guys we've got problems because we can't change that part of the world, period. At all." It's slowly changing but how far it will go, I don't know. That's just the way it is. RBT: Going back to your experiences in the army and specifically in the Hampton Roads area and Virginia Beach, did you have any run-ins with authority figures, white police? I know blacks had a lot of trouble with that in certain areas. Did you have any encounters with that?
LG: When I was a kid--. Let's just say you had some incidents in a black neighborhood and stuff like that. On the police force, you might have two black cops on the whole Virginia Beach Police force and you never ever wanted to see those two guys because they were
mean. They were the only two. So, in other words, if it happened in a black neighborhood, they went there. But no, we never had a whole lot of problems with that.
RBT: What about any discrimination in public facilities around the Hampton Roads area? Do you have any recollection of public discrimination? I know you were telling me about the segregation in the theatres.
LG: That was the only time that I saw that, because you knew where you could and could not go, bottom line. That's probably why you didn't have incidents, because you knew your limitations. You knew your limitations so you didn't violate them.
RBT: Now, with those limits, how did that make you feel? What were your feelings towards that? Were you limited, being a black male, to certain things that regular white folks could do?
LG: True. You didn't realize that until the time you reach a certain age. That's when you realize what was going and then you think back. That's when I put the timeline together to where Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, Robert Kennedy, and Malcolm X and all these guys were killed. In other words, when you're in elementary school, the chances of you putting that together and tying this stuff together to where it meant something, no. It's the time you start learning history that you realize what was going on, what was meant by it, and so on and so forth. When I went to the eighth grade at Virginia Beach High School, and I didn't tell you this--. My very first day in Virginia Beach High School, I was sitting probably seven rows from the front and, looking across my shoulder, I heard somebody calling names. I turn around and I look and it was the white kid. He was sitting there calling me every name but the child of God. I turned around and said, "Guy, do you know me?" He got quiet and he
didn't say anything else. That was my very first day in that school, but I never had any incidents after that.
GT: It almost seems like once they actually started to get to know everybody, then, there was more of a good group dynamic would you say?
LG: Yes, it's just like today, especially on the athletic side of the house. In other words, you see kids getting along just great and having fun. When I was growing up, Jesus Christ, you had rock music. I like rock music, at that time psychedelic music. I love psychedelic music. Jimi Hendrix came along and it was psychedelic music. Well, hey, guess what? Everybody likes psychedelic music. Even blacks like psychedelic music. Well, when it came to soul music, that didn't cut it. But, when you go all the way back to some of the older blacks and their music, that was so-so. As time went along, everything and everybody started getting along and mended.
RBT: In retrospect, do you harbor any resentment towards others for the actions in the past, for atrocities committed either here in the Hampton Roads to yourself or to other blacks within the country during the civil rights movement? And, if yes, how do you deal with this and does it sill affect your behavior or your way of thinking today?
LG: I try not to go around carrying a chip on my shoulder. Is it hard? Yes, because you are reminded—and I tell one of my friends this to this day—you are reminded everyday of who you are here in this country. Take the way you would go into a store and buy something in the same line from the same cashier. You will see how that [white] person speaks to a person, carry on with that person, and pay for the item until the person is completely checked out. When you get there, there might not be a word muttered. If you don't watch it, in other words--. If you have change coming back and if it doesn't come down the change machine, there are a whole lot of times if it's a flat counter that people now, rather than touch your hands, will put in on the counter. Yes, that stuff is still prevalent. In other words, yes. Does it bother me? Yes, because I know what it is. I've just seen you treat that person differently. I've just seen it, so what was your reason for treating me any different? It's not what you see but also the media. It constantly goes on in the media ( ). It just eats away. The minute you think everything is okay and you see something like that, it flames up again. Take my job. I work at Boeing up in Philadelphia. I asked my leader one day--. He's white and we sit around and we joke. I said, "When I first got here, people don't speak to you around here." He said, "Larry, I glad you noticed that." I said, "Yeah, people don't speak. There's nothing to it." They walk and they pass each other, just like this. They look at you right in the eye and they just go by. I know they can talk and I know they can speak to people. If the guy behind me, if he doesn't know him, he'll go by and say good morning. Well, he doesn't speak to me. Could I be taking it somewhere else? Sure, I could, but that's just not--.
GT: The subtle ways in which it's very noticeable.
LG: You get a reminder of this all the time. Another incident was when I was down in Alabama. This was right after I had retired in 1997. One late night I was going back to the hotel—it was probably 9:00, 9:30—and I stopped at the convenience store. I said, "I'll get me a drink before I get back to the hotel." I walk in the store and turn down the aisle to go back to the freezer to get a drink and the lady who was in there goes, "Sir, can I help you?" My blood started boiling. I said, "Jesus Christ, Larry." I go back, get my drink, and then go up to the counter. I have a smile on my face and I started talking with her and trying to make her laugh. And then I said, "Ma'am, you might want to try and get another job because this job is probably not good for you." I think, in a way, I made her feel okay because I said,
"Hey, don't stereotype me. I don't know what bad experience you've had in your life or what've you've seen on TV, but I'm not that person." It happens all the time. It's the little things. But most people say you have tendency to look at it. I'm 60 years old. I've been doing a lot of looking. It's the bottom line. Most of the time it is what it is.
RBT: Now, how do you cope with that on an everyday basis? Do you just put it in the back of your mind?
LG: You put it in the back of your mind. In other words, you know you don't get out there and make a scene or anything like that unless it's bad to a point where you might have to go see management or something like that and you have to let people know just what's going on. It's almost like you got this cheek, but you can't have that one. That's what you see in the younger generation now. You have younger generations of blacks—and you've probably seen it for yourself—who talk to the mom and dad and they say, "God, if that was me I couldn't have taken that kind of stuff back then." You have to take a trip through the south. That's the bottom line. You have to go through states like South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and stuff like that. Believe it or not, now it might be a little off the subject, but I took a trip all the way out to California. I was in the hills of Oakland. And I traveled out there for a company that I was working for at the time. And the guy said, "Larry, do you want to go down to San Francisco Bay with me tonight and see a friend because he's getting ready to get married?" He's a retired pilot and my background is also aviation. So I said, "Sure, I'll ride down there with you." We were in Stockton, California, so it was only a 45-minute ride. So we go down there, and I had no idea we were going to end up in the hills of Oakland. We're in these big old mansions. Now, before we left he had said, "Hey Larry, you look okay. You don't have to change clothes." But I changed clothes and good thing I did. Now,
I'm in this big old mansion. The guy who he was going to see, his mom lived in this mansion and he lived across the bay. I'm sitting at the dinner table, mom's sitting here, he's sitting here, and the son's sitting at this end of the table. I'm like, "Man, what in the world? This is a real long table." My friend used to always ask me about civil rights. For whatever reason, he used to do that. This lady is in California by way of Missouri, and I could see my friend, on the other side the table, getting a little nervous because she's starting in on our conversation. I could see him over there thinking, "God, please don't let this lady say anything out of the norm" because he pretty much knew me. I told him afterwards that he didn't need to worry about me because I don't go off. I said, "Hey, we could sit here and debate about this till the cows come home." I never raised my voice. That's just the way it is. She was asking what you think about this and what you think about that. And at the time--. Do you remember Bob Dole? He was in Congress ( ) and as far as the Democratic side of the house, most people didn't care much for the guy. You got to sit and listen to both sides, because something good can come out from both sides of the house. But that was one night he was glad to get out of that house.
RBT: How has the civil rights movement, as a whole, impacted your life growing up in Virginia Beach and the Hampton Roads area? And, what affect did it have on you negative or positive in a broad sense?
LG: I said a while ago that I don't go around with a chip on my shoulder, but I'm vigilant. In other words, I keep my head up. Everything that goes on around me, I pay attention. I'm smart and intelligent enough now to know when I'm being treated unfairly and bad. It's not just me. In other words, I look out for other people. It doesn't matter what race. It has taught me a lot, to the point where I can sit down with a group of people. First of all, I'm a
registered Democrat. I have voted more times Republican than I have Democrat. It's kind of hard to believe. I say that because most people sit around and say, "Well, blacks vote race," and that's not true. For us, it was always vote for who we thought could do the better job. Yes, I voted for Reagan. I voted for Papa Bush. I was old enough to vote for Nixon and Carter. In other words, I was old enough to vote for Republican presidents. It was who we thought could do the best job that was best for blacks because we knew we had it hard. When I hear that blacks vote race, that's not true. If I'm not mistaken, didn't we have Alan West down south? And the blacks didn't support him. Now, when Al Sharpton was running for presidential office, back in 2008 when he was a candidate, you're sitting here saying, "Do you believe that the blacks here in this country would go out and vote for Al Sharpton?" That's not saying Al Sharpton is a bad person because he is a good man. But can he run this country? The answer is no. Will I go out and vote for him as president? The answer is no because I know he can't do the job. I shouldn't say he can't but everything leading up to Al Sharpton would dictate to me and my opinion would be "No." Would he have gotten the support of minorities the blacks and the Hispanics and so forth? I doubt it. No. I can go out on a limb and say no for that. I've learned a lot and it's not all about me. It's about everybody. During the election I didn't just call you. I was on my phone calling everybody. RBT: What changes did you see as positive in the community during the civil rights movement and what were some of the negative reaction you encountered as far as in Virginia Beach and what were some the positive things that came out of it in your community? LG: Virginia Beach wasn't a bad place to live. They never had a whole lot of violence. Even when segregation was there, Virginia Beach was never a bad place. If that was the case, then the two or three percent of us probably would've moved out anyways and said the heck with this place. But we didn't because it was nice atmosphere. We had a good time. We knew everybody. In other words, it wasn't a bad place. Even when integration came about, did we see a big change? No. Everything was pretty much okay. The only difference was we could go on the boardwalk. We could go in the ocean and so on and so forth. We didn't have a problem with that neither. You didn't go down there and say, "Hey, boy, what you doing down here?" That was never the case. It was always a good place to live. That's just the way it was back then. Just as long as we don't see you walking up and down the boardwalk or out there jumping around in the Atlantic Ocean or being somewhere you shouldn't be, that's fine and dandy. The parents made sure the kids stayed in the yard. In other words, you had a boundary. That was it. You either had your big sister, or your big brother or, at that time, older people who looked out for everybody's kids because they knew both parents worked. Big sister, big brother took care of siblings. But it wasn't just your family. It was the family next door and the family across the street. And not for one minute--and I know you might have heard this--a parent would leave word that if he or she acted up, then spank their butt. It happened. When you got home, you got another one. And the majority of the time, you got from both your mother and your father. In Virginia Beach, everything was mild. It was never ever violent or anything like. The most violent experience I'd ever seen was when the college students came to Virginia Beach. It had to have been around 1989, when a million college students came here for Greekfest [Sept.2-4, 1989]. What happened was that--. You've been to Virginia Beach before? You know how you cruise up and down Atlantic Avenue with your music wide open in your car and stuff like that? You had one million blacks that went there for college break. The population of Virginia Beach is a little over four hundred thousand right now. So you had a million blacks going there for Greekfest from all over the country. Now you couldn't cruise Atlantic Avenue with loud music. They were making the laws up as they went along. When the black guys with the boom boxes came along, the cops would say, "Hey, turn your music down. Turn it off." But the [white] guys who were the residents there would cruise by with the loud music in their cars and nothing was being done. They were enforcing and making laws as they went along. All violence broke loose and that's when they tore up Virginia Beach. It was in shambles. That was in the late 80s or early 90s. That was the worst I've ever seen in Virginia Beach.
GT: What was your view of the most important or significant moment of the civil rights movement?
RBT: The milestone that was reached that was the defining factor of the civil rights movement--
LG: Now, when Brown v. Board happened, I was living then. But I would pretty much have to reflect on the Civil Rights Act because it involved so much. I would have to always go back to that because it involved all of your black leaders who at that time we looked up to. And after Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson said, "Hey, this is the right thing to do" and he signed the bill into law. So I would have to say the Civil Rights Act.
RBT: What do you regard as some of the unfinished legacies of the movement, or what are some of the most pressing problems that are facing African Americans today?
LG: I could sit here and probably argue that for a while.
RBT: Just a couple of major points that you think the civil rights movement hasn't accomplished just yet. Or you would like to see accomplished, if anything.
LG: First of all, people here in this country think everything is well and okay. But it isn't. In other words, if you say that racism and prejudice isn't alive in this country and well, then
you'd be lying to yourself. Anybody who says that is, in my opinion, in denial. I just wish it would go away. A whole lot of people say that all the work and the legacy that Martin Luther King laid down and fought for and ended up losing his life over is that--. You kind of look around among the blacks in this country and see that they can do far more with the opportunities that they have afforded to them and get a whole lot more out of them than they are getting right now. That can be from young teenage blacks who have unplanned parenthood. You blame them. You got to blame the young blacks. They look for this. If you check your history and you find a teenage black female, you can go back generations and you will find out that her mom, her mom, the mom before that were the same. It's a domino or chain effect. Then we can go all the way back to the days of slavery. That was how long ago? Quite some time. Sure, we've been out of slavery for almost 200 years, but is there an impact? Yes, absolutely and I'll tell you why. It is simply because what blacks were not allowed to do back then, from owning property, having good jobs, making good money, learning how to save, buying this, buying that, and having kids, meant that when got to the point in their lifetime to pass it down to this generation, there wasn't anything to pass down. That's a ripple effect, in other words. Now, houses were cheap when I was kid. You could very easily buy a house for seven or eight thousand dollars. Back then, seven, eight, nine, ten thousand dollars was a lot of money. Well, blacks weren't only not allowed to own property. There were also laws that they couldn't just go in and ask for a loan. It was just forbidden. In other words, when they come along and pass the Civil Rights Act, you still didn't get a loan because, "Hey, guess what?" You didn't have any good job. So slavery had a lasting affect and it still has a lasting effect. Pretty much everything you own in life, you really have to go out and buy it. Sure, and I know we hear it all the time, that the government is taking care of people. Handouts and stuff like that. It's just the impact that slavery has had. And most people sit around say, "Well, that was back then." Now, to anybody who says that to me, I say, "You're not me. You've never had to live, not one day, in this shell. You don't know how I feel. You don't know how I'm treated. You don't how it is to go in there and ask for a loan and they say no. When you leave out the door you say, I have good credit so why?" But they go right back to say, "Well, people are being treated equal," and I think that's one of the biggest things now. You don't know when you're being treated equal or not. Those are the doubts that are in the minds of so many blacks. It's one of those chips you walk around with on your shoulder because, deep down in your heart, you know you're not going to get a fair shake. That's just the way it is.
RBT: Looking back, is there anything you would change either physically, socially, or politically about yourself during the Civil Rights era?
LG: No, because I think the way that I got through it was from my upbringing, from my parents, and from my family. I think I did a pretty good job. I always tell somebody that I think if I was born two or three years earlier that I probably would not be sitting talking to you guys right now. I thank God for my mother and my father. It was hard, I'm telling you. As a little kid, you don't have any responsibility. All you do is eat, sleep, play and so on and so forth. But, then you become an age where you realize, "Hey, why am I being treated like this?" And you see your counterpart is totally different. How come they wear good shoes and good clothes and why am I walking around in here with shoes with holes in them? You can see the difference, bottom line. I remember when my mom worked for this family. I remember a whole lot of times the parents used to bring clothes home that their kids wore. Hand-me-down clothes. That's just the way it was.
RBT: That pretty much concludes the interview, is there anything else you would like to contribute?
LG: No, I probably talked too much! [laughter]
RBT: Do you have any recommendations for future interviews for this project?
LG: God bless his soul, he just passed away. I went to his funeral here about a month and a half ago. I wish you all could have sat down and talked to this gentleman. He was seventy years old and one of our fellow golfers. He used to tell me that, when he was in the military, you went to basic training and you came out of basic and you went to AIT. That's your advanced individual training. He gets on the bus--. He's ten, twenty, years older than I am. He was born and raised in Florida. Now you're talking about back in the '30s, the late '30s. He's on the bus with some of his white counterpart soldiers on their way home. The bus stops at these rest stops, and you can get food and go to the restroom and stuff like that. He gets off the bus and he can't go in the building. Now, his counterparts go in and order food. They just have a window for blacks. You could walk around to a window from the outside. He had to order his food from there. You never get your food ordered until the whites get served on the inside. So when the whites get served, and before the blacks get their food, the bus is ready to go. So half of the time, they didn't get their food. If they got their food, they got it and walked all the way around the building and they went and sat on milk crates in the kitchen somewhere. And he was in the army. When I sit and I think and go back, it's not that long ago. If you look at this country now, you say, "How on God's earth did this country let something like this happen?" Because if you look at this country now, and somebody came here, you would swear nothing like this ever happened here in this country. You sit there and you think and say, "I'm 70 years old." But, if you go back to when they passed the civil
36
rights law and ask, "How many years ago was that?" It wasn't long ago at all. If you ever get a chance to go to Alabama, go down to Montgomery and go down to the civil rights thing
down there. They have a time clock down there. It's a clock and you will see so and so was born on such and such date and died as a result of being bitten to death by dogs, or beaten to
death by a water hose, or beaten to death by clubs. And that's how these people actually died.
That's down there in the Civil Rights Museum. You sit back and you say, "Well, you know something they did not bring me from another country. I am a product of my ancestors who
were brought here and put into slavery. But don't bring me from a place I know and treat me bad, or take my life.” And you sit there and you say, “Why?” You know, you continue to ask
yourself, "Why did it happen?" And the only answer that I always get, even today, is that's just the way things were and that’s not an answer. We have 50,000 soldiers who are missing
limbs, who are abroad and fighting for people. They are not just fighting for this country but they are fighting for people. They are making better lives for those people over there. Well,
when we're doing it for those people, then you kind of look back and say, "What the heck happened here?” in our own country. It’s just how it is. ( )
RBT and GT: Thank you for the great interview. It was wonderful. This concludes it.
END OF INTERVIEW
Transcribed by Gabe Thomas and Randell Bronte-Tinkew
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SNAPSHOT
Young Adult Homelessness: Options to Improve Employment and Housing Security
Finding employment and housing are major milestones in the transition to adulthood, and for the one in 10 adults ages 18-25 who experience homelessness each year, they can be difficult goals to achieve. Young adults exiting foster care or incarceration face additional challenges that make it difficult to meet their basic needs, including barriers to education and health care. State lawmakers have policy options to help young adults create pathways to self-sufficiency, prevent homelessness and improve opportunities to thrive in work and life.
5 Things to Know About Young Adults and Homelessness
Prior involvement with juvenile justice and foster care increases the risk of homelessness for young adults. Nearly one-third of young adults experiencing homelessness have been in foster care and nearly half have been in juvenile detention, jail or prison. Many consider these experiences to be the beginning of their homelessness.
Education is crucial for young adults to obtain employment, build financial independence and secure stable housing. The lack of a GED or high school diploma is the greatest single risk factor for homelessness. Youth without a diploma or GED are 4.5 times more likely to experience homelessness than those who complete high school. 2
Young adults experiencing homelessness often do not have access to their Social Security card, birth certificate or other vital records, which creates barriers to obtaining stable housing and employment. Without identification documents, young adults cannot sign a lease, purchase car insurance or complete wage and tax documents. 3
Low wages and underemployment contribute to the inability of young adults to maintain housing security. Nearly 45% of workers earning the federal minimum wage or less are under 25 years old. The value of the federal minimum wage is at its lowest point in 66 years, and rent costs are outpacing wages in nearly every state.
Young adults in rural and nonrural areas experience homelessness at similar rates, but their experiences are different. Young adults in metropolitan areas are more likely to attend school and to be employed than those in rural communities. Access to supportive services, particularly health care, is often more limited in rural areas, which can compound unemployment and housing insecurity.
5 Options to Help Prevent Young Adult Homelessness
Increase housing options for youth experiencing homelessness, particularly those
n Colorado SB 82 (2023) established the Fostering Success Voucher Program to provide housing vouchers and case management services to young adults ages 18-26 who are experiencing homelessness and have prior involvement in foster care or kinship care.
previously involved with foster care or juvenile justice.
n Virginia HB 349 (2022) requires local departments of social services to provide housing supports for up to six months to young adults ages 18-21 who turned 18 while in foster care or while in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice.
Create opportunities for young adults to continue their education and participate in workforce development programs.
n Maine SP 424 (2021) aims to increase high school graduation rates for students experiencing housing instability or education disruption through mentorships, course credit waivers and flexibility in diploma requirements.
n Iowa SF 318 (2023) created an Office of Apprenticeships to establish rules and quality standards for pre-apprenticeships and youth apprenticeships.
n Maryland SB 551 (2023) equips young adults disconnected from school and/or work with mentoring, job training and financial literacy skills through the state Service Year Option Pathway Program.
Expand access to identification and vital records to ensure young adults have the necessary documentation to obtain employment and housing.
n Florida HB 1577 (2022) waives all fees for birth certificates for unaccompanied homeless youths and young adults who are or were at the time of their 18th birthday in the custody of the Department of Children and Families or Department of Juvenile Justice.
n Alabama HB 385 (2022) exempts youth and young adults experiencing homelessness from certain fees associated with obtaining a driver's license.
Promote economic self-sufficiency and housing security by raising state minimum wages or offering direct financial assistance to vulnerable young adults.
n New MexicoSB 437(2019) raised the state's hourly minimum wage to $12 and established a training wage for high school students.
n California AB 172 (2021) administers a guaranteed income pilot program to provide unconditional cash payments for basic needs and prioritizes young adults who have aged out of the extended foster care program.
Develop and fund programs that improve health outcomes, stabilize housing and promote employment opportunities for young adults experiencing homelessness in rural areas.
n Minnesota HF 2900 (2023) created a grant program to fund intensive treatment and support for adolescents and young adults experiencing or at risk of experiencing an emerging mood disorder. Providers must ensure access for rural residents and can use funds for housing and travel expenses for people receiving services or to address other barriers. | <urn:uuid:8e69cad6-f34f-4d02-b032-5175c0a9d883> | CC-MAIN-2024-26 | https://documents.ncsl.org/wwwncsl/Human-Services/Housing-Employment%20Policy%20Snapshot.pdf | 2024-06-20T11:45:05+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-26/segments/1718198861940.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20240620105805-20240620135805-00144.warc.gz | 182,736,201 | 978 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.996319 | eng_Latn | 0.997021 | [
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Grades 3–5
3.5.3-5.U Technology and Engineering: Design in Technology and Engineering Education
Students who demonstrate understanding can evaluate designs based on criteria, constraints, and standards.
Clarifying Statement: Students in this grade band develop an appropriate vocabulary to identify and discuss design parameters or requirements. They can recognize that purposeful design decisions are based on criteria and constraints.
Assessment Boundary: N/A
| Science and Engineering Practices (SEP) | Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) | Technology and Engineering Practices (TEP) |
|---|---|---|
| Engaging in Argument From Evidence | ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions | Critical Thinking |
| Engaging in argument from evidence in 3–5 builds | • Tests are often designed to identify failure | |
| on K–2 experiences and progresses to critiquing the | points or difficulties, which suggest the | • Knows how to find answers to technological |
| scientific explanations or solutions proposed by | elements of the design that need to be | questions. |
| peers by citing relevant evidence about the natural | improved. | |
| and designed world(s). | | |
| • Respectfully provide and receive critiques from | | |
| peers about a proposed procedure, | | |
| explanation, or model by citing relevant | | |
| evidence and posing specific questions. | | |
Pennsylvania Context: Examples of Pennsylvania context include but are not limited to manufacturing businesses.
Pennsylvania Career Ready Skills: Select coping skill strategies response to adverse situations (e.g., positive self-talk, talking to others, taking a break, taking care of oneself, avoiding negative self-talk).
Connections to Other Standards Content and Practices
| Standard Source | Possible Connections to Other Standard(s) or Practice(s) |
|---|---|
| PA Core Standards: Reading | CC.1.2.3.G: Use information gained from text features to demonstrate understanding of a text. |
| and Writing in Science and | CC.1.2.4.G: Interpret various presentations of information within a text or digital source and explain how the information |
| Technical Areas | contributes to an understanding of text in which it appears. |
| | CC.1.2.5.G: Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a |
| | question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently. |
| | CC.1.4.3.V: Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic. |
| | CC.1.4.4.V: Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic. |
| | CC.1.4.5.V: Conduct short research projects that use several sources to build knowledge through investigation of different |
| | aspects of a topic. |
| | CC.1.4.3.W: Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on |
| | sources and sort evidence into provided categories. |
| | CC.1.4.4.W: Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; take |
| | notes and categorize information, and provide a list of sources. |
| | CC.1.4.5.W: Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; |
| | summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished work, and provide a list of sources. |
| PA Core Standards and | MP.2: Reason abstractly and quantitatively. |
| Practices: Math | MP.4: Model with mathematics. |
| | MP.5: Use appropriate tools strategically. |
| Science, Technology & | N/A |
| Engineering, and | |
| Environmental Literacy & | |
| Sustainability Academic | |
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INSPECTION REPORT
ST JOSEPH'S ROMAN CATHOLIC VOLUNTARY AIDED PRIMARY SCHOOL
Stockton on Tees
LEA area: Stockton-on-Tees
Unique reference number: 111684
Headteacher: Mrs A M Benfield
Reporting inspector: Andrew Clark
21596
Dates of inspection: 6th – 9 th May 2003
Inspection number: 255088
© Crown copyright 2003
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INFORMATION ABOUT THE SCHOOL
Type of school:
Infant and junior school
School category:
Voluntary aided
Age range of pupils:
3 to 11
Gender of pupils:
Mixed
School address:
Ragworth Road Norton Stockton-on-Tees TS20 1HR
Postcode:
Telephone number:
01642 397356
Fax number:
01642 397356
Appropriate authority:
Governing body
Name of chair of governors: Mr Peter Walker
Date of previous inspection: June 1997
St Joseph's RC VA Primary School - 3
INFORMATION ABOUT THE INSPECTION TEAM
| Team members | | | Subject responsibilities |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21596 | Andrew Clark | Registered inspector | Music; foundation stage curriculum; English as an additional language |
| 19443 | Nancy Walker | Lay inspector | |
| 21585 | Tony Kingston | Team inspector | Science; information and communication technology; physical education; educational inclusion |
| 32165 | Christine Barsby | Team inspector | Mathematics; art and design; design and technology |
| 2893 | John Manning | Team inspector | English; geography; history; special educational needs |
St Joseph's RC VA Primary School - 4
The inspection contractor was:
QED Reginald Arthur House Percy Street Rotherham S65 1ED
Any concerns or complaints about the inspection or the report should be raised with the inspection contractor. Complaints that are not satisfactorily resolved by the contractor should be raised with OFSTED by writing to:
The Complaints Manager Inspection Quality Division The Office for Standards in Education Alexandra House 33 Kingsway London WC2B 6SE
St Joseph's RC VA Primary School - 5
REPORT CONTENTS
St Joseph's RC VA Primary School - 6
PART A: SUMMARY OF THE REPORT
INFORMATION ABOUT THE SCHOOL
St Joseph's is a voluntary aided Roman Catholic Primary School serving the area of Norton in Stockton on Tees. The school is larger than average with 284 boys and girls on roll and a further 52 children who attend the nursery part-time. Almost all the pupils are from white British families. A very small percentage of pupils speak English as an additional language. The majority live locally in an area of mixed private housing and rented accommodation. Approximately 14 per cent of pupils are eligible for a free school meal which is broadly average. The percentage of pupils on the school's register of special educational needs, 15 percent, is also average. The percentage of pupils with a statement of special educational needs is below average. The pupils have a wide range of special educational needs including learning difficulties, emotional and behavioural difficulties and physical disabilities. The children's attainment when they start school is typical for their age. Over the last two years there has been a large turn over in staff as a result of promotion and retirement.
HOW GOOD THE SCHOOL IS
This is a good school with very good features. Pupils achieve well in many subjects and standards in English and mathematics are sound. The quality of teaching and learning is good. The pupils' attitudes and personal development are very good and the school is very well led and managed. The school provides good value for money.
What the school does well
* The children get a very good start to their education in the foundation unit. (nursery and reception classes)
* Pupils write with clarity and fluency in many subjects
* The school is successful in encouraging boys to achieve well
* Standards in art and design are excellent
* Pupils are mature and responsible because of the very good provision made for their personal development
* The school is very well led and managed by the headteacher, senior staff and governing body. The aims and values of the school are very clear to all the school community and guide improvement well
What could be improved
* The pupils' ability to correct their own spellings
* Pupils' ability to perform division and subtraction sums efficiently
The areas for improvement will form the basis of the governors' action plan.
HOW THE SCHOOL HAS IMPROVED SINCE ITS LAST INSPECTION
The school has made good improvement since the last inspection in June 1997. Standards have improved and the quality of teaching is much better. The pupils now present their work very neatly and write well for many different reasons. The aims of the school are now very apparent and form the basis for all the school's work. The monitoring of teaching and learning is effective and teachers' subject knowledge is good.
St Joseph's RC VA Primary School - 7
STANDARDS
The table shows the standards achieved by pupils at the end of Year 6 based on average point scores in National Curriculum tests.
| Performance in: | compared with | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | all schools | | | similar schools |
| | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2002 |
| English | B | A | C | D |
| mathematics | D | B | D | E |
| science | C | A | C | B |
Since the last inspection standards in English by Year 6 have largely been above average and pupils have achieved well. Test results were lower in 2002 although the majority of pupils achieved the level expected for their age. The proportion of pupils reaching higher levels was also similar to the national average. Almost 30 per cent of the pupils taking the tests in 2002 had special educational needs and a significant number of those did not arrive in the school until well into the juniors. The results for mathematics have varied a lot from year to year. The overall trend of improvement in test results for the last five years for English and mathematics has been similar to the national one. Standards in science have also varied from year to year, but average and above average ability pupils have often attained above the national average. In the Year 2 tests, pupils have often attained results above the average in reading and writing. The standards in mathematics have been more variable, as in the juniors. In 2002 they were below average because not many pupils attained the higher levels. Despite the variations in test results, most pupils make at least satisfactory progress in English and mathematics as they go through the school. The boys make better progress than they do nationally because the work is skilfully tailored to their needs. Pupils with special educational needs also make suitable progress because of the good provision made for them.
In the work seen, pupils' speaking and listening and reading skills are good throughout the school. A particular strength in the pupils' writing is their ability to write for many different reasons with a clear purpose and appropriate style. However, the pupils, especially the less able, are not accurate enough in their spelling. In mathematics, pupils' numeracy skills are generally sound and they apply them well to solving problems. They are not as good at calculating division and subtraction as they are at addition and multiplication. Pupils have good investigative skills in science and apply their knowledge well. Standards in information and communication technology are at nationally expected levels and this is a good improvement from the last inspection. Standards in art are excellent throughout the school with pupils' knowledge, technical skills and application being very good. Pupils' work in music is good particularly singing. Standards are above average in history and geography and design and technology. In physical education standards are average.
By the time children leave the reception class the majority attain the goals expected for their age and many are working above these levels. Their progress, particularly in communication, language and literacy, mathematics, personal and social development and creative development is often very good.
The school has a robust process of target setting based on the pupils' earlier learning and they are on course to achieve them.
St Joseph's RC VA Primary School - 8
PUPILS' ATTITUDES AND VALUES
TEACHING AND LEARNING
Inspectors make judgements about teaching in the range: excellent; very good; good; satisfactory; unsatisfactory; poor; very poor. 'Satisfactory' means that the teaching is adequate and strengths outweigh weaknesses.
The quality of teaching and learning is good overall. This is a good improvement from the last inspection. Lessons are very well planned and work is carefully set to challenge pupils in most lessons. The teaching of English and mathematics is good. The teaching of literacy is good, but pupils are not sufficiently encouraged to find and correct their own spellings. The teaching of numeracy is also good although there is not enough emphasis given to division. In the majority of lessons, work provides challenge to pupils of all abilities and those with special educational needs are given good support. The teaching of information and communication technology is sound. The pace of most lessons is good and pupils motivated and interested. The management of pupils' behaviour is very good overall, although that of a few infant pupils is not dealt with firmly enough. Teachers often use imaginative techniques such as role-play and 'hot seating'. This has a positive impact on the pupils' confidence and eagerness to learn. The teaching in the foundation stage is very good because the range and quality of activities throughout the day are accurately based on the children's needs. Pupils' work hard during their lessons and persevere with challenging tasks. The use of homework is often good particularly in science.
OTHER ASPECTS OF THE SCHOOL
St Joseph's RC VA Primary School - 9
The parents have positive views of the school and contribute well to children's learning. The curriculum is imaginatively planned to link different subjects which motivates pupils.
HOW WELL THE SCHOOL IS LED AND MANAGED
The accommodation is good and used very well to support specialist teaching in English and music. Staffing levels are good and the teaching assistants make a very good contribution to pupils' learning. The Chair of Governors is very helpful to the school through his management experience and strong commitment.
PARENTS' AND CARERS' VIEWS OF THE SCHOOL
The inspection team agrees with the parents' positive views. They largely disagree with the parents' concerns. The information for parents, especially about their children's learning and progress, is better than that often seen. It is regular and precise. There are many learning opportunities both within the school day and after school which enrich the children's learning. However, most of these are for older pupils and the team would suggest that the school considers opportunities for infant pupils.
PART B: COMMENTARY
HOW HIGH ARE STANDARDS?
The school's results and pupils' achievements
1 In the most recent national tests in 2002 standards were similar to the national average for English and science by Year 6 and below average for mathematics. The results in 2002 are not typical of the standards that the school normally achieves. For example over the previous three years the school's results for pupils aged eleven improved each year and in 2001 standards had been well above the national average. There were special circumstances that adversely affected the school's results in 2002. There were a large number of pupils with special educational needs in the Year 6 class. Also their progress was impeded in Year 5 because of several staff changes. The results were below those for similar schools and well below for mathematics. The trend in the school's average national curriculum points for all core subjects was broadly in line with the national trend. The work observed indicates that standards are high enough and well placed to improve well.
2 In 2002 the standards in Year 2 were above average in reading and writing. There has been a good trend of improvement. The results in the infants have been variable over the past five years because of the differences in the basic skills that pupils have when they start school.
3 In both the infants and juniors standards in mathematics have varied considerably from year to year. This seems to reflect both the pupils' ability when they start school and the development of the teaching of mathematics. There has recently been a change in the leadership of the subject and the action plan in place and the quality of teaching and learning seen indicate that weaknesses have been addressed and standards are more secure.
4 A strength of the school is its systematic analysis of the pupils' attainments in each year group. Key areas for improvement are identified and worked towards. These issues are fully explained and action is taken to address each issue. The outcome is that the whole school is fully aware of the issues and committed to raising standards. The school sets challenging targets based on the pupils' previous attainment. It assesses pupils on a regular basis to ensure that the right amount of progress is being made. It is implementing specific strategies to stretch higher attaining pupils to ensure that they reach the higher levels in the national tests.
5 Currently the pupils' work in English is in line with the national expectation. By year 2 pupils are reading fluently and with good expression. The Year 6 pupils are independent readers with an interest in a wide range of books. Pupils are developing good writing skills and write effectively for a number of purposes such as letters, stories and instructions. However the standards of spelling are not always high enough especially for the less able pupils who do not have strategies for independently correcting their own spellings.
6 The pupils' work in mathematics is in line with the national expectation. The pupils are skilful at addition and multiplication but not as good at subtraction and division. They are learning how to solve word problems effectively.
7 Currently the pupils' work in science is above the national expectation. The pupils are particularly good at conducting experiments and using their knowledge and understanding.
8 Standards in information and communication technology are average and this is an improvement since the last inspection. The school's investment in resources and staff development has resulted in the teaching of the subject being sound and pupils working enthusiastically and confidently. There is still room for a greater use of computers in other subjects.
9 Pupils with special educational needs achieve well. The school is effective in identifying pupils with special educational needs at an early stage to make sure that they receive help as soon as possible. Teachers write clear individual plans for pupils who then make good progress in the targets that are set. They are involved in all aspects of the curriculum and receive extra help from classroom assistants.
10 Pupils achieve well in all subjects. In art and design standards are very high because of the very good leadership and the stimulating activities that pupils undertake. In history, geography, design and technology and music, standards are above average because of good planning and the use of specialist staff. Standards in physical education are average.
11 The attainment of boys is often higher than the average expected for boys. This is because the school has invested heavily in reviewing the curriculum to make subjects more practical and with a focus on non-fiction. This seems to appeal to the boys and has led to good success in tests and assessments. The school has made very good use of the support and funding from the Education Action Zone in this. There is no evidence that the girls are not also doing well over time.
12 Children make very good progress through the nursery and reception classes and achieve well. This is a direct result of close teamwork, well developed long and short-term planning and very good teaching. The majority of children in the present reception class are working at, and often above, the levels expected for their age. Standards are particularly good in personal and social development; communication, language and literacy; mathematics and creative development. They are at least sound for knowledge and understanding of the world and physical development. Progress through both the nursery and reception classes is at least good and often better.
Pupils' attitudes, values and personal development
13 Standards in pupils' attitudes, values and personal development have improved since the last inspection and are now very good indeed and a significant feature of the school. As a result, the school is a very calm and orderly environment where everyone is very well respected and pupils can learn. The children make a very good start in the nursery and reception class. They learn to be very independent in choosing the activities they wish to do and persisting with their work for long periods. They are good at sharing and working with other children because of the many opportunities created especially on the 'Fundation' day when nursery and reception pupils work together.
14 Pupils have very good attitudes towards school and their learning. Parents confirm that their children are happy to come to school. They arrive on time and they settle very quickly in lessons both at the start of the day and after break and lunch times. They consistently achieve attendance levels above those found in other primary schools across the country. The vast majority, and particularly those in the junior classes, listen very carefully to their teachers and are clearly very keen to learn. There is, however, some minor inattention at times in younger classes, particularly when teachers are more lenient in their expectations of pupils' attitudes and behaviour. The vast majority of pupils throughout the school play a full part in discussions and activities and they consistently produce a good amount of quality work. They take care in how they present their work and are proud to show and talk about it to adults.
15 Standards of behaviour throughout the school are very good. Pupils are very polite and well mannered towards each other and towards adults. They know the school rules and what is expected of them and they follow instructions promptly. The school has had no cause to exclude any pupil, even on a short term basis, over at least the past six years.
16 Relationships are also very good. Pupils respond very well to the examples that all adults in school set and so there is a very high level of mutual respect balanced with appropriate friendship. Pupils like their teachers and say they are one of the main reasons why they like their school. Pupils also like each other and are clearly happy in each other's company. They work very well together in lessons sharing ideas and equipment and they are particularly supportive of one another. For example, when a pupil struggled to write clearly on a projection screen, fellow pupils were very patient with several commenting that they too had found it difficult to manage. At break and lunchtimes pupils play and socialise very well together in the ample and attractive grounds and make few demands on adult supervisors.
17 Pupils develop well as individuals and parents appreciate the part the school plays in this. Pupils display high levels of confidence and self-esteem and so they are prepared to try new experiences and take advantage of what is on offer to them in school. Even the youngest pupils are independent and organise their belongings very well but opportunities for older pupils to engage in independent learning, such as research, are limited and consequently they do not always use their initiative to best advantage in lessons. Nevertheless, when they are entrusted with specific responsibility, they are keen and sensible in carrying out their duties. For example, pupils in Year 6 help in the dining hall and they are so good at the job it is not immediately obvious to visitors that they are still children. They have been sensible in the changes they have implemented through the pupil school council, for example, pupils themselves have been responsible for introducing fruit as a snack at break time, and being able to sit together in their own chosen groups at lunchtime regardless of whether they have a packed or school lunch. Pupils also have a very well developed sense of fairness and justice and Year 5 pupils demonstrated this in an English lesson when they discussed civil war and the part politics may play.
HOW WELL ARE PUPILS TAUGHT?
18 The quality of teaching is good and is making a significant impact on the behaviour of the pupils, their attitudes to learning and the standards of the work that they achieve. This is an improvement since the last inspection. Some of the teaching is excellent or very good and inspires the pupils to try their hardest and creates a desire in them to want to learn more. The teachers work well as a team and give each other support by sharing their expertise in the subjects for which they are responsible. A significant proportion of the teachers are new to the school but the effective procedures for welcoming and supporting new staff and the high priority given to professional development means there are good levels of consistency in the teaching.
19 Where teaching is least effective it is because there is a lack of clarity about what the pupils are to learn and the pupils become confused about what they are expected to do. The marking of pupils' work is variable and needs to be more consistent if all pupils are to benefit from the best practice. Where marking is of high quality pupils are given detailed written and oral feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of their work and what they need to do to improve. However, in a minority of cases, pupils' work is merely ticked and no advice is given as to how they can do better. In a small minority of lessons in the infants the management of pupils' behaviour is not good enough and this reduces the pace of teaching and the overall effectiveness of the lessons.
20
Teaching for children aged five and under in the nursery and reception classes is very good. This is because of the thorough planning of activities and many opportunities provided for imaginative and creative play. The teachers and support staff work extremely well as a team.
21 Teaching has improved in a number of important areas. The systems for planning what is to be taught are good. Teachers are very clear what the objectives of the lesson are and these are shared with the pupils so that they are aware of what they have to do to succeed in the lesson. This leads to pupils learning effectively and having opportunities to check at
the end of the lesson what they understand and what they need to do next. The systems for assessing pupils have improved and teachers now use the information about their progress to plan the next stage of their learning. This means that higher attaining pupils are given tasks that are challenging and allow them to do as well as they can. Teachers give constructive and supportive feedback throughout lessons and the result is that pupils hard work and show good levels of concentration.
22 Teaching has many strengths. Teachers and support staff work very effectively as a team and are consistent in what they expect from the pupils. This means that very good use is made of the time in lessons and pupils are always aware of the tasks that they have to do. The relationships between the staff and the pupils are very good and pupils are given many opportunities to work independently and take the initiative in what they are learning. In art, for example, the pupils research their own plants as the basis for their designs. The staff are warm, friendly and firm and treat pupils with respect. They trust them with responsibilities and expect them to persevere when they find the work to be difficult. This means that pupils develop a positive attitude towards what they are learning and work well in groups and pairs to overcome problems.
23 Pupils with special educational needs are taught well. The good progress that pupils make is unquestionably aided by the contribution of support staff. They are very clear about their role in lessons and frequently focus on individuals and groups who are in most need of support. Teachers identify pupils who are experiencing difficulties at an early stage and make sure that they are given additional support to help them with their learning. Pupils' individual education plans are precise and specific targets are set so those pupils can progress at the pace that is most suitable to them.
24 When teaching is very good or excellent teachers question pupils skilfully, probing pupils to make decisions for themselves and express their own ideas and thoughts. In these lessons the teachers have a high level of expertise in what they are teaching, use additional resources imaginatively and succeed in capturing the attention and motivation of the pupils. As a result pupils are enthusiastic, actively engaged in the activities and learn quickly. Where teaching is particularly effective, it is because teachers make pupils think for themselves and set them problems to overcome by using their powers of deduction. This is so in mathematics and science when pupils are involved in experiments and have to prove that their answers are correct.
25 Teachers are confident to use a range of approaches in their teaching and are very effective in using resources and other adults directly in the pupils' learning. The teamwork in most classes is impressive and ensures that pupils get the most out of what is being taught. Teaching makes effective use of trips and visits to supplement what is being taught in school and pupils find this very helpful in making their learning even more enjoyable.
HOW GOOD ARE THE CURRICULAR AND OTHER OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED TO PUPILS?
26 The quality of curricular provision has improved since the last inspection and is now very good. It offers many exciting learning opportunities, is well planned and makes sensible and interesting links between subjects. The curriculum also clearly reflects the school's aims to provide rich experiences as well as clear and challenging targets. The school provides excellent opportunities for pupils in art and design. The curriculum meets all statutory requirements and is, for the older pupils, enriched by a range of extra-curricular activities. However, opportunities for younger pupils to take part in extra-curricular activities are limited.
27 The curriculum for the Foundation Stage of education for pupils in the nursery and reception classes has been introduced very effectively. This prepares them very well for the early stages of the National Curriculum. Teachers' planning is based on accurate assessments of children's attainment and progress and takes into account their needs and readiness for
the next stages of learning. This is further supported by the use of relevant and well chosen everyday topics such as food and families so that children can relate to what they are doing. These factors ensure that the curriculum is purposeful, support learning and make a significant contribution towards the achievement of the early learning goals in all areas of learning for children of this age.
28 Provision for pupils with special education needs is good. Pupils who have special educational needs are identified as early as possible and appropriate steps are taken to assess their needs, write individual education plans and provide support. These plans are reviewed regularly and provide necessary detail to enable teachers to plan relevant learning experiences.
29 Teachers make good use of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies to plan work and this, particularly in the case of literacy, is one of the reasons why standards are rising.
30 Teachers link subjects effectively so that they make more sense to pupils and enable them to use their knowledge, skills and understanding gained in one subject in a variety of meaningful ways across the curriculum. For example, work in history includes reading, imaginative writing and geography. As a result pupils improve their creativity, use of imagination, organisation and expression in writing as well as their understanding of the past. The use of drawing and illustration in science, design and technology, geography and history is very effective in helping pupils to record learning as is the use of drama in, for example, the development of pupils' speaking and listening skills and understanding of moral issues such as stealing.
31 The school ensures that all pupils have equal access to all areas of the curriculum and that they have equal opportunity to succeed in them. Teachers make every effort in all lessons and activities to ensure that the contributions of all pupils are celebrated and valued. The school has developed and implemented a very good and effective policy for the identification and support of gifted and talented pupils across a range of activities and personal attributes including art, drama, music, technology, sport and leadership. This policy is supported well by two secondary schools to which pupils transfer at eleven. Additionally, the school holds 'Master Classes' for pupils who show a particular flair in either art or mathematics. These classes are well supported.
32 Teachers give very good emphasis to pupils' personal, social and health education. They promote these areas actively and consistently as part of a carefully structured programme which is embedded in the life of the school. For example, caring for others and raising pupils' awareness of how their actions can affect others is given high priority through discussions in all classes. Pupils value such opportunities to speak, to be heard and, at times, just to listen. These sessions also reflect the school's success in developing pupils' self-confidence and social skills. The school has developed a very effective School Council on which sit elected pupils from every year group in the school. They raise and discuss concerns and ideas put to them by their peers, demonstrating:
* a highly developed sense of corporate responsibility for their actions
* very high levels of maturity
* well developed abilities to resolve differences by exploring alternatives and making choices.
33 The Council advises the head teacher and is an impressive and integral part of the school's decision making process.
34 The school's provision for pupils' spiritual, moral and social development continues to be very good, as it was at the time of the last inspection. Provision for their cultural development is good. At the time of the last inspection this was satisfactory, so there has been a good rate of improvement since then.
35 The way the school cultivates pupils' spiritual development is firmly rooted in very many aspects of school life. In assembly, there is an atmosphere of reverence when pupils and staff pray and sing. There is ample opportunity for them to reflect on their lives, and for quiet contemplation. This extends to classrooms, with pupils finishing morning and afternoon sessions with a short prayer, and ending on Fridays with a more lengthy time to reflect on the week gone by, consider how it has affected them, and what they will do as a result. The Catholic ethos is very strong. The school's policy for religious education sets out ways in which it links with all other subjects. Displays in classrooms and corridors reflect this. For example, photographs of the pupils who are about to make their first communion, with a request that people should pray for them, together with prayers written by the pupils themselves, are exhibited in an entrance. Here, in a place that all the pupils walk by frequently, the school prayer is prominently displayed. The very rich learning environment also contributes to spiritual development, with pupils responding with sensitive writing and artwork. For instance, in one junior classroom there is a selection of the pupils' very perceptive and empathetic charcoal drawings of Christ's suffering on the road to Calvary. These were inspired by a visit to the church to look at and discuss the "stations of the cross". In another class, pupils wrote in a very thoughtful way about issues of loneliness, showing empathy with those less fortunate than themselves. As well as studying the catholic religion, they learn about the codes, values and traditions of other major world religions.
36
Pupils learn the difference between right and wrong through assemblies and religious education and personal, social and health education lessons. They apply this knowledge in art, English, geography, history and science lessons, where they have very good opportunities to discuss issues, for example, about the rights and wrongs of exploiting the Earth's rain forests, the plight of refugees in wartime and issues around tobacco smoking. Moral and social values in the school are very strong and reinforced by all adults. These result in pupils' very good behaviour in classrooms and around school. The relationships between adults and pupils, and their relationships with each other, promote a very warm and positive atmosphere. Every opportunity is taken to raise pupils' self esteem. This is seen in the way their work is valued in beautiful wall displays, and by the posters around school that tell them that everyone can be SMART (Special, Motivated, Artistic, Reliable, Talented).
37 Pupils have a good understanding of their own local history and their British heritage, built up through history lessons and many visits within the locality. They explore stories and art from other cultures, and learn about different traditions in history, geography and religious education lessons. This study of other cultures gives the pupils an insight into the beliefs and values of other groups of people, and teaches them to respect these differences, thus laying the basis for learning about life in the diversity of British multicultural society.
38 The school has established good links with the local community and these enrich the range of experiences and contribute to pupils' learning and personal development. For example:
* community engineers provide excellent help and guidance to teachers and pupils during the school's annual technology week
* the local priest is a frequent visitor to the school enabling pupils to appreciate the importance of Christianity as the basis of beliefs and values
* the help provided by groups of parents and grandparents who possess a range of talents and skills benefits individual pupils and the learning experiences of whole classes.
39 Educational visits to places of interest and a residential visit to London are used effectively to support and extend the range of pupils' experiences and contribute well to their learning and social development. Visitors to the school including theatre companies provide further exciting opportunities for pupils to learn about science, history and geography. The school has satisfactory links with partner institutions.
HOW WELL DOES THE SCHOOL CARE FOR ITS PUPILS?
40 The care of pupils has improved since the school was last inspected and it is now very good. Routines are very well established and so there is a calm but purposeful ambience in school where pupils feel welcome, valued and secure.
41 The school has good child protection arrangements. Staff have had appropriate training in this aspect and they adhere to reporting and recording requirements. Nevertheless, the school's policy document provides only brief guidance to staff on the actual signs of abuse. Pupils themselves receive good guidance in leading a healthy and safe life including expert training in what to do in an emergency situation through an annual visit to 'Crucial Crew', and regular reminders about 'stranger danger', road and water safety. Pupils are well supervised throughout the day and staff are particularly vigilant in ensuring pupils are safely handed over to a known adult at the end of each day. There are a number of adults in school with knowledge and qualifications in first aid and they are thorough in checking the severity of any injury sustained in school. Staff are kind to pupils and comfort them when they need it. Pupils are seen as important and their views are actively sought. For example, there is a pupil school council through which ideas have been raised and implemented to improve school life even further. Kitchen staff also take note of pupils' views on their likes and dislikes and adjust the lunch menu accordingly to provide very good quality meals that pupils like. Indeed, many of the pupils say 'school dinners are great; cheese flan and cottage pie are gorgeous'. There are regular health and safety inspections of the school site and the County's health and safety officer very recently inspected to school and found no shortfalls. The school's policy on educational visits out of school is very thorough in what it expects from staff regarding the well-being of pupils but it does not include a formal risk assessment record.
42 There have been good improvements in the procedures to assess pupils' progress since the last inspection. In English, progress is tracked carefully using test results and reading and spelling scores. Pupils are set targets that they understand and the teachers' marking reinforces what they have to do to get better. Pupils with special educational needs are carefully monitored and their individual education plans are reviewed regularly. There are the beginnings of more formal procedures in other subjects though in mathematics, assessment is not yet rigorous enough. Teachers are starting to use information about pupils' progress to plan lessons with greater precision for individual needs. They phrase questions well to ensure pupils understand the work and follow this up by providing appropriate activities to help them achieve well.
43 The educational and personal support and guidance given to pupils is very good. There is a very consistent and effective approach throughout the school to promoting good behaviour. The majority of staff have very high expectations of pupils and they use praise and rewards very well. Equally, staff are very quick to deal firmly but sensitively with any incidents of misbehaviour, including any rare occurrence of intimidation or bullying, and parents are fully involved at an early stage. Attendance and punctuality is closely monitored and because of the very positive atmosphere and relationships in school, pupils simply want to come to school. However, registers are not always completed with sufficient diligence. Staff know pupils well and they celebrate any achievements and keep records of particular strengths or weaknesses in pupils' personal development and so they can address or build on these.
HOW WELL DOES THE SCHOOL WORK IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PARENTS?
44 The school is very committed to working with parents in the care and education of pupils. As a result of what the school does to inform and involve parents, there is a very effective partnership with high levels of mutual respect and appreciation for the part that they each play. As a result, pupils benefit both academically and personally.
45 Parents hold the school in high regard and their opinions of much of the school's work are considerably better than those of parents at the last inspection some five years ago. Prior to the recent inspection, a small percentage of parents shared their views with inspectors and others were spoken to during the inspection. The vast majority of this small sample are pleased with everything that the school does. In particular, they are pleased with how the school works together as a team involving pupils, staff, parents and parishioners in its dayto-day functioning as well as in specific events. Parents are also pleased with the expectations of their children to work hard and to do their best, with the quality of teaching, that their children are happy here and with the progress they make. A very small minority of parents are not entirely happy with how closely the school works with parents, and with the range of activities on offer to their children outside lessons. Inspectors believe there is no justification for parents' dissatisfaction with what the school does to involve them, and that the range of activities outside lessons is satisfactory overall but limited for the infant classes.
46 The quality of information provided for parents is very good and has improved since the last inspection. There are regular and informative newsletters and notices which keep parents very well informed of the general life and events of the school. Information on what will be taught in each class is provided at the start of each term, including clear explanations and sensible suggestions as to how parents can best help to reinforce their child's learning at home. Home/School reading records are an effective communique on reading and there are many opportunities for parents to visit school and see pupils' work and exchange information with staff. For example, there are two formal parents' evenings, plus an open day, curriculum meetings, special assemblies, and a programme of meetings as part of pupils' preparation for First Holy Communion. In addition, relationships between staff and parents are very well established and so parents and teachers often have informal exchanges of information before and after school. End of year reports mostly provide parents with good quality information on what their child has learned and can now do in all subjects as well as pointing out areas which need to be worked on.
47 Parents respond very well to the school's efforts to inform and involve them. They understand the routines and the school's expectations including attendance, uniform, behaviour and courtesy, and so they are able to support their children in achieving those expectations. A number of parents and friends of the school help in classes on a regular basis, and very many parents hear their children read and encourage them at home. The whole community, including parents, have worked extremely hard over the past three years to raise substantial funds which have improved the school accommodation considerably.
HOW WELL IS THE SCHOOL LED AND MANAGED?
48 Leadership and management are very good. The headteacher has established a very positive and high achieving ethos. She has successfully addressed issues from the last inspection when she was new to the school, improved the quality of teaching and raised standards. She is energetic, enthusiastic and committed setting a good example in all her work. She is well supported by a developing senior management and the rest of the staff team. Several members of the senior management, including the deputy headteacher, are quite new to the school but have already forged effective roles. The governing body fulfil their statutory requirements well and provide very good support in planning the strategic development of the school.
49 The headteacher is thoroughly involved in the life of the school and her work is a significant strength. The pupils warmly welcome her on regular visits to their classrooms and the majority of parents feel the school is well led. Similarly, working relationships with teaching and non-teaching staff are easy and open and there is considerable mutual respect. The school plans and operates as a team with clear direction from the headteacher. She is well supported by the deputy headteacher in both day-to-day management and strategic planning. The ethos of openness and support has led to continued improvement to the quality of teaching and learning. There is a very good structure to management systems and all staff are clear about their roles and responsibilities. Subject leaders, especially those for literacy and numeracy, are fully involved in monitoring standards and the quality of teaching. They also lead by setting a very good example through shared teaching activities and maintaining a good quality of display. This is particularly evident in art and design. They ensure the school is well resourced and that staff are given every opportunity to maintain their training needs. All staff contribute effectively to school improvement planning through producing detailed action plans based securely on their own monitoring activities. The regular staff meetings and curriculum groups are planned for well and detailed minutes are maintained. This makes it easier for staff to work as a team with every staff member clear about their role in developing new initiatives.
50 The governing body plays a full role in planning for future improvement. The governors have a full programme of monitoring activities including lesson visits, observations of pupils' work and regular presentations from subject leaders. They have worked very closely with the local education action zone initiative to improve provision. They also participate in a good range of training both jointly with the school staff and through specific governor training organised by the local education authority. The commitment and enthusiasm of the chair of governors is very motivating in itself. He works very closely with the headteacher to analyse test data and prepare presentations for the governing body. They are effective in closely monitoring financial provision and ensuring that those providing services to the school give good value. They receive good analytical information on the results of both national and internal tests and the headteacher's good natured and informative regular reports to governors contribute to their ability to take a useful role in school improvement.
51 The management of provision for pupils with special educational needs is good. Pupils are identified at a very early stage and their progress is carefully monitored. All staff are made aware of the needs of individual pupils and work well as a team. The management of provision for children in the nursery and reception classes is very good. The staff make sure that education is focused effectively on the needs of young children. They make good use of national guidance for provision for these pupils and there are effective procedures in place to measure children's progress. The staff work very closely as a team so that this area really is a 'Foundation Unit', laying the cornerstone for the children's future education.
52 The school maintains good staffing levels at present. Very effective use is made of the specialist skills of several staff for mathematics, music and art and design. There are adequate levels of support staff who are very effectively deployed. The induction of new staff is very good, as is the professional development of all teachers. The headteacher is quick to identify and support teachers' particular strengths and provide real opportunities for managerial development. However, she is careful not to overburden staff and the governors match staff responsibilities to pay as effectively as overall finances allow. This has been effective in developing the role of the deputy headteacher. The procedures for professional developments are very good. Teachers set challenging targets for improving their pupils' performance and developing their own skills. They are given good support through careful monitoring by the headteacher and deputy headteacher and regular reviews on their progress towards meeting the targets. The system sits comfortably alongside the ethos of sharing and striving towards high achievement.
53 The school has very thorough and detailed systems for planning how to spend its money wisely. This involves regular discussions between all staff and the governing body so that there is a common understanding of the school's priorities. There are clear procedures for controlling expenditure and for getting the best value from purchases, as the recent audit report confirmed. The school has had good support from the local Education Action Zone project, which helped them to focus on the best way to raise boys' achievement. Recent additions to the information and communication technology systems have improved overall communications within the school. Overall the school is managed very efficiently
54 The very good quality of leadership and management makes a significant contribution to the school's success and potential for the future.
WHAT SHOULD THE SCHOOL DO TO IMPROVE FURTHER?
In order to improve further the headteacher, staff and governing body should:
* Ensure that the teaching of spelling places sufficient emphasis on encouraging pupils to check and correct their own words (Paragraphs: 5, 66, 67)
* Ensure that strategies for teaching division and subtraction allow the pupils to develop effective skills alongside those for addition and multiplication (Paragraphs: 6, 71, 74)
The school should also consider the following, lesser issues for inclusion in its school improvement planning:
* The management of the behaviour of a few pupils in the infants (Paragraphs: 14, 67)
PART C: SCHOOL DATA AND INDICATORS
Summary of the sources of evidence for the inspection
Summary of teaching observed during the inspection
| | Excellent | Very good | Good | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactor y | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | 5 | 14 | 22 | 8 | 1 | 0 |
| Percentage | 10 | 28 | 44 | 16 | 2 | 0 |
The table gives the number and percentage of lessons observed in each of the seven categories used to make judgements about teaching. Care should be taken when interpreting these percentages as each lesson represents more than two percentage points.
Information about the school's pupils
| Pupils on the school’s roll | Nursery |
|---|---|
| Number of pupils on the school’s roll (FTE for part-time pupils) | 25 |
| Number of full-time pupils known to be eligible for free school meals | 0 |
FTE means full-time equivalent.
| | Nursery |
|---|---|
| Number of pupils with statements of special educational needs | 0 |
| Number of pupils on the school’s special educational needs register | 2 |
Attendance
Authorised absence
Unauthorised absence
| | % |
|---|---|
| School data | 4.6 |
| National comparative data | 5.4 |
| | % |
|---|---|
| School data | 0 |
| National comparative data | 0.5 |
Both tables give the percentage of half days (sessions) missed through absence for the latest complete reporting year.
Attainment at the end of Key Stage 1 (Year 2)
| Number of registered pupils in final year of Key Stage 1 for the latest reporting year | Year | Boys | Girls |
|---|---|---|---|
| | 2002 | 17 | 18 |
| Numbers of pupils at NC level 2 and above | Boys | 15 | 15 |
|---|---|---|---|
| | Girls | 18 | 16 |
| | Total | 33 | 31 |
| Percentage of pupils at NC level 2 or above | School | 94 (98) | 89 (95) |
| | National | 84 (84) | 86 (86) |
| Teachers’ Assessments | | English | Mathematics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Numbers of pupils at NC level 2 and above | Boys | 15 | 17 |
| | Girls | 18 | 15 |
| | Total | 33 | 32 |
| Percentage of pupils at NC level 2 or above | School | 95 (93) | 91 (95) |
| | National | 85 (85) | 89 (89) |
Percentages in brackets refer to the year before the latest reporting year.
Attainment at the end of Key Stage 2 (Year 6)
| National Curriculum Test/Task Results | | English | Mathematics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Numbers of pupils at NC level 4 and above | Boys | 17 | 16 |
| | Girls | 14 | 12 |
| | Total | 31 | 28 |
| Percentage of pupils at NC level 4 or above | School | 74 (80) | 67 (80) |
| | National | 75 (75) | 73 (71) |
| Teachers’ Assessments | | English | Mathematics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Numbers of pupils at NC level 4 and above | Boys | 16 | 16 |
| | Girls | 16 | 15 |
| | Total | 32 | 31 |
| Percentage of pupils at NC level 4 or above | School | 76 (80) | 74 (77) |
| | National | 73 (72) | 74 (74) |
Percentages in brackets refer to the year before the latest reporting year.
Ethnic background of pupils
Exclusions in the last school year
| Number of fixed period exclusions | Number of permanent exclusions |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
The table refers to pupils of compulsory school age only. It gives the number of exclusions, which may be different from the number of pupils excluded.
Teachers and classes
Qualified teachers and classes: YR – Y6
| Total number of qualified teachers (FTE) | 12.4 |
|---|---|
| Number of pupils per qualified teacher | 26 |
| Average class size | 30 |
Education support staff: YR – Y6
Qualified teachers and support staff: nursery
FTE means full-time equivalent.
Recruitment of teachers
| Total number of vacant teaching posts (FTE) | 0 |
|---|---|
| Number of vacancies filled by teachers on temporary contract of a term or more (FTE) | 0.4 |
| Number of unfilled vacancies or vacancies filled by teachers on temporary contract of less than one term (FTE) | 0 |
FTE means full-time equivalent.
St Joseph's RC VA Primary School - 25
Financial information
Results of the survey of parents and carers
Questionnaire return rate
Percentage of responses in each category
My child likes school.
My child is making good progress in school.
Behaviour in the school is good.
My child gets the right amount of work to do at home.
The teaching is good.
I am kept well informed about how my child is getting on.
I would feel comfortable about approaching the school with questions or a problem.
The school expects my child to work hard and achieve his or her best.
The school works closely with parents.
The school is well led and managed.
The school is helping my child become mature and responsible.
The school provides an interesting range of activities outside lessons.
| Strongly agree | Tend to agree | Tend to disagree | Strongly disagree | Don’t know |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 69 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 68 | 28 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| 55 | 40 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| 35 | 56 | 7 | 1 | 1 |
| 72 | 24 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| 59 | 32 | 7 | 1 | 1 |
| 65 | 26 | 7 | 1 | 1 |
| 72 | 27 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 48 | 40 | 10 | 2 | 0 |
| 46 | 41 | 9 | 1 | 3 |
| 64 | 34 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
PART D: THE STANDARDS AND QUALITY OF TEACHING IN AREAS OF THE CURRICULUM, SUBJECTS AND COURSES
AREAS OF LEARNING FOR CHILDREN IN THE FOUNDATION STAGE
55 The new foundation unit has been open for one year following the building of a new purpose built nursery classroom. This is linked to the reception classroom and both share a large and challenging outdoor play area. The classes are largely taught separately although all planning is through weekly meetings. Once a week the two classes work as one class for much of the day; 'the Fundation Day'. The quality of teaching and learning is very good in the nursery and reception classes. As a result the children make good or better progress in all areas of learning. The majority of pupils meet the goals expected for their age and a significant minority exceed them by the time they start Year 1. The curriculum for the children in the foundation stage unit is extremely well planned so that they make consistent good progress. Work is matched well to the needs of children of all ages and abilities. A strong priority is given to children's personal and social development and the basic skills of literacy and numeracy. Very accurate and regular assessments are made of children's achievement and these are used to support pupils well. Relationships in the unit are very good and support staff are well informed and effective. Parents and other volunteers contribute to the children's good progress. The provision, quality of teaching and learning is a good improvement from the last inspection.
Personal, social and emotional development
56 Standards are higher than those expected nationally by the time children leave the reception class. They make very good progress through the nursery and reception. The quality of teaching is very good. The two classrooms are well planned to provide a wide range of bright and stimulating activities to encourage children to participate independently. For example, there are familiar role-play corners such as the home area and more challenging ones such as the opticians. All areas are purposefully planned so that children make decisions about their work and play and take pride in their achievements. Teachers join in with children's games, for example, in directing the 'traffic' in the playground or participating in role-play. This gives the children confidence and the opportunity to explore and extend their relationships with others. By time they start Year 1, most children are happy to mix with children and adults, talk about their work and pleasures and play in different groups and settings. They are independent and secure. Teachers and support staff are very effective in giving both praise and encouragement.
Communication, language and literacy
57 Progress is very good. By the time they start Year 1 a significant group of children are working above the expected levels and the majority are at those levels. In speaking and listening children show increasing confidence in talking to others. They explain their ideas well, for example, when explaining their designs for classroom labels for the blind. By the end of reception, many children talk to the class in clear and well-structured sentences. The less able and those with special educational needs are also eager to talk.
58 The quality of teaching is very good. Children are given many reasons to read and write and this encourages their development. For instance, simple questions and statements always accompany displays of children's work. They are taught letter sounds and blends systematically and in entertaining ways. They are given many opportunities to practise and experiment with letter shapes. For example, using large paintbrushes and water on the playground or drawing in the sand trays. Teachers work closely with the children in the reading and writing corners. By the end of reception a small, but significant group of pupils write imaginative sentences about bugs and insects with very little support. Most children find the words they want from a selection and use those to make sentences and have a
sound knowledge of a range of key words and phrases. Whilst there are some very inventive ideas for encouraging children to write for different reasons, such as diaries, pamphlets and science reports the most able do not often write at any length. There is a very good range of fiction and non-fiction in the classrooms and children listen to stories well and relate closely to the characters.
Mathematical development
59 The curriculum is well planned to provide children with increasingly challenging mathematical experiences and this leads to good and sometimes better progress. By the time they start Year 1 the majority of pupils achieve the nationally expected goals and almost a half of the pupils are working at least a term above this. Their knowledge of number is very good. The reception children know what the word estimate means and make accurate and reasonable estimates of the number of biscuits in a pack. They quickly count well beyond thirty and count backwards accurately. The most able count in 10s and in 5s and use this to solve number problems. The teacher makes learning fun and the pace of learning is fast. In the nursery children make good progress in recognising and writing numbers and matching them to a given quantity. The children produce graphs showing favourite pets and other familiar situations. They develop a good knowledge of colour and use this to create extended repeated patterns with beads and models. They make good progress in adding and subtracting and recognising written forms.
Knowledge and understanding of the world
60 The curriculum is very well planned to give children a wide range of experiences both in the classroom and through visits. All activities start from familiar situations and subtly extend the children's knowledge of the world. The majority of children attain expected levels for their age. The children learn because they are interested and teaching is at least good. For example, in both the nursery and reception classes the children find out about tastes and smells in well-constructed science experiments. They draw on familiar scents such as fish and chips and the sea and staff relate this to visits the children have made. The children become familiar with farm and domestic animals through visits to farms and their own class work. They investigate 'bugs' under magnifying glasses and then design and create excellent collage pictures. By the end of reception they know the parts of the human body and those of insects such as antennae. Some opportunities to reinforce this learning in physical education were missed. Children make good use of computers. They have sound skills in using the mouse and enjoy following and controlling the adventures of on-screen characters. The children have very good opportunities to learn more about the world through play with construction toys and 'small world' toys. The planning is closely matched to the National Curriculum for history, geography and religious education. All these activities are well planned to reinforce and consolidate learning as the children progress through the nursery and reception.
Physical development
61 There are very good opportunities for outside play and in the hall. Teaching is good overall. Sometimes the pace of lessons in the hall is not challenging enough, particularly to some older pupils. However, the vast majority of pupils attain at least the expected levels for their age. Children run, skip and jump with confidence because of the good provision and teachers' clear instructions. The well-planned outside play area provides ample opportunity for children to develop their ability to pedal, push and tow vehicles with accuracy and care. They are increasingly aware of the need to play safely and appropriately understand the health benefits of exercise. The children follow instructions very well, controlling wheeled vehicles and stopping to let others cross in front. They bounce and catch balls with increasing skill. In the nursery, children show no fear of the large spaces in the hall. They
listen very attentively and move with confidence between obstacles avoiding each other. They concentrate very hard.
Creative development
62 The children make very good progress because of the strong emphasis on this throughout the foundation stage. Children sing well and with enthusiasm from a wide range of activity songs, which are often linked to the topics planned for other areas of learning. By the time they start Year 1 the children are very good at selecting fabrics and materials to produce exciting textured collage pictures. They cut and stick neatly and accurately. Their 'bugs' show clear body parts and are brought to life by vibrant colouring and sticking. In the nursery children show delicacy in paintings of hands and things that can be done with hands. They know primary colours and mix paints well. They discuss their ideas well with teachers and support staff because of the carefully focused questions. The classrooms are brought to life by the many examples of the children's rich and vibrant artwork.
ENGLISH
63 Standards of reading and writing for seven-year-olds are consistently above the national average. For those at the age of eleven, standards in English dipped in the last year when the proportion of pupils with special educational needs rose to about a third of the entry. The current Year 6 has taken in more pupils with special educational needs than were in the school when they took the tests at age seven but attainment overall is at least in line with national expectations.
64 Speaking and listening are above average in the school. Even young pupils can describe what used to happen on pirate ships and they use imaginative ideas to suggest why sailors might get into difficulties: "They might hit icebergs and the crew would have to jump overboard." A minority of the boys are not good listeners and more firmness is needed to ensure that they concentrate in the discussion and writing sessions. In older classes pupils develop better powers of concentration and work hard. They listen to what others say and think before answering. Excellent teaching draws out sensitive answers from pupils who are planning to write about people from different countries. When discussing attitudes to others in war time their responses are very pertinent: "Grown ups sometimes deliberately misjudge others because of their religion." Others join in with: "Politicians should not decide who can be my friend." Careful preparation such as this leads to excellent writing from the more able pupils and above average writing from everyone else in Year 5. Some pupils in Year 6 are less prepared to express their ideas orally despite good teaching and this has inhibited their progress in writing.
65 Reading standards are above those expected in all classes. The pupils are well taught and have good opportunities to read silently during each day and aloud as part of their lessons. All pupils show enthusiasm for reading and even those who find it difficult can sound out words systematically. Young pupils recognise different ways of spelling words with the sound "-ai,-ay, and a_e" in them. Those in the young junior classes soon pick up on the ways that words can have the same spelling but different meanings. Teachers do not always reinforce this in marking pupils' work however. Most pupils are fluent and talk about their reading with genuine interest. They explain technical terms that give poems and stories added zest such as "onomatopoeia brings out the meaning of nonsense words in 'Jabberwocky'. There are good links between the school and parents to ensure that the reading record is regularly maintained, and reading progress of pupils is systematically checked. The library is currently used as a classroom and although there is a good supply of books around the school there is no central area for pupils to browse and discuss their reading.
66 There is good quality writing throughout the school although the weaker spelling in Year 6, especially by the lower attaining pupils, adversely affects the overall standards. Teachers correct pupils' spellings for them in their books rather than setting them the task of proof reading for themselves. However the overall standard of writing is good and some of the more able pupils write with flair and at great length even in the infant classes. Presentation and handwriting are very good and teachers set an excellent example through the lively and exciting displays of work in every room and corridor. This creates a good working climate for the pupils and they respond by working industriously. In Year 2 one pupil gave a delightful account of Cinderella at the ball: "I danced with a lovely girl. She was a beauty with hair like gold and with roses as a necklace." Pupils use speech marks well to enliven their narrative. They learn the importance of using paragraphs from an early age. Junior pupils continue to develop their ideas and learn to write for different purposes. They are taught to reflect on important issues such as the dangers of smoking and the advantages and disadvantages of testing drugs on animals. Teachers ensure that pupils with special educational needs have suitable work for the lessons, phrasing questions to involve them in the introduction and providing writing guidelines with a clear structure that help them to develop their ideas. In the additional lessons for pupils working below levels expected for their age the teacher is very careful to help them to prepare their writing and she then goes over it with the whole class to point out common errors and what works well. Despite this some pupils still find difficulty in writing correctly unaided.
67 The quality of teaching is good. There are several examples of very good teaching and, on occasions, there are excellent features. No lessons were unsatisfactory. Teachers have high expectations of pupils' writing and they prepare them well, using a range of good strategies such as role-play to help them "think on their feet". Pupils are good at devising their own questions to explore issues and characters' feelings. They use this skill in writing in history and geography when they imagine what it is like to live in different places at different times. Marking is good and teachers give good advice to pupils such as ways to raise their levels of attainment. They supplement this by encouraging pupils to achieve targets in writing that they can understand. Two aspects of teaching that could be improved are: ensuring that boys concentrate more during some lessons in the infant classes; and giving pupils more responsibility for correcting their own spelling errors.
68 The quality of leadership and management are very good because:
* The monitoring of teaching and learning encourages the sharing of good practice
* Careful assessment of pupils' needs are translated into targets to help them learn
* There is a clear direction for developing writing and literacy skills across subjects
* There has been good improvement in English, especially teaching, since the last inspection.
MATHEMATICS
69 Standards in mathematics are currently in line with what is expected nationally. This is satisfactory progress since the last inspection, although standards have fluctuated over the last few years sometimes being above what would be expected of pupils of ages 7 and 11 nationally, and at other times below that. The variations partly reflect the prior attainment in mathematics but also changes of leadership and management and development in training. With the expertise of the new subject leader and the action plan for improvement standards are well placed to improve more consistently. Boys' achievement is a strength.
70 By the end of Year 2 more able and average pupils are beginning to understand numbers up to 1000, and can split up numbers into tens and units and are beginning to understand hundreds tens and units. They do calculations in addition and subtraction with numbers up to 100 and are beginning to work out problems using multiplication, and less often, division. They use this knowledge when working with money and measures. More able and average pupils usually do the same work. Lower attaining pupils also often do the same work as
higher attainers, but with smaller numbers, and often with the support of teaching assistants. All pupils name simple 2-D shapes and 3-D solids, and group them according to the number of sides and corners, and can construct simple graphs and tables and answer questions about them.
71 By the end of Year 6 more able and average pupils use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to two places of decimals, to solve problems. They solve problems involving fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio and proportion. Lower attainers work with simple fractions and on less complex problems. All pupils calculate the perimeters and areas of rectangles and more complex shapes. They build on their knowledge of properties of shapes and solids. They measure angles to the nearest degree, and use the appropriate vocabulary related to this. They draw and interpret a range of graphs and charts. This knowledge is well applied in science lessons, where pupils use graphs to help them to interpret results and draw conclusions. The younger junior pupils, and less able older juniors use informal written methods for calculation, leading to the teaching of efficient standard written methods. Some younger junior pupils are taught written methods for calculation before mental methods are secure, giving rise to errors.
72
Support for pupils with special educational needs is good and they achieve well. Teaching assistants help lower attaining pupils to sustain concentration during lessons and help them with their mathematics. This support is given in an unobtrusive way so that it does not interrupt the teacher and other pupils. Support for pupils with English as an additional language is also good. The school has set ambitious targets in mathematics for 2003. Higher attaining pupils could be given more challenging work in lessons. There is a mathematics "master class" after school for talented and able pupils.
73 Teaching and learning in mathematics lessons is good overall in infant and junior classes. Pupils' attitudes to their mathematics work, and their behaviour in mathematics lessons is very good both in the infants and in the juniors. The standard of presentation of mathematics work is satisfactory in the infants and good in the juniors.
74 Teachers use guidance provided by the school to plan lessons. This incorporates the National Numeracy Strategy's framework for teaching mathematics. Lesson planning has recently begun to take more account of the different levels of ability of pupils in classes, so that all can make progress and achieve. Plans now clearly set out activities at three distinct levels. Opportunities for infant and junior pupils to do investigative work and open-ended problems are more limited. Addition and multiplication is better developed than subtraction and division.
75 The school's procedures for monitoring the progress of pupils' mathematical learning are satisfactory. Recently mathematical targets for each pupil, based on key learning objectives in National Numeracy Strategy's framework for teaching mathematics, are attached to pupils' exercise books. They are adapted to make them easy for pupils to understand. Pupils can keep track of their own progress through teachers indicating when they have reached a particular target. The system is quite new, and so practice is somewhat inconsistent, with some teachers implementing a "traffic light" grading system, giving an indication that a target may have been partially achieved, or not achieved. Others mark only when targets are fully achieved, with the date on which they were achieved, often with helpful comments such as "very secure". Teachers' marking of work often gives helpful advice to pupils about how they can improve their work, as well as rewarding them with praise.
76 Resources for the teaching of mathematics are good. Classrooms have a good range of posters, number squares and number lines, which support pupils' learning and help them to be independent in their learning. All members of staff have received some training in the National Numeracy Strategy. There is some use of information and communication technology to support teaching, for example in one lesson for junior pupils, the teacher used
a computer and projector to model work in mathematics for pupils. It was an efficient and effective way to do this, and also helped to keep pupils' attention.
77 The leadership and management of the subject ensure clear direction for the development of mathematics. There is a new subject leader, who took up his post in January 2003. He very quickly undertook an audit of the subject, with energy and enthusiasm, and identified several areas for improvement and is making good progress towards achieving them.
78 The subject leader has already ensured that work has begun on the first three of these items, although it is too early to say how this has impacted on learning.
SCIENCE
79 Standards in science for pupils at the ages of seven and eleven are above national expectations. Results in the 2002 national assessment tests for pupils aged eleven were above the national average. This is a trend which has been maintained over the past four years. Evidence collected during the current inspection confirms that this standard is being continued and represents good improvement since the previous inspection. This is a result of:
* effective planning
* a more coherent and well planned curriculum which, by linking subjects together well, makes learning meaningful
* the emphasis placed on and the systematic development of pupils acquisition of scientific enquiry skills through the application of their knowledge and understanding
* improved standards of teaching.
* interesting activities that interest pupils and promote learning
80 Progress and achievement for all pupils in experimental and investigative science is good. This is better than at the time of the last inspection when it was judged to be satisfactory in the infants and unsatisfactory in the juniors. The scrutiny of work shows that the school has developed an effective whole-school approach to the development of pupils' scientific skills of enquiry. For example, pupils aged seven carry out investigations and are able to draw conclusions from their findings. By this age they are already making predictions and asking questions such as, "What will happen if..?" By the age of 11 pupils undertake, design and complete their own investigations to solve problems. They have a very good understanding of fair testing and demonstrate their good working knowledge of variables by predicting what will happen to their results should one factor be changed while others remain the same. At least half attain standards above that expected of pupils for this age. Throughout the school pupils show a good understanding of scientific vocabulary and use a range of different ways to record their work including illustrations, graphs, tables and matrices and clearly written accounts of their procedures, processes and conclusions. This development is both systematic and purposeful. For example, a Year 5 pupil when recounting his investigation on parachutes confidently stated, "The biggest parachute, the one with the largest canopy, came down slowest because the air resistance was the greatest." Their proficiency in describing their observations using correct vocabulary is because teachers are consistent in their expectations and application of the school's scheme of work.
81 In both the infants and the juniors pupils develop a good understanding of life and life processes and living things. For example, Year 1 pupils learn about plants by caring for their own garden within the school grounds from which they gain an enormous amount of pleasure and Year 4 pupils discover about animal habitats and minibeasts by collecting evidence from the school's environmental science area, using an electronic microscope, identifying the creatures and then researching information about them in the school's library.
82 By the end of Year 6 pupils have a very secure understanding of the principles of classification of animals and use branching diagrams well. Infant pupils can sort materials
by their properties and use appropriate descriptive vocabulary such as bendy, rigid, squashy, hard etc. This knowledge is applied effectively in observations of materials around the school.
83
Scrutiny of pupils' work shows that they make good progress in the area of physical processes. Infant pupils are familiar with pushes and pulls and simple circuits. By the age of eleven pupils are testing forces using Newtons and testing and drawing circuits using the correct symbols in their neatly presented circuit diagrams.
84 Pupils enjoy their work in science. They work enthusiastically on their practical tasks showing involvement, concentration, perseverance and a joy of learning. This was particularly evident in a Year 4 class investigating minibeasts and their habitats. Pupils listen well to their peers when they are talking about their work and this ensures that their learning is further developed. Homework is used extremely well to consolidate and extend learning as, for example, when Year 6 pupils are called upon to interrogate information in the form of graphs and their observations used to great effect and purpose at the start of the following lesson.
85 Teachers offer pupils good opportunities to develop their basic skills in literacy and numeracy through their science investigations. For example, in their work on heart rates pupils observed and measured the changes as exercise increased, drew accurate line graphs, and interrogated them to gain meaning and recorded their conclusions with considerable clarity in their written work. In a small number of classes good use is made of information technology where, for example, teachers use a data projector to deliver their lessons effectively and pupils use data bases to collect, store, sort and classify information ready for interrogation. Pupils recognise the effectiveness and the efficiency of information technology when sorting and interrogating data.
86 Teaching and learning are good. Teachers' management of classes is very good. Their use of resources is effective in giving pupils practical experiences and they make good use of time so that all pupils make gains in their learning. Brisk recall of earlier lessons leads to pupils being quickly involved in the lesson. Teachers' subject knowledge is very secure, expectations are high and questioning is challenging. As a result pupils work logically through each stage of their experiments. They show depth in their understanding. Assessment and record keeping are applied consistently well throughout the school and are significant factors in the raising of standards.
87 The leadership and management of the subject are very good. Nationally recommended schemes of work have been skilfully adapted to meet the needs of the school and its pupils. Teachers translate these into detailed and effective lesson plans which ensure lessons are well directed at specific learning points and that new learning is securely based on what pupils already know and can do.
ART AND DESIGN
88 Judgements about standards have been made mainly from looking at pupils' work from all year groups and all levels of ability, and talking to pupils and to the subject leader for art. Standards are currently excellent for both infant and junior pupils. At the time of the last inspection, standards were similar to those expected nationally for pupils of the same age. Excellent progress has been made since then.
89 Art has a very high profile in this school, with a wealth of beautiful artwork in classrooms and around school. Pupils' paintings are valued and celebrated by being framed and hung on the walls in corridors, some in beautiful frames made by pupils and some in commercially produced ones. The school recently achieved an award in recognition of its high quality provision for the arts including art and design, and design and technology.
90 Teachers use very clear guidance provided by the school to plan artwork. This helps them to plan very well for pupils' progression from year to year, logically building on the skills, knowledge and understanding acquired. The guidance also shows teachers how to plan for opportunities to teach art in lessons on other subjects. For example, junior pupils' understanding of Hinduism and of symmetry in mathematics is enhanced by the creation of beautiful Rangoli patterns. Both infant and junior pupils study the work of famous artists from different periods in history and different cultures and their appreciation is good. Links with the community are fostered through art by exhibitions, where parents and members of the community are invited to come into school and look at pupils' artwork. They also exhibit in the community itself, in local supermarkets and shopping centres and the library. Pupils recently had an opportunity to work with professional artists who came into school and worked with them to paint a very attractive mural around the kitchen serving-hatch, depicting pupils and workers at lunchtime. The subject leader has collected together a great many samples of pupils' work. These include photographs of wall displays, other exhibitions and three-dimensional work. This work is of excellent quality and enables teachers to compare it to the artwork of their pupils, so that they can assess how well they have achieved.
91 Teaching and learning in art are very good, as are pupils' attitudes. They enjoy art lessons and make excellent progress. In a lesson for junior pupils, the teacher, assisted by a volunteer parent helper, very clearly explained and demonstrated the technique of quilling. Pupils then very skilfully sketched designs, and working from these, made exquisite flower pictures using the technique, taking exceptional care with materials and equipment. Support for pupils with special educational needs and those for whom English is an additional language is good. Resources for the teaching of art and design are very good. There is an art master-class after school, for pupils who are artistically able and talented.
92 Leadership and management of art are very good. The subject leader is passionate about art and design and has worked hard to develop the subject to a very high level, leading by example. She has a very clear idea of how she wants the subject to develop and has supported staff development by providing very good guidance for teaching art and design, together with training on the use of techniques and equipment. The school proliferates with a great variety of very high quality work from all age groups.
DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY
93 Only one lesson in design and technology was seen during the inspection, so judgements about standards have been made principally from interviews with the subject leader and pupils, and from looking at pupils' work. Standards for both juniors and infants are above those expected of pupils of their age nationally. This is an improvement since the last inspection, when standards for infants were satisfactory and for juniors, unsatisfactory. This is good progress for infants and very good for juniors.
94 Teachers plan work for pupils using very clear guidance provided by the school. This enables the pupils to increase their skills, knowledge and understanding in design and technology each year, acquiring the use of many different techniques and working with an increasing range of tools and materials. The guidance includes information on how teachers can enhance pupils' understanding in other subjects through design and technology, and how it can be combined with many other subjects. In an infant classroom pupils had learned about the Great Fire of London in history lessons. Their understanding of the period was deepened by their working together to produce a lively and attractive collage of London ablaze, and some very attractive, carefully made, framed collage portraits in the style of that period of history.
95
Teaching and learning and pupils' attitudes to design and technology are good. Pupils enjoy lessons and talk about their work with enthusiasm. In a good infant lesson, pupils worked on making flowerpots from play dough. This was in preparation for doing the same thing using (less easy to manipulate) clay in another lesson, and enabled them to learn the
technique of making a "pinch pot" with fingers more easily. They used simple tools to decorate their pots according to their beautifully drawn, simply labelled plans, which they had done previously. The teacher talked to them about why they might wish to alter their designs, and pupils gave good reasons for doing so. Infant and junior pupils' design and technology exercise books show an increasing sophistication in planning what they will make, becoming more accurate and detailed in terms of drawing, labelling and measurement. The books do not, however, include written evaluations of products. Many examples of work displayed in school combine art and design, and design and technology and are highly decorative, for instance, the beautifully observed copies of Viking designs using sewing and embroidery by older junior pupils. Other work shows pupils' knowledge of structures, such as the very striking pterodactyl made by infant pupils using wicker with tissue paper stretched over it. Links with the local community are good, with pupils' work being exhibited, along with their artwork in supermarkets and shopping centres. Older junior pupils had the opportunity to increase their knowledge and understanding of structures, and how they can be made strong, through work done in school with a group of retired engineers. The teaching culminated in groups of pupils working collaboratively to build a model of a bridge conforming to certain standards, with a limited budget and in within a limited time. This also gave them some insight into how things are done commercially.
96 Leadership and management of design and technology are very good. The subject leader is the same person who leads and manages art and design. Her leadership gives clear direction for the development of design and technology. Resources for the teaching of this subject are very good, and very well organised.
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
97 There were no lessons in history or geography during the inspection and no judgements are possible on the quality of teaching. Careful scrutiny of work and talking with the pupils and their teachers revealed that standards are above average at age seven and 11 in both history and geography. This is an improvement on the last inspection and comes about because the planning of the subjects and the resources available are better than before. The school's consistent focus on developing reading and writing skills across the curriculum have also helped pupils to explore topics coherently and in depth, using research through the internet and in reference books.
98 In history infant pupils write sensitively about the lives of famous people in different periods. They understand and give details of the difficulties facing a nurse like Florence Nightingale in hospitals during the Crimean War and they list the achievements of Captain Cook. Younger pupils gain an appreciation of time passing as they look at the toys they own and compare these with their grandparents' possessions. Teachers reinforce this by taking pupils on visits to local places of historical interest where pupils can see different clothes and act out scenes from the past.
99 In Year 2 there is some excellent extended writing about the origins of the Great Fire of London. Pupils write from the point of view of Charles II and manage to capture the atmosphere of the period well. Teachers make good links between numeracy and history by asking questions in their marking such as "How long ago was The Great Fire?" When asked many pupils can identify the possible causes of the fire and discuss issues surrounding the period. They suggested that the fire did at least rid the city of many elements that caused the plague earlier.
100 Older pupils develop their understanding of more complex historical issues and write at length about life in Victorian times. Teachers' marking poses questions for the pupils to answer and they respond by giving personal opinions about aspects of the topic they are studying. In Year 4 pupils write lively newspaper accounts inspired by a study of Tutenkhamun: "To see inside, a mean, muscly man came and showed them into the tomb". There are vivid accounts of actions in World War II and many pupils worked hard on
research into the exploits of Anne Frank. They obviously enjoy history and use their skills in art to illustrate much of their writing. There is selective use of work sheets but most of the writing is generated by a desire on the part of pupils to share their own ideas about historical events such as the customs of the ancient Egyptians or the making of Viking long ships.
101 In geography infant pupils draw clear maps and use two point reference squares to locate places within them. In lessons they are encouraged to share their holiday experiences through photographs and in class discussions. When asked, young pupils can name the different countries in the United Kingdom and with help they mostly understand where London is in relation to their own town. In their writing they relate to stories about living on a Scottish Island: "I like painting the view here where nothing can disturb me." They are starting to identify objects associated with a shoreline and different geographical locations.
102 In junior classes maps are drawn to scale and in their study of an Indian village pupils can tease out many differences in the lifestyle from their own town. Their writing on travel and tourism is of a high order, beautifully set out and containing good factual detail. Pupils are expected to be able to draw their own conclusions from research and not merely copy out ideas indiscriminately. Pupils with special educational needs are given good support in both subjects through visual prompts and practical activities such as matching games. The digital camera is well used to provide lasting images of the local geography that they are studying.
103 The leadership and management of history and geography are good. The planning for the subjects is well co-ordinated and the school makes good use of visits to local museums and visitors with experiences to share. Pupils re-enact historical scenes in assemblies and there has been a real emphasis on helping pupils to understand relevant vocabulary.
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
104 Standards of pupils' attainment in information and communication technology are in line with national expectations by the ages of 7 and 11. This is good progress since the time of the last inspection when standards were judged to be unsatisfactory. There is evidence of good standards being attained in Year 5. The principal reasons for the improvement are:
* the good links made with other subjects
* the development of a well structured programme of work that pupils follow as they move through the school
* increased teacher knowledge and confidence.
105 All pupils, including those with special educational needs, make at least satisfactory progress.
106 By the end of Year 2 most pupils use information and communication technology to organise information and present their findings in a limited but interesting way in a range of subjects. For example, using a simple database they can collect, store, add and retrieve information such as when recording the growth of seedlings and present their findings in block and bar graphs. Pupils' skills, knowledge, and understanding of control technology are improving well through the use of 'Pixie' tabletop robots which they can program to negotiate obstacles, draw simple geometric shapes and follow routes on their own designs of treasure islands and intergalactic space travel. The more able and average pupils see the value of writing the instructions down in advance. Pupils make effective use of the computer to write for different purposes and combine pictures and text.
107 By the end of Year 6 pupils use a wide range of skills in information and communication technology to support their learning across a range of subjects. Year 3 pupils use maths programs to consolidate and extend their skills in quick methods of mental calculation, they are competent users of the digital camera and are becoming increasingly proficient users of
email. In Year 4, pupils use LOGO competently to produce a sequence of instructions to create complex shapes such as a hexagon. With this activity they show that they are confident when using control language. In their topic on Ancient Egypt pupils use their knowledge and skills in drawing to produce effective and informative branching diagrams. In Year 5 pupils create their own databases and enjoy accessing, retrieving and interrogating them to support their work. They use their developing skills in word processing effectively to produce poems and narrative in which the text is used in a pictorial way to reflect meaning. For example, one pupil enhanced the fun and interest of the presentation by altering the letter size to imitate the idea of being '…BARGED DOWN!' By Year 6, a small number of pupils have the skills to combine information from different sources. For example, some have created multimedia presentations using PowerPoint on such topics as 'Materials and Their Properties', 'The Dangers of Smoking', and 'How to Survive National Curriculum Testing!'
108 The quality of teaching is satisfactory throughout the school, other than in Year 5 where it is good. Where pupils have had the benefit of being taught specific skills they build effectively on their previous attainment. In a Year 5 class, for example, pupils achieve well as they continued to store, access and interrogate information collected during their science topic on minibeasts and habitats. The teacher's very good subject knowledge was used well to ensure that skilful questioning and clear demonstrations enabled all pupils to use the different functions and utilise the power of the computer effectively and efficiently to sort and classify information in a variety of meaningful ways in response to questions inputted by pupils. Teachers use information and communication technology well across the curriculum as a teaching aid. This has a positive impact on learning as pupils are very responsive and show a high level of interest.
109 The subject leader has a very good understanding of her management role. She supports colleagues and manages resources for the subject effectively. Although systematic assessment procedures and practices have been developed and implemented they have not as yet had sufficient time to further improve standards of attainment.
MUSIC
110 By Year 2 and Year 6 standards in music are above nation expectations. This is a good improvement since the last inspection. Pupils of all abilities make good progress because of the high quality of, often, specialist teaching and the imaginative curriculum. The subject makes a very good contribution to pupils' spiritual and cultural development.
111 By Year 2, the pupils sing well. They have clear diction and sing tunefully. They know a good range of action and activity songs well. They also show sensitivity when singing hymns in assembly. They are highly motivated by the confident and cheerful teaching. The pupils concentrate hard and show this well when singing in two or more parts. Standards of performance and simple composition are also good. For example, the Year 2 pupils developed their own accompaniments to classic children's tunes using hand bells. They follow the conductor's instructions well.
112 By Year 6 standards of singing are good. This is the direct result of very effective teaching, particularly by specialist staff. Pupils understand the value of warming up in singing sessions and undertake specific vocal exercises. These are well planned to be fun and fast paced. The pupils show very good concentration as a result and have good breath control and clear diction. They follow the teachers' good example. Because the lessons are taught at a good pace, all abilities are kept motivated and involved. This results in very inclusive sessions where no one feels their achievement is not respected. The pupils have a good musical vocabulary, often quite technical with phrases such as ostinato, largo, harmony etc. They maintain a good posture whilst singing and this helps their breathing. They learn to appreciate music from other cultures. For example, they compare French and English
traditional songs, identifying similar patterns in the tunes. They create their own songs using standard and non-standard musical notation. By Year 4, most of the pupils are very familiar with the instruments of the orchestra and group them into different categories such as woodwind and string. Almost all the pupils can order them by size. Pupils have a good knowledge of major works by classical and modern composes including Prokofiev and The Beatles. They compose simple melodies based on their appreciation of traditional songs. The range of tuned instruments is limited but pupils make good use of the keyboards available. The range of untuned percussion is very good.
113 The quality of teaching and learning is very good. The school employs a specialist singing teacher for older pupils, but many of the staff are also competent and capable. This is very evident in the good examples they set in singing and this inspires the pupils who thoroughly enjoy their music lessons. Lessons are planned well so that they move at a good pace and pupils progress at several levels. Those with special educational needs are supported well. The teachers make good use of the skills of pupils who take instrument lessons. For example, they demonstrated the sounds of their instruments to improve appreciation of Peter and the Wolf. Pupils have the opportunity to learn treble or descant recorders both boys and girls participate well. Relationships are good and behaviour is very well managed in lessons.
114 The subject is led and managed well. The subject leader is new to the post. There is a new scheme of work currently under review and resources have been assessed. There is a need for more tuned instruments such as keyboards. There are many opportunities for performance both within the school and in the community. A good proportion of pupils has specialist instrumental tuition and the work seen in this was of good quality. There is sound use of information and communication technology. Pupils use a composition program on the computer and the school has recorded and successfully sold its own CD.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
115 Due to timetabling arrangements it was not possible to see all strands of physical education. Only two lessons were seen during the week of the inspection. It is not possible, therefore, to make judgements on pupils' overall attainment and the progress they are making.
116 Year 2 and Year 5 pupils know why lessons always have a warm-up and closing coolingdown activity. In the infants pupils demonstrate average skills in throwing and catching and make satisfactory progress during their lessons. They throw with accuracy over increasing distances to a partner who in turn shows a developing skill in the art of catching. They watch the ball closely and move forwards, backwards or to the side to ensure that they are in the correct position to hold on to receive it.
117 Juniors are provided with opportunities to develop their performances by taking part in wellconstructed skills practices designed to challenge and improve their throwing, catching and striking skills. Skills are practised in twos and threes and then applied to small games situations where co-operation, teamwork, tactics and positional play are essential components. Pupils try hard to take into account and apply tactics and basic principles suitable to striking and fielding games. Over time this clearly has a beneficial effect on the standard and quality of their performances as demonstrated by their level of throwing and catching skills. They enjoy the competitiveness of the games situation. This is reflected in the number of girls and boys who take part in the extra-curricular football and netball clubs where they not only share their love of sport but show considerable maturity in the way they apply rules fairly and praise the performance of others. All pupils in Year 3 and Year 4 have swimming lessons. It is clear that they achieve water confidence quickly. The significant majority demonstrates proficiency in a range of strokes over 25 metres, some achieve well over this. The school places great importance on the ability to swim and those pupils who
do not achieve 25 meters by the end of Year 4 are given the opportunity to continue in Year 5.
118 Pupils made satisfactory progress in the lessons seen. Good organisation was evident and resources were used well to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Pupils' have very positive attitudes, particularly in Year 5, where they show a willingness to participate, observe demonstrations and suggest how a performance can be improved and to listen to their teacher and their peers. They respond well to advice.
119 Teaching in the lessons seen ranged from satisfactory to good. The good teaching gave pupils the opportunity to be fully engaged in a range of physical activities throughout the lesson. The timing of the sessions was good and helped pupils to make effective links between the practising of simple skills and application of them to the whole game situation. This, along with the teacher's effective questioning, led pupils to consider different options. These elements improved the level of the pupils' performance.
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2006-2672: LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY WITH AN INTRODUCTORY MODULE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
Valerie Maynard, Northwestern University
is a Research Associate: Content Developer in the Materials Research Institute, Northwestern University. She received a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign. She taught introductory college physics for 10 years and then, frustrated with the abilities of incoming freshmen, went to work on improving science education at the pre-college level.
Matthew Hsu, Northwestern University
is a Research Associate: Content Developer in the Materials Research Institute, Northwestern University. He received a Ph.D. in materials science from Northwestern University. He has worked with the Materials World Modules since their inception.
Katherine Chen, California Polytechnic State University
is an Associate Professor in the Materials Engineering Department at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo, CA. Her degrees are from Michigan State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has a strong interest in K-12 education, and spent her sabbatical with the NCLT at Northwestern University.
R.P.H. Chang, Northwestern University
is Professor of Materials Science & Engineering and Director of the Materials Research Institute at Northwestern University. His degrees are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University. He is also Director of Materials World Modules, an NSF-funded, inquiry-based science and technology educational program.
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2006
Laying The Foundation For Nanoscience And Nanotechnology With An Introductory Module For High School Students
Abstract
In response to the need to create a skilled workforce in nanotechnology and to excite young students with the wonders and potentials of science, the National Center for Learning and Teaching in Nanoscale Science and Engineering, is developing educational materials for grades 7 – 16. Learning theory and cutting-edge research are used in the development of modules on nanoscience and nanotechnology. This paper describes the rationale for such materials and describes an introductory module in which students are lead through a series of inquiry-based and hands-on activities, which lead to a design project. Its goal is to teach an underlying principle in nanoscience and nanotechnology—the significance of the surface-area-to-volume ratio as objects get very small. The first section of the module investigates how the physical form of a material can influence the degree to which an object interacts with its environment. Different forms of different materials (steel, superabsorbent polymer, and sugar) are investigated as a function of dimensionality and size. The second section is centered on math tools needed to express very small quantities, viz., powers of 10 and scaling, and we intend that students get a feel for how small "nano" is. Shape and size effects on surface areas and volumes are explored in the third section. Graphs illustrate how the surface area to volume ratio changes with size. Consequences of such a trend are discussed in readings about nature and new technologies. The culminating event is an open-ended design project that incorporates the concepts from the previous activities and facilitates engineering design skills. Preliminary field testing has yielded both qualitative and statistical results.
Introduction To the Science & Technology
A seed was planted in 1959 by Richard Feynman when he postulated that it was possible to write "the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin." 1 The idea lay dormant until the early 1980s, when technology made it practical to visualize and even manipulate individual atoms on surfaces. The result was a new realm of science and technology—the nano-realm. The nanoscale is between the microscale and the atomic scale. With respect to lengths, the nanoscale ranges between about 1 and 100 nanometers; it may extend into the hundreds of nanometers.
Being able to understand and manipulate objects and functions at this scale has extraordinary potential for two general reasons. The first may be obvious. Feynman's proposal is an example. Just being small—very small—is sometimes a big advantage, as in information storage, and as in interacting with other small things. For example, the building blocks of life are nanoscale objects. The medical area is expected to be especially impacted by nanotechnology.
The second reason is not so obvious. It may seem surprising that a scale larger than the atomic scale is a new area of science and technology. Nevertheless, it is true that scientists understand the atomic scale much better than the nanoscale. This is because the nanoscale does not "play by the rules". The "rules" that are relevant for the microscale (and larger), Newtonian mechanics, and those for the atomic scale, quantum mechanics, are well understood. It is somewhere in the nanoscale—in the transition from the dominance of one set of rules to the other—where surprising behaviors are opening doors to possibilities where we did not know that doors even existed, such as a piece of tape 1 cm 2 that can hold up 20 kg—and then be removed as easily as a sticky note, or particles much smaller than a light wavelength that change their color just by changing size, or the power of a supercomputer on your desktop. And this is not even the tip of the iceberg. Because nanotechnology holds the promise of building things as nature does, atom by atom, "it holds the potential to change everything." 2
From Scientific Research To the Classroom
Thus nanoscience and the technology that it motivates may be among the most significant science/technology revolutions to date. The National Science Foundation had this in mind when it launched a comprehensive effort to enhance nanoscale science and engineering education. The effort began in stages over the range of years 2000 – 2005, beginning with graduate education, then undergraduate, high school, and K – 8.
There are several reasons that argue for the study of the nanoscale in pre-college education. Nanotechnology is an enabling technology; it is not a technology category, but will make possible advances in many areas. Thus many policy decisions will arise for which citizens should have achieved a level of scientific literacy to make informed decisions. The number of such decisions will also grow because with great potential comes great hype. Citizens should have a knowledge base to help them separate the bad propaganda from the good.
A second reason for pre-college nanoscale education is the need to stimulate a desire in more students to pursue science or engineering in college, and for a subset of them to pursue nanoscience and technology. Student enrollment in college courses for science, technology, engineering, or math careers has been roughly constant for 10 years, while the need, even without the ensuing growth in nano, is not being met. "As nanotechnology moves into the mainstream, companies ... will face a serious shortage of talent—far worse than what is already occurring." 3 Yet, "[a]t the secondary level, teachers, counselors, and administrators, for the most part, do not recognize the coming impact of nanotechnology... ." 4 An introduction to nanoscience and technology may be especially motivating both because of the extraordinary potential of the technology and because students will see here, more than with other areas of science, that it is a very unfinished business; science is a very dynamic enterprise.
Yet another reason is the possibility of a synergistic effect upon learning traditional science topics, most probably, the structures and functions of atoms and molecules. Misconceptions about the atomic scale are common and are due in part to the lack of direct experience at that scale. They are greatly compounded when the experiences that scientists tell us about are so qualitatively different from our macroscale familiarity. Thus we rely on models, which often are macroscale analogs (e.g., the "solar system" model of the atom). If, however, we offer to students a continuous journey of learning from the macroscale through the micro- and nanoscales to the atomic, students can "see" the manifestation of the electron cloud behavior as they "get close" to an atom. The difference in the curriculum is analogous to the following. The typical curriculum progression of macroscale—microscale—atomic scale (skipping the nanoscale) is like first learning about an airport and its environs, and then taking off in a seaplane, flying above the clouds, and landing in an ocean, with no idea of the relationship between land and sea. But if the nanoscale is inserted, the analogous journey is traveling on land to the shore and then stepping onto a boat. The traveler has seen everything along the way and knows exactly where he/she is.
Finally, nanoscience and technology are inherently interdisciplinary because nanoscale phenomena are functions of size, not of some other delineating factor that defines disciplines, such as living vs. nonliving. This word interdisciplinary is almost ubiquitous when nanoscale research groups are described. Often more than one physical science area is represented (e.g., physics, chemistry, materials science), and if a biological system is the research interest, molecular biologist will be on board. The collaboration between biologists and chemists, especially will increase as biological applications increasingly involve surface chemistry. When the science interacts with technology, a corresponding range of engineers will contribute. Such collaboration often occurs in other areas of research (although it is generally most germane to nanoscale research), and scientists and engineers concerned with high school education have long advocated interdisciplinary lessons.
For practical reasons, lessons about the nanoscale usually will be a good fit in a physics or chemistry class, but a strong argument can be made for biology. Nanotechnology is expected to have a huge impact on biotechnology, and more fundamentally, a biological cell is a highly evolved nanomanufacturing facility.
Having justified the task, its difficulty should be acknowledged. The scale of the phenomena makes direct observation in a pre-college school difficult to accomplish for most examples. One must try to find or invent meaningful macroscale phenomena that have a clear relationship to the nanoscale, and that can take place in a classroom; or one must create models that do not mislead. Upon examination, this has not been easy for some molecular and atomic content in chemistry and physics education. Almost always, cost or hardware requirements preclude promising ideas.
A Module To Introduce the Nanoscale
We are creating a module to introduce the nanoscale to students, targeting high school juniors/seniors and their teachers. We mention teachers explicitly because in almost all cases, we suspect that these materials must be educative for them. This is the responsibility of any materials that introduce new content.
Our primary mission is to engage all students in the classroom with materials consisting of a sound selection of content and best-practices. Reflecting the reasons stated above for introducing nanoscale learning, we want to motivate interest in science, and we want to contribute to the achievement of several learning goals.
The module is designed to take about 2 weeks. This is a significant chunk of curriculum time, but the learning goals and tasks are not add-on content; they are standards-based content and skills and, as such, can supplant other lessons. The module consists of four major parts: three sections have well-defined learning goals; the fourth is a design project.
The module is delivered in two components: pdf files and kits. A pdf file is downloaded by the teacher, printed, and copied for students. This is the Student Edition.
Another file is the Teacher Edition. It contains a page-long statement of the module's mission. For each section, it contains information about materials and materials preparation, purpose, summary, objectives, content background information, connections to the curriculum, estimated times, suggested items for students to ponder before they open their Student Edition, comments on each activity, and answers to prompts that students are to respond to.
A kit of hands-on materials is shipped to the teacher.
The Module Topic
When first considering the content for this introductory module, the question at hand was: what is most fundamental to understanding the nanoscale? The potential nanoscale topics are far ranging, as one would expect. The combinations of atoms that can form nanoscale objects are huge. Nevertheless, there are categories of properties that are being studied. The three examples given above—the super-strong "sticky note" (an example of scientists trying to catch up with nature as exhibited by a gecko's feet), the particles that change color just by growing or shrinking, and the personal supercomputer—are examples of surface, light, and electrical nanoscale properties, respectively. Others include mechanical (such as strength and plasticity), chemical reactivity, magnetic, and thermal.
All of these properties are types of behavior whose description qualitatively changes during some range of nanoscale size change. The mention of size change is the key to the choice of the major topic of this module, viz., the geometry of getting small. This is the property upon which all of the behavior properties depend. More specifically, they all depend on the surface area, the volume, or the ratio of surface area to volume. As the linear dimensions of an object decrease, this ratio increases—and at the nanoscale, this ratio becomes huge. This is the "big idea" for this module; i.e., it is the "coherent foundation for the concepts, theories, principles, and explanatory schemes for phenomena" in nanoscience. 5 A big idea from a scientist's perspective is a foundational explanation that functions both within and across disciplines. From a science educator's viewpoint, a big idea is a "building block for future learning ... [and] is key for future development of other concepts and helps lay the foundation for continual learning." 6 Thus this module can function as the first in a series of nanoscale learning experiences, or as a unit that introduces a new area of science and technology as an interesting context for its learning goals (such as the geometry mentioned above).
The Whole Module
With the module's big idea set, we turned to learning goals. These were chosen with a consideration of science and mathematics standards (National Science Education Standards 7 , AAAS's Project 2061 8 , and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics 9 ), prerequisite knowledge, common curricula currently in schools, and learning performances. Later in this document, these factors will be linked to examples. The learning goals are listed here following the big idea:
big idea
As object size decreases, the surface area to volume ratio increases—at the nanoscale, this ratio is huge.
learning goals
1 - The physical form of a solid influences the degree to which it interacts with its environment: the smaller it is in three, two, or one dimension(s), the more readily it interacts.
2 - The magnitudes involved with the nanoscale can be represented with powers of 10 and scaling.
3 - The surface area to volume ratio changes with the shape or size of an object. This ratio changes dramatically in the nanoscale.
There is a section for each learning goal. Each of the three sections begins with an introductory article about something familiar, yet describing an aspect that students may not have thought about (such as a relationship between environmental temperature and animal size and shape).
Then come hands-on activities, which are designed for groups of three or four students. The activities range in time from a few minutes to 1 – 2 class periods. These are mentioned below.
Each section ends with text that expounds the concepts in the hands-on activities.
The Sections
In Section 1, an extra effort is made to engage students. There are three hands-on parts—each with the same theme but with very different materials:
o A: applying a flame to steel in two forms: a nail and steel wool
o B: adding water to a superabsorbent polymer in two forms: pellets and powder
o C: dissolving in the mouth five forms of sugar: approximately spherical (3-dimensional [3-
D], thin (approaching 2-D), fibrous (approaching 1-D), smaller 3-D, and even smaller 3-D.
Section 2 deals with two mathematical tools that are necessary for relating to nanoscale quantities: powers of 10 and scaling. The section has four hands-on parts:
o A: Length and volume scale differently: These are measured for a "grow animal" made of a superabsorbent polymer before and after water absorption.
o B: how to represent a wide range of lengths: Macroscale lengths spanning four powers of 10 are determined and must be illustrated on a single sheet of paper. The range is too large for a simple scaled drawing. We would think of using a logarithmic scale. What might students invent?
o C: expressing scaled heights: first at the human scale; then at the nanoscale
o D: Bring it all together: A poster is constructed. Its theme must relate an object at the macro-, micro-, and nanoscales, and the representation from Part B is used.
Section 2 features some nature-of-science processes that are practiced too rarely in many classrooms. Part A sneaks in a science process message: scientific investigations do not always fit into one class period. The animal may still be expanding slightly at the end of a week. The teacher may also use this as another process lesson by letting students decide when to stop taking data. Parts B, C, and D have different types of open-ended prompts. The relative representation in Part B is an obvious instance. In Part C1, students infer estimated heights. In Part C2, students are asked to imagine what they would see if they were nanometer-sized.
Of the three sections, Section 3 is most directly connected to the big idea. Section 3 is mainly about geometry with some qualitative graphing at the end. It begins with the more familiar twodimensional geometry and then advances to three dimensions.
o A: first, two dimensions: Using a specific number of identical sticks, students create polygons that minimize or maximize perimeter / area. Students are asked to mentally take two of the ratios beyond what the sticks can show, and reach a conclusion about the limiting shape.
o B: now three dimensions: Using a specific number of linking cubes, students create shapes that minimize or maximize surface area / volume. Analogies with Part A are considered, as is the suitability of using the linking cubes to model a one-dimensional object.
o C: For B, volume was constant, and shape was varied. Here, shape is constant (cubic), and volume is varied. Students record length (L), volume (V), and surface area (SA). A Flash computer file has been created to extend this cube-building exercise.
From these data, students create two graphs, V vs. L and SA vs. L, and analyze them qualitatively.
Finally, the ratio SA/V is plotted vs. L. Students consider whether this ratio reaches a maximum.
At the end of Section 3, students make connections between Sections 3 and 1 by considering how the linking cubes be used as models of the forms of materials in Section 1 and where the particle forms in Section 1 would be plotted on the SA/V vs. L graph created in Part C?
co-teaching ?
The content of Sections 2 and 3 is mainly mathematical—tools for expression, analysis, and understanding the nanoscale. Thus the module lends itself well to be co-taught by a science and a math teacher. Such collaboration would not only match the more qualified teacher to the respective content. It could shake up students' misguided attitudes about compartmentalized learning. Math teachers, especially, often look for ways to give math more meaning to students.
Unfortunately, in our initial testing of the module, we have encountered numerous roadblocks to such collaboration, even when teachers appreciate the benefits. All that we can do is encourage such teamwork.
Design
The Sections are guided activities; as such, there are a number of features of inquiry that may not occur. They include posing questions, examining information sources, planning investigations, identifying assumptions, thinking critically, and considering alternative explanations.
Engineering design projects provide opportunities to develop these thinking skills. But don't tell the students. They are often motivated by the goal to produce the product via a process that cedes many choices to them. Such motivation, if experienced often enough, could spur a larger subset of students to pursue science, engineering, and technology in college. Major manufacturing organizations in the U.S. are advocating for such changes in curricula because they predict dire consequences if current projections of inadequately skilled workers, including engineers, are realized. A projected nanotechnology revolution will make these consequences even more acute.
For all of these reasons, a culminating design project is considered a critical part of the module. The Design project starts with an article that describes the problem in need of an engineering design solution and gives some background information. It begins thusly:
"You and your design team work for a company that is a leader in high-quality water treatment systems. The company has just signed a contract with NASA to create a better water treatment system for the International Space Station (ISS)."
The current state-of-the-art and its undesirable features are given. A solution requires a different approach. Photocatalytic nanoparticles that degrade the major contaminants are available, as is a simple recipe for their adhesion to plastic. Plastic objects of different shapes and sizes are available, although students are free to try anything. Students do not simply optimize surface area; for the plastic substrates made available, prices are given, and for any other objects that students choose, price must be considered. A dye models the contaminated water. The photocatalyzed breakdown of the dye molecules is monitored by color strength or pH.
The students are given a generic eight-step Design Process [ based on Dieter 10 pp 3-11 ]:
1) Write: need, shortcomings of other solutions, goals... 2) Brainstorm... 3) Plan...
4) Make a prototype... 5) Evaluate prototype... 6) Improve the design... 7) Present this prototype to your colleagues in other groups... 8) Prepare a final report...
The situation and the process steps outlined for the students satisfy the following characteristics, which are intended to increase the effectiveness of a design project. (The characteristics are paired with their effects.) real-world connection → motivation; lack of specific constraints → student choices; testable product → data for evidence-based reasoning; and iterative → evaluation → re-design. 11
The teacher has the following assessment rubric:
(For brevity's sake, only the OUTSTANDING column is completed here.)
ASSESSMENT OF DESIGN PROJECTS
| | evidence of a need. o Students crafted a strongly convincing problem statement. |
|---|---|
| prototype | o Prototype is completed ahead of schedule. o Prototype works beyond what was intended. |
| feasibility | o Prototype is highly successful in addressing the problem. o Prototype is accompanied by an impressive set of test data. |
| presentation (oral or written) | o Presentation is very well organized. o Presentation includes very complete remarks that are well supported by graphics: data displays, drawings, pictures, video, etc. |
| aesthetics | o Prototype has strong eye appeal. o Prototype appears to have been very carefully crafted. |
Testing the Module
We have done some preliminary field testing of the module. It has been used in eight classrooms located in all parts of the U.S. and in five different NCES locales. For such a small sample, the ranges of demographic data are large. All classes have been either chemistry or physics, and have ranged in level of difficulty from introductory to advanced. The grade level range was 10 – 12. The maximum class size was 28. The teachers were half and half: male and female. Their level of academic preparation ranged through the Ph.D. The one category without a large range was years experience teaching high school science. The minimum was 11 years.
statistical analysis
A Design project rubric (see above) was used to score five criteria. The points are totaled, and a class average is obtained: 90%.
Identical pre- and post-tests are given. They are analyzed three ways. The simple percent gain was 80%.
The mean normalized gain was a moderate 0.38, which may be interpreted as equivalent to the class as a whole having progressed 38% beyond the mean pre-test score toward a perfect score of 100%. Said another way, it is equivalent to 38% of the class having achieved a perfect score of 100%. This compares favorably with a typical science classroom. Normally when presented with new material, only about 2% of the class score 100%.
The standardized mean gain effect size is an impressive 2.33. In other words, students gained 2.33 standard deviations between their pre- and post-test scores. This effect size was considerably greater than the highest effect size of 0.73 reported by Lipsey & Wilson 12 for various types of social-science research including 22 effect sizes for K-12 math and science instruction.
qualitative analysis
The teachers responded to a lengthy on-line survey. With such a small sample, there was little clear consensus, but there was some. The consensus for one survey item was negative, viz., the clarity of the Student Edition. We recognize that and have also solicited feedback from others (both teachers and editors) who simply read the module. (They did not use it with students.) The constructive criticism led to the following changes:
Section 1: In the explanatory article at the end, we tried to describe, using words and diagrams, the structure and function of a superabsorbent polymer. More diagrams were requested, so we collaborated with learning technology experts (Braatz group at the University of Illinois – Urbana), and now students (and teachers) will be able to link to a computer-animated explanation.
Section 2: Half of the activities were simplified. The biggest change was the elimination of an activity that directed students to create a semi-log graph.
Section 3: The beginning and ending articles were overhauled due to a lack of relevance to the hands-on parts.
Section 4 and Design: Because the procedure for Section 4 must be changed, new versions will be offered for feedback.
There was a positive consensus for two items. These teachers would encourage others to order the module. The second was in the "student outcomes" category. The module helped students function better as a team member.
Teachers went beyond the requisite numerical response ratings during the on-line survey to add the following comments:
"Every day as they come into class, they ask me what to do next regarding the Nanoscale module."
"This [formulate explanations and models] is the best feature of the module."
Phone interviews with some of the teachers gave us many specific suggestions plus the following information about the module's fit into existing curricula. The module fills a hole that often exists in chemistry curricula, viz., the relationship between surface area and reaction amount. In physics curricula, the module is a good fit between classical and quantum physics.
We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Barbara J. Pellegrini, Ph.D., Project Evaluator, in the design of the evaluation, creation of test bank items, and statistical analyses of field test data.
Student is amazed, or amused, by how fast a superabsorbent polymer absorbs water when the polymer particles are small.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ESI-0426328.
Bibliography
1. Feynman, Richard P., "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom: An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics" www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html.
2. "So tell me kind sir, if you can, all about the basics of molecular nanotechnology." http://www.nanotechnow.com/basics.htm.
3. Roco, Mihail, "Businesses need to plant nano seeds in schools, NNI chief says" www.smalltimes.com/print_doc.cfm?doc_id=5133.
4. Fonash, S.J., "Implications of Nanotechnology for the Workforce" in Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology NSF, March 2001 http://www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications/
5. Wilson, Mark R. and Bertenthal, Meryl W., Eds., "Systems for State Science Assessment" Executive Summary www.map.edu/catalog/11312.html.
6. Krajcik, Joseph, "Learning Goals Driven Design – Identifying and Interpreting Standards" personal communication.
7. National Science Education Standards. National Research Council. 1996.
8. Benchmarks for Science Literacy. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1994.
9. Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. 2000.
10. Dieter, G.E., Engineering Design: A Materials and Processing Approach (2nd Ed.) McGraw-Hill 1991.
11. Baumgartner, Eric and Reiser, Brian J., "Inquiry through Design: Situating and supporting inquiry through design projects in high school science classrooms" paper presented at 1997 annual conf. National association for Research in Science Teaching, Oak Brook IL.
12. Lipsey, M.W. and Wilson, D.B. "The efficacy of psychological, educational, and behavioral treatment: Confirmation from meta-analysis" American Psychologist, 1993 December, pp. 1181-1209. | <urn:uuid:5e45f761-5e39-4a71-82b2-99f8344dfbc0> | CC-MAIN-2024-26 | https://peer.asee.org/laying-the-foundation-for-nanoscience-and-nanotechnology-with-an-introductory-module-for-high-school-students.pdf | 2024-06-20T12:32:37+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-26/segments/1718198861940.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20240620105805-20240620135805-00151.warc.gz | 392,982,296 | 6,122 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.98566 | eng_Latn | 0.997289 | [
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Grades 3–5
3.5.3-5.EE Technology and Engineering: Nature and Characteristics of Technology and Engineering
Students who demonstrate understanding can explain how solutions to problems are shaped by economic, political, and cultural forces.
Clarifying Statement: For example, the interests, desires, and financial resources of a group of people will influence the type of transportation system developed for that community. A transportation system for a large city may rely on mass transit, while one in a smaller town might rely on personal vehicles. Assessment Boundary: N/A
| Science and Engineering Practices (SEP) | Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) |
|---|---|
| Engaging in Argument From Evidence | N/A |
| Engaging in argument from evidence in 3–5 builds | |
| on K–2 experiences and progresses to critiquing the | |
| scientific explanations or solutions proposed by | |
| peers by citing relevant evidence about the natural | |
| and designed world(s). | |
| • Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a | |
| problem by citing relevant evidence about how | |
| it meets the criteria and constraints of the | |
| problem. | |
Pennsylvania Context: Examples of Pennsylvania context include but are not limited to Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry regulations.
Pennsylvania Career Ready Skills: Identify one's own strengths, needs, and preferences.
Connections to Other Standards Content and Practices
| Standard Source | Possible Connections to Other Standard(s) or Practice(s) |
|---|---|
| PA Core Standards: Reading | CC.1.2.3.G: Use information gained from text features to demonstrate understanding of a text. |
| and Writing in Science and | CC.1.2.4.G: Interpret various presentations of information within a text or digital source and explain how the information |
| Technical Areas | contributes to an understanding of text in which it appears. |
| | CC.1.2.5.G: Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a |
| | question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently. |
| | CC.1.4.3.V: Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic. |
| | CC.1.4.4.V: Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic. |
| | CC.1.4.5.V: Conduct short research projects that use several sources to build knowledge through investigation of different |
| | aspects of a topic. |
| | CC.1.4.3.W: Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on |
| | sources and sort evidence into provided categories. |
| | CC.1.4.4.W: Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; take |
| | notes and categorize information, and provide a list of sources. |
| | CC.1.4.5.W: Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; |
| | summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished work, and provide a list of sources. |
| PA Core Standards and | MP.2: Reason abstractly and quantitatively. |
| Practices: Math | MP.4: Model with mathematics. |
| | MP.5: Use appropriate tools strategically. |
| Science, Technology & | 3.3.5.F: Generate and design possible solutions to a current environmental issue, threat, or concern. |
| Engineering, and | |
| Environmental Literacy & | |
| Sustainability Academic | |
| Standards | | | <urn:uuid:6f399349-7f1a-4f42-9fdf-d01771776e2d> | CC-MAIN-2024-26 | https://files5.pdesas.org/182027150149060240163231214166075160188136013080/Download.ashx?hash=2.2 | 2024-06-20T12:27:29+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-26/segments/1718198861940.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20240620105805-20240620135805-00152.warc.gz | 210,928,714 | 796 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.993256 | eng_Latn | 0.993256 | [
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practice test chapter 3 (Homework)
For answers, send email to: firstname.lastname@example.org.
Include file name: Chemistry_Worksheet_0119
Price: $3
(c) 2012 www.tutor-homework.com: Tutoring, homework help, help with online classes.
1.
Convert 125.8°C to K. Enter the correct number of significant figures.
2.
Classify the following as homogenous mixtures, heterogenous mixtures, elements or compounds.
(a) salt water
(b) water
(c) magnesium oxide
(d) shampoo
(e) salad dressing
3.
Select the best separation technique that could be used to separate each of the following mixtures.
(a) two colorless liquids
(b) a nondissolving solid mixed with a liquid
(c) red and blue marbles of same size and mass
4.
Which of the following are examples of substances?
Explain why each is a substance. (3.1)
5.
Identify each of the following as an extensive or intensive physical property. (3.1)
(a) melting point
(c) density
(d) length
6.
Is a change in phase a physical change or a chemical change? (3.2)
Explain.
7.
Which of the following indicators suggest that a chemical change has probably taken place? (Select all that apply.) (3.2)
8.
Which of the following are characteristics of a mixture? (3.3)
9.
Classify each of the following as a homogeneous mixture or a heterogeneous mixture. (3.3) (a) brass (an alloy of zinc and copper)
(b) a salad
(c) blood
(d) powder drink mix dissolved in water
10.
A 4.90 g nugget of pure gold absorbed 288 J of heat. What was the final temperature of the gold if the initial temperature was 24.0°C? The specific heat of gold is 0.129 J/(g·°C).
11.
A 155 g sample of an unknown substance was heated from 25.0°C to 40.0°C. In the process, the substance absorbed 5696 J of energy. What is the specific heat of the substance?
Identify the substance among those listed in Table 16-2.
Table 16-2
12.
What is the specific heat of an unknown substance if a 2.39 g sample releases 13.1 cal as its temperature changes from 25.7°C to 20.3°C?
13.
If313g water at66.9°C loses9760J of heat, what is the final temperature of the water?
14.
How is a qualitative observation different from a quantitative observation? Give an example of each.
15.
Are the following physical changes or chemical changes?
(a) Water boils.
(b) A match burns.
(c) Sugar dissolves in tea.
(d) Sodium reacts with water.
(e) Ice cream melts.
16.
Classify these as heterogeneous or homogeneous mixtures.
(a) salt water
(b) blood
(c) 14 k gold
(d) concrete
17.
Nickel freezes at 1455°C. What is the melting point of nickel?
18.
Is the overall processing of food in your body an exothermic or endothermic process?
19.
Is the melting of candle wax an exothermic or endothermic change?
20.
Identify the following as an element, compound, homogeneous mixture, or heterogeneous mixture.
(a) nitrogen
(b) polyethylene plastic
(c) clear apple juice
(d) wood
(e) syrup
(f) granite
(g) soda
21.
Identify each of the following as either chemical or physical properties of the substance.
(a) Copper is drawn into wires.
(b) Salt dissolves in water.
(c) Magnesium burns in air.
(d) Gold jewelry is unaffected by perspiration.
(e) Baking soda is a white powder.
(f) Potassium is a highly reactive element.
22.
Identify each of the following as either chemical or physical changes.
(a) Magnesium burns in air.
(b) Air is squeezed by a pump and forced into a tire.
(c) A lump of gold is pounded into a large, thin sheet.
(d) Baking powder bubbles and gives off CO2 when it is moistened.
(e) A pan of water boils on the stove.
(f) Hydrogen sulfide gas causes silver to tarnish.
23.
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Restoring health and well-being in the Native community by recovering knowledge of and access to healthy, indigenous foods, medicines and lifeways.
Dream of Wild Health appreciates your financial support!
Please use the enclosed envelope to show your support of quality Native American youth leadership programs and greater community access to healthy and indigenous foods.
Miigwetch and Pidamaye!
The Youth are the Seeds of Our Future
November 2016
2016 Annual Report
Sara Rubinstein
Dream of Wild Health is all about healthy food! We work with Native people to recover the teachings of our ancestors by returning to indigenous foods and medicines.
From our humble beginning as a small garden in 1998, Dream of Wild Health has grown into a 10-acre farm in Hugo, MN, where we produce five tons of organic vegetables each year. We grow and protect the rare, tribal seeds that were a gift from Cora Baker, a Potawatomi Seed Keeper. Cora believed that returning to our indigenous foods was the way to heal the health of our community. Our traditional diet that was based on foods we hunted, gathered, and grew, was disrupted by the move to reservations and dependence on high fat, high starch commodity foods. We are so grateful to elders such as Cora, who cared for our corn, squash, and bean seeds, knowing that our children would need them.
With each season at the farm, with every community garden, and every plant that we grow ourselves, we are reclaiming our right to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food. We are recovering the knowledge that was displaced by assimilation, teaching Native youth and families how to rebuild a relationship with the land and our food. At the farm and our Minneapolis Phillips neighborhood office, we offer programs that teach gardening, healthy cooking and nutrition, and the pride that comes from reclaiming our food system. Today, more than ever, we need to treat Mother Earth with loving kindness, and to stand up for her when she needs us.
We send blessings and prayers for our Water Protectors.
ReBuilding Food Sovereignty
After developing 3/5 of the foods that are eaten today, we know that Native American people are some of the best agriculturalists in the world!
At Dream of Wild Health, we provide access to healthy food through three Farmers' Markets in the Twin Cities, an Indigenous Food Share that is distributed weekly, donations to local food shelves and the Elders Lodge, and by providing delicious meals to the youth and families in our programs. With help from our youth, this summer we grew more of our indigenous seeds, including two varieties of Dakota corn, three kinds of beans, including Black Turtle Beans, Rabbit Beans, and some Mandan Shield Figure Beans, and enjoyed a sweet variety of Iroquois melon. Youth learn the importance of protecting these seeds, including hand pollination, and the threats they face from the GMO crops that surround us.
Berries were always an important food in our diet, so we are nurturing two acres planted with chokecherries, juneberries, high bush cranberries, elderberries, and more. A two-acre Pollinator Meadow provides the habitat and food that is so essential for our native bees and butterflies. In every sense, we strive to be good relatives to the land, and to teach our children these values.
Every farm needs good equipment, and we are very proud of our new pole barn and walk-in cooler, which help us maintain excellent food safety standards. After planting our first crop in our new high tunnel, we have arugula and tomatoes in late October! These structures will help us expand our season in 2017.
"Changes I've seen in myself at DWH are that I feel more independent, significant and knowledgeable. I learn so much every day, especially from the elders, and I'm able to take the advice and stories they use, and apply them to real life situations."
- Garden Warrior 2016
DWH supports the East Side Indigenous Garden as a collaborative garden project for Native families living or working in St. Paul. Many thanks to Maggie Lorenz for all her efforts coordinating the work!
What You Can Do...
Volunteer Fridays at the farm
Make a donation
Start a garden & Grow Organic
Plant Heirloom seeds
Choose carefully where you buy your food
Working in partnership with Bdote Immersion School, DWH brings the children to the farm, reinforces Native languages and exposes more of our youth to indigenous food and cultural practices.
Strengthening Community with Youth Programs
Early each morning throughout the summer, a van delivers 15 Native American youth, to the farm where they step away from their cell phones to be present in mind and body. Beginning each day in circle, a prayer from our cultural director, the youth learn language and begin their garden lesson in the fields. Youth take turns preparing a wholesome, delicious lunch for the entire group, developing cooking skills and learning the basics of healthy nutrition. Most of all, these youth are learning to respect and nurture the land as our Mother, and to give thanks for her gifts.
Each summer, we host Native youth as part of our Cora's Kids (ages 8-12) and Garden Warrior (ages 13-18) programs. These youth come from inner-city neighborhoods and all of them face the challenges of growing up as a Native youth in the Twin Cities. When provided with a safe environment at the farm, healthy food, stable adults, and high expectations, these youth thrive.
To provide new learning and opportunities, the Garden Warriors attended a Berry Camp at the White Earth Reservation where they learned to gather and cook wild food, canoe, and camp. Sixteen teens represented Dream of Wild Health at the First Medicines conference at the Bois Forte reservation, teaching a workshop on the traditional game of double ball, and making a kale salad. When youth
www.dreamofwildhealth.org (612) 874-4200
speak, their words carry a powerful message of hope and healing.
The most successful Garden Warriors are invited to join our Youth Leaders program, where they learn to advocate for healthy lifestyles in their community by supporting a Healthy Food policy, speaking at events, attending conferences, and participating in partner programs with Roots for the Home Team, Climate Generation, and Fund of the Sacred Circle. We believe these skills and experience will help them succeed in their lives, and help them achieve social justice in a sustainable world.
We are so proud of all of our youth! We especially want to congratulate Sedric Oliver, in 11th grade, who was awarded the Sally Auger Rising Star Youth Scholarship for his impressive work ethic and maturity.
Cooking programs are one of the most important ways DWH engages families in learning how to use indigenous foods in contemporary and traditional recipes. We host workshops in basic cooking and food preservation, such as making hominy and canning.
On November 17, we have 24 hours to raise as much as we can!
During Give to the Max Day, your donation ($25 minimum) could win us an extra $1,000! Please give what you can to invest in the health and well-being of our Native community.
Donate online on Nov. 17th at: www.givemn.org/organization/Dreamofwildhealth
What does your donation support?
140
Stewarding
indigenous seed varieties
75 4
10
110
500
200
Tribes represented in youth programs
36
Native youth in
programs
People served by or Indigenous
Food Shares (IFS)
Percent of
IFS families are Native
American
Families reached by our cooking classes
Acres of organic land in Hugo, MN maintained
Farmers
Markets
Cookbooks distributed
Produce Distribution
Funding
Sources
IFS
Program
Market
PRESORT STD
U.S. POSTAGE
TWIN CITIES, MN
PAID
PERMIT 2805
6%
30%
53%
Wholesale
3%
Donations
4%
Saved Seed
4%
Foundation $259,784
Government $144,334
Individuals $10,900
Earned Income $26,000
Misc.
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Some Background Concerning Physical Science Content Standards for Fifth-Grade Teachers:
Atoms in Living Organisms
by Ellen Deehan, M.S.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Physical Science Topic: Atoms in Living Organisms
3. Websites
Introduction
The background information for teachers in this document addresses the following physical science content standards 1 for fifth-grade teachers:
1. Elements and their combinations account for all the varied types of matter in the world. As a basis for understanding this concept:
h. Students know living organisms and most materials are composed of just a few elements.
1 As specified in Science Framework for California Public Schools Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. Sacramento: California Department of Education, 2003, p 69.
Physical Science Topic: Atoms in Living Organisms
Science Framework 2 for California Public Schools
Grade 5: Standard Set 1. Physical Sciences: 1.h. "Students know living organisms and most materials are composed of just a few elements."
"By weight 98.59 percent of Earth's entire crust consists of eight elements: oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium. Nearly 3,500 known minerals are in Earth's crust. This fact shows that the complexity of the crust is also the result of a small number of elements in a large variety of combinations. Similarly, living organisms are mostly composed of the elements carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus. The number of types of atoms used as "building blocks" is relatively small. The way in which the atoms are organized into molecules provides variety."
Background for Teachers
Matter (solid, liquid, gas) is made of atoms and molecules. We have over 100 kinds of atoms (elements) here on Earth. Every kind of atom on our planet is listed in the Periodic Table of the Elements (Figure 1).
Although we have over 100 kinds of atoms, most of the Earth's crust is composed of only eight kinds of atoms. These common atoms combine in many ways to form thousands of kinds of mineral molecules – one of the most common of which is silicon dioxide (glass and quartz).
2 As specified in Science Framework for California Public Schools Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. Sacramento: California Department of Education, 2003, p. 62.
Atoms in Living Organisms
Living organisms are composed of molecules that contain atoms from rocks, air, and water. Most of the molecules in living organisms are made out of only six kinds of atoms, which are relatively small and light: carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), and phosphorus (P).
Plants bring atoms into the food chains of ecosystems by absorbing molecules from rocks, air, and water. The planetary sources of the most common atoms in our ecosystem are listed on the following page.
3 Image from website: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Atom_
Atoms from Rocks
Sulfur atoms come from rocks; plant roots absorb sulfur atoms as mineral-nutrients 4 from the soil.
Phosphorus atoms come from rocks; plant roots absorb phosphorus atoms as mineral-nutrients 5 from the soil.
Atoms from Air
Carbon atoms come from the air (they were released from volcanoes 8 as carbon dioxide); plant leaves absorb carbon atoms as carbon dioxide molecules from the air.
Nitrogen atoms come from the air; special bacteria absorb nitrogen atoms as molecules from the air, and release mineral-nutrients 6 into the soil; plant roots then absorb nitrogen atoms as mineral-nutrients 7 from the soil.
Atoms from Water
Hydrogen atoms come from water molecules (water comes from the ocean to the land and back again in the water cycle); plant roots absorb hydrogen atoms as water molecules in the soil.
Oxygen atoms come from water (water comes from the ocean to the land and back again in the water cycle); plant roots absorb oxygen atoms as water molecules in the soil.
Molecules in living organisms break apart and reform as they travel through the food chains of ecosystems; however, the atoms themselves are never broken.
Atoms are re-used over and over again!
4 Sulfate molecules
6 Nitrate and/or ammonia molecules
5 Phosphate molecules
7 Nitrate and/or ammonia molecules
8 Pure carbon from rocks is found deep in the Earth's mantle, sometimes as diamonds
Websites
Youtube video and slide show of a song by a Harvard professor about every kind atom on the planet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYW50F42ss8
Interactive website for students that describes each element in the periodic table:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=periodic_table
A great chemistry site for kids:
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ASSOCIAZIONE CONCA D'ORO
Our points of view about social farms' role, educational and training paths
Social farms' role
* A social farm is a real agricultural enterprise A social farm is a real agricultural enterprise which produces an income (It must be on the market) and provides services to the local community.
* The local community must feel the social farm as The local community must feel the social farm as its own. So the rôle and help of volunteers are essential
* There must be formal and informal links with the There must be formal and informal links with the local community.
* Whatever is the disability of persons included, Whatever is the disability of persons included, their activities must be meaningful for the farm and useful to it.
WORDS ARE STONES
* What name for the persons included in a project What name for the persons included in a project of social farming? Users? Clients? Patients? Beneficiaries?
* We have chosen: We have chosen: Apprentices. They start learning doing a meaningful and useful work. They are helped helping.
* Each name puts them and the professionals in a Each name puts them and the professionals in a precise rôle: the one who takes care of and the one who is taken care of, the one who gives and the one who receives, the one who helps and the one who is helped.
* Why not "farmer's helpers"? Why not "farmer's helpers"?
CONTRASTS
* Psychiatrist: Tomatoes are a tool. Psychiatrist: Tomatoes are a tool.
* Social worker: No, tomatoes are the Social worker: No, tomatoes are the aim.
Thinking of a young adult first of all from a therapeutic or rehabilitative point of view means to compare him/her to a car perpetually under repair.
Mental disability is not an illness. It is a state of the mind.
* This influences the social image of disables, This influences the social image of disables, their self-perception and self-esteem.
SOCIAL DISTANCE
* Social distance means to identify the other one Social distance means to identify the other one more for the differences than the likenesses.
* Thinking of him/her as a bearer of needs instead Thinking of him/her as a bearer of needs instead of a bearer of stories.
* The risks are: The risks are:
* " "Changing human goals into technical-medical goals" (Canevaro).
* Medicalization of farming (metaphorical white Medicalization of farming (metaphorical white overall).
* Endless dependence and de-responsability of Endless dependence and de-responsability of disables
CHOICES
* Tomatoes or cabbages are not therapeutic Tomatoes or cabbages are not therapeutic
* If the main or only aim is therapeutic, very likely If the main or only aim is therapeutic, very likely it will have less therapeutic outputs than if the main aim is a productive and shared activity.
* Therepeutic outputs Therepeutic outputs are the beneficial byproducts of a progressive responsability of a useful and shared task aimed at the production of goods and services.
AN EXAMPLE: AUTISTICS
We have a small project for four autistic adolescents (14-16 years). So the aim cannot be work training or work inclusion.
The aim is to improve their autonomy and social intelligence, putting them in touch with real life in a complex and productive environment. We don't simplify neither the environment nor the tasks.
* Of course they are not productive (2 therapists Of course they are not productive (2 therapists for four boys!) but the activities they do are coherent and useful to the farm. For example: once a week they make pasta for the restaurant
OUTPUTS
* More adaptability and adjustment to the social More adaptability and adjustment to the social environment and to the others.
* Lengthening of time dedicated to an activity. Lengthening of time dedicated to an activity.
* Coming out of unforeseen competences and Coming out of unforeseen competences and abilities.
* Decrease of stereotyped behaviour and Decrease of stereotyped behaviour and isolation.
* These are therapeutic outcomes thought of but These are therapeutic outcomes thought of but not looked for.
* They look for one another. They imitate. They They look for one another. They imitate. They make jokes. They play together.
PRACTITIONERS' TRAINING
* Different professional backgrounds: agrarian, psychological, educational, social.
* Close observation of the interaction between practioner and disable, between disables and of the working action.
* They must feel to be authors of the project, not just performers of others' choices and decisions.
* The most revealing and interesting aspects of the action and interaction are the less conscious, authomatic ones (changement in posture, a glance, etc.).They can show the way the practitioner feels and thinks, the difficulties and abilities of disables better than words.
* To be the external motivational engine for the disables
* They must learn to distinguish between competences and characteristics of the disables.
Competences and characteristics
Competences are what disables are able to do.
Characteristics are how they "interprete" their own disability. It mostly depends on their educational stories. Exemples of characteristics are: reliability, mood, perseverance, dependence, etc. Which are all relational and social qualities.
Many difficulties don't come from poor competences but from characteristics which hinders them in social inclusion and work training.
PRACTITIONERS' RÔLE
* Not the rôle of therapist or instructor
* Working side by side with disables in the same task (direct observation, stronger motivation, direct correction)
* First of all, I am your collegue and foreman then, perhaps, your friend.
* Bringing out what does exist and works.
* Working with the "proximal development area" (Vygotskij)
* Not to anticipate the solution, the answer or make the task easier
* Division of tasks among practitioners, not division of rôles towards disables.
* In the fields or in the kitchen, the professional is the farmer or the cook, not the educator or the psychologist.
* When is possible: rotation of tasks
DISABLES' TRAINING
* Being treated as adults. Being treated as adults.
* Learning to work, which is different and more Learning to work, which is different and more complex than to learn a work.
* Everything must carry the meaning that we are Everything must carry the meaning that we are working seriously not for the sake of doing it.
* They must feel that the farm is also theirs and They must feel that the farm is also theirs and their work is really useful.
* Responsability of tasks and times . Responsability of tasks and times .
* Learning by doing. Limited formal learning. It Learning by doing. Limited formal learning. It must concern their working experience.
* Turnover of tasks. Turnover of tasks.
ORGANIC AND SOCIAL FARMING: THE SAME LOGIC
* Close observation of what is going on.
* Safeguard of what does exist. Vocation of: soil, plants, biodiversity, etc. for the farming. Cognitive, manual, social, working abilitities etc. for the disables.
* To improve what does exists.
* There is not a single/simple answer for a complex problem.
* Why what works here, doesn't work there?
* Discovering/Understanding the why is already an answer.
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Evaluation of Road Safety Scotland's Early Years Resource
June 2016
PHOTO REDACTED DUE TO THIRD PARTY RIGHTS OR OTHER LEGAL ISSUES
EVALUATION OF ROAD SAFETY SCOTLAND'S EARLY YEARS RESOURCE
Kate Skellington Orr and Laura Sharp KSO Research
Contents
Executive Summary
Key Findings
- Feedback on the content and design of the books was largely positive, and the resource is fit-for-purpose as an early years road safety education tool.
- There is a strong brand and a recognisable character that children, educators and parents seem to engage with well.
- The main limitations of the resource are the length of the books and the sophistication of some of the stories, especially for ante-pre-school children.
- Some minor adjustments to the ordering and distribution process, including a possible shift to electronic mechanisms, may maximise uptake and reach.
- Parental understanding of the purpose and rationale for the books could be improved, as well as awareness of the full range of resources available.
- The big and small books are being used to complement outside active learning and are being used in a range of innovative ways.
- There seems to be a genuine enthusiasm for the resources to continue to evolve and expand into new mediums.
Background
Launched in 2010, Go Safe with Ziggy is Scotland's main road safety programme for children in their early years. Focussed around a series of six books, the approach targets three key age groups: 0-3, pre-school and the transition into Primary 1, in line with the Scottish Government's policy on early intervention and Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) 1 .
Each of the books is available in large copy format ('big books') for use as a teaching resource by professionals in early years' establishments and primary schools, as well as small books for the home to be used by children and their parents/carers. The books are also available in Gaelic and Scots, and audio copies of the books are accessible via the 'Go Safe with Ziggy' dedicated website. The online resource also provides road safety information and interactive activities. The Ziggy books are made available for free to all early years establishments across Scotland, however, take-up remains far from universal.
With the programme having been in operation for just over five years, an independent evaluation was commissioned to explore experiences of the resource to date. This report details the learning from the research, and considers how the evidence may be used to contribute to the onward development, promotion and use of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources.
1 See http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/
Research Aims and Objectives
The main aim of the work was to evaluate the content, distribution and use of the Go Safe with Ziggy series of books in order to understand whether they are designed, distributed and utilised in an effective way, offering value for money and to identify where potential improvements might be made.
Research Methodology
The research methodology had four key strands including: a desk based familiarisation and technical review exercise, an online survey and telephone interviews with a sample of early years practitioners and teaching professionals, focus groups with parents and carers across Scotland, and workshops with road safety professionals and early years practitioners.
The online survey provided the main data to inform the evaluation, and shaped significantly the overall evaluation findings that are presented here. A total of 279 valid responses were received from a mix of schools, nurseries and community based playgroups. The majority of respondents indicated that they worked with either ante-pre-school (78%) or pre-school aged children (76%) 2 , with most working with both age groups (73%). Only one in four respondents said that they worked with Primary 1 aged children (25%).
Twenty semi-structured telephone interviews with early years practitioners were completed, which sought to explore in more detail the use and perceptions of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources and build on the survey findings. This was complemented by four focus group sessions with parents and carers of children in their early years in different geographic locations around Scotland, and two separate half-day workshops (one in Glasgow and one in Aberdeen) to bring together road safety professionals and early years practitioners. The purpose of the workshops was to share learning from the available research findings, and to seek views on how to take forward the emerging learning.
Across the research strands, there was considerable variation in the numbers of respondents who took part between local authorities and this should be borne in mind when interpreting the data presented in this report. It should also be noted that participation in the research cannot be taken as a proxy for engagement with the Go Safe with Ziggy resources and some of the views of those who use the resources most may not be represented in the research.
2 Ante-pre-school refers to the penultimate year before children are eligible to start school (typically ages 3-4) while pre-school refers to the year immediately prior to commencing primary education (typically ages 4-5)
Evaluation Findings
Distribution and Uptake of the Resources
The average uptake of the small books among early years establishments is around 47%. While there do not appear to be any clear links between geography or deprivation and uptake, there are clearly some local authorities where ordering activity is consistently higher or lower than the national average. Pro-active, targeted promotion by local Road Safety Officers (RSOs) may be the way forward in achieving more equitable distribution and use across the country, although it is recognised that access to RSOs and other resources to promote road safety education for the early years also varies considerably across the country.
Although the existing distribution process seems to operate well, there is some confusion regarding how and when the books should be ordered and there may be some preference to making the ordering system more flexible throughout the year, including the capacity to order full sets of books at a single ordering point.
The findings from the online survey indicated that there was a preference for online or email ordering compared to the paper based ordering that currently exists. The distribution of order forms could also potentially be accompanied by more direct communication and information about both the online resources, support resources and the main aims of the books to ensure that the full range of resources are being used to maximum effect. Awareness of the online resources was found to be particularly poor and there is scope for better signposting of these resources, perhaps via the distribution and ordering process.
Local practices for distributing books to parents varies and there is some evidence that a more personal approach to distribution, including guidance or supporting information directed at parents/carers may ensure that books are used as intended.
There might be further scope for Road Safety Scotland, in collaboration with Education Scotland and the Scottish Government, to refine and update the existing database of early years establishments that is held to ensure that it is up-to-date, and that ordering data is more accessible and can be monitored more regularly to identify variation in uptake.
Use of the Resources
While most establishments still have and use their big book packs (which were distributed when the programme first launched), there seems to be some desire for the big books to be replenished since the original copies have been misplaced or become worn in several establishments.
The small books appear to be well received overall although some particular books appear to be ordered more by establishments than others and to be more recognisable to parents/carers and practitioners alike. It is not clear from the research why this is the case. Given that each of the books contains different road safety messages, there may be scope for ensuring the other books achieve equal distribution to ensure that the messages contained within them are not being missed.
The big and small books are being used to complement outside active learning and in a range of innovative ways. There is perhaps appetite from staff to reinforce the messages from the books with more interactive talks, and while there may be a preference for this to include visits from external partners, the proportionality and cost implications of this would need to be considered. Parents and carers report a child-led approach to using the books, where children act as the main instigators for use. The books are also being used as a reference resource in cases where children fail to act safely.
Content and Design of the Resources
Feedback on the content and design of the books was largely positive, and it seems that the current resource is fit-for-purpose as an early years road safety education tool. Most respondents who took part in this research reported that children liked the Ziggy character and generally appear to engage well with the style of the books. The Ziggy brand is clear and recognisable and the use of repetition across the series of books is welcomed.
Over 75% of survey respondents rated the appearance, length, age appropriateness, format and usefulness of the books as either 'good' or 'excellent'. The limitations raised by some respondents were the length of the books and the sophistication of some of the stories for ante-pre-school children. This means that early years practitioners and parents are adapting the books to meet their own needs. This in itself is not necessarily a limitation, since the books were designed with Curriculum for Excellence in mind, which encourages non-prescriptive learning based on children's individual interests/preferences. It may, however, be acting as a barrier to more frequent use, in some cases.
The online resources, soft toys and interactive resources all received positive feedback from those who had used them and there is potential for greater use of these by raising awareness of the full range of Ziggy resources, especially among parents and carers. Although a recent addition to the Go Safe with Ziggy resource, the new journey pack was something that is already being well received and, based on comments from professionals and parents alike, it seems like it has potential to further improve the home links agenda.
There seems to be a genuine enthusiasm for the resource to continue to evolve and expand into new mediums. While this is a positive finding from the work, it must be recognised that the time and other financial resources that would be required to deliver against some of the wishes expressed by parents and practitioners alike would be considerable, and may be difficult to implement both nationally and locally.
Conclusions
Overall, the Go Safe with Ziggy resource is well liked, has many strong and attractive features and addresses many of the weaknesses highlighted in the review of the road safety resource that preceded it. There is a strong brand and a recognisable character that children, educators and parents on the whole seem to engaging with well. The design of the books is generally seen as good, although the length and
complexity of the books was highlighted by some as a potential barrier to use among the younger aged children. Parental understanding of the purpose and rationale for the books could also be improved, but neither of these issues seem to be creating significant barriers to use. The full range of resources is welcomed, but some support materials are being under-utilised due to a lack of awareness. Based on the feedback gathered, the resource itself requires little in terms of re-design or development except, perhaps, some simplification of story lines and main road safety messages for those at the younger age of intended user-group spectrum.
The biggest challenge, moving forward, is in ensuring that the right people are made aware of the full range of resources, and are encouraged to order them. Updating and refining the ordering and distribution process seems to be key to maximising the future success of the resource and helping it realise its full potential. This will ensure that children in their early years, and their parents and carers, continue to learn the importance of 'going safe'.
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
In September 2015, KSO Research was commissioned to undertake an independent evaluation of Road Safety Scotland's Early Years Resource: 'Go Safe with Ziggy'.
Launched in 2010, Go Safe with Ziggy is Scotland's main road safety programme for children in their early years. Focussed around a series of six books, the approach targets three key age groups: 0-3, pre-school and the transition into Primary 1, in line with the Scottish Government's policy on early intervention and Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) 3 . The Ziggy books are made available for free to all early years establishments across Scotland each year including all public, private and publicprivate nurseries. Each of the books is available in large copy format ('big books') for use as a teaching resource by professionals in early years' establishments and primary schools, as well as small books for the home to be used by children and their parents/carers. The hope is that the small books can be used at home to complement the work done in class and build strong links between home and school, promoting consistent road safety messages in both environments. The books are provided to all who submit an order, however, take-up remains far from universal across the country.
Given that the Ziggy books have now been in operation for just over five years, it was considered timely to evaluate whether they are delivering against their aims and to explore potential for further improvements based on users' experiences of the resource to date. This report details the learning from the research that was commissioned and considers how the evidence may be used to contribute to the onward development, promotion and use of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources.
1.2 Aims and Objectives
The main aim of the research was to evaluate the content, distribution and use of the Go Safe with Ziggy series of books in order to understand whether they are designed, distributed and utilised in an effective way, offering value for money and to identify where potential improvements might be made.
Specifically, the research sought to provide an understanding of:
- how the books and online resources are being used across the country;
- how the resources are perceived by users, in terms of content and design; and
- how the books are being distributed to parents/carers;
- suggestions for improvements to the content, distribution and/or use of the Go Safe with Ziggy series of books.
Although the main focus of the work was on the Go Safe with Ziggy books, consideration was also given to the wider offering (including the online and audio resources that accompany the books, and associated collateral), to provide a more holistic view of the resource overall.
3 See http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/
1.3 Research Methodology
The research methodology had four key strands, as follows:
- a familiarisation exercise: including interviews with those involved in the resource distribution process, a literature and data review, and a technical review of the Go Safe with Ziggy books;
- engagement with early years practitioners: including an online survey of early years practitioners and telephone interviews with a sample of teaching professionals;
- engagement with parents/carers: through small focus group sessions held in four different sites across Scotland; and
- workshops with road safety professionals and early years practitioners: designed to bring together representatives from different backgrounds to share early learning from the research and discuss suggestions for any future refinement or improvements.
The approach was formative, with findings from the early stages of the work informing the subsequent development of surveys, interview schedules, focus group topic guides and the workshop content.
Desk Research and Technical Book Review
An early task for the research was to complete a technical review of the Go Safe with Ziggy books. This was designed to provide the researchers with a comprehensive overview of the content, style and overall nature of the books in order to inform the subsequent development of questionnaires and topic guides for engaging with the books' users. The technical review was undertaken at two stages: first, on inception and secondly, at the end of the research, following analysis of feedback from professionals, parents and carers with a view to better understanding and contextualising the feedback that was received. Each of the core books were reviewed separately against the same criteria to allow comparisons to be made between the different resources. Both the large and small copies of the books were included, along with the audio and online versions of the books. Although the Gaelic versions of the books and the accompanying multi-media resources/activities were not included in the initial review, views on these resources were sought in subsequent stages of the research.
Online Survey of Early Years Practitioners
The online survey provided the main data to inform the evaluation, and shaped significantly the overall evaluation findings that are presented here. The survey was designed to be completed online, with invitations to take part issued by email. Permission to approach schools and early years establishments in each local authority was sought from Directors of Education. Establishments from all local authorities were then invited to take part in the research, except for those in Moray where the council asked to be excluded from the research. To facilitate survey distribution, covering emails were designed for Head Teachers or other equivalent
heads of establishments. The link to the survey was included in the covering email alongside assurances of anonymity and contact details for the research team. Email addresses for primary schools were sourced from the Scottish Government's school contacts database (a total of 2196). Addresses for early years establishments (including public, private and public-private partnership nurseries) were sourced from the Care Inspectorate database. These were cross-referenced with the 3130 4 establishments listed on the Education Scotland early years database that is used for the distribution of the Go Safe with Ziggy order forms (which does not hold email addresses) to ensure that only those who had previously been invited to order the books were included in the survey.
A large proportion of establishments listed on the Education Scotland database could not be linked to email addresses on the Care Inspectorate database. Some of the establishments had specifically asked for their email address not to be included on the Care Inspectorate database and some groups did not fall under the remit of the Care Inspectorate (e.g. some playgroups and mother and toddler groups). Given that these groups are still eligible to receive the Go Safe with Ziggy books, independent efforts were made to trace their email addresses so that they were represented in the survey sample. In cases where email addresses were missing, online searches were carried out to try and find up-to-date email addresses. It was considered that the time and resources required to telephone establishments to ask for their email addresses was disproportionate to the likely returns.
The online search revealed that some of the establishments listed on the Education Scotland database had moved premises, changed name or had closed. Several of the early years establishments listed had the same email addresses as schools where the two were co-located (1186). There were also a number of duplicate entries (63 in total). Following removal of primary schools from the list (to avoid contacting them twice), a total of 1467 separate early years establishments were emailed.
Invitations to take part were issued by Transport Scotland's Analytical Services instead of being distributed directly by the research team. It was felt that issuing invitations from a central, recognisable government organisation would help to highlight the legitimacy of the work and hopefully maximise response rates. Respondents were initially given between 2-3 weeks to respond, and the survey deadline was extended by a further 1-2 weeks following a reminder email 5 .
The questionnaire was also made available in paper format on request, and participants were offered an opportunity to take part by telephone, if preferred. There was one request for a paper copy of the questionnaire, and this was issued but was not returned.
A total of 279 valid responses were received from the 3663 email addresses that were contacted. It is important to stress that some of the email addresses may have been incorrect, have changed or been updated, may have been addressed to staff
4 Number based on the October 2015 database, excluding establishments within the Moray Council area
5 The dates of the initial emails and reminder emails varied due to the staggered nature of distribution over a period of 1-2 days
who were no longer at the establishment or may have been linked to establishments that were no longer open (e.g. community based playgroups). Given the mode of distribution, it is also likely that some of the emails were undelivered, may have been blocked or not opened by the intended recipients, and so it is not possible to know exactly how many of the invitations were actually received. Using the figure of 3663 as a guide, however, the indicative response rate was 8%.
The majority of respondents indicated that they worked with either ante-pre-school (78%) or pre-school aged children (76%) 6 , with most working with both age groups (73%). Only one in four respondents said that they worked with Primary 1 aged children (25%). A total of 21 respondents (8%) said that they worked with all age groups (i.e. ante-pre-school through to Primary 1). Where respondents indicated that they worked with 'other' children, this was typically those aged 0-5 or included children up to Primary 2. Some of the smaller rural or island based establishments worked with composite classes up to and including children in Primary 7.
Overall, the proportionate breakdown of email invitations issued was 60% to primary schools and 40% to early years establishments. With only 25% of the final sample indicating that they worked with Primary 1 aged children, the proportionate response from early years establishments seems to have been considerably greater than that of schools 7 .
There was considerable variation in the proportion of responses received from those invited to take part between local authorities and this should be borne in mind when interpreting the data presented in this report. It should also be noted that participation in the survey cannot be taken as a proxy for engagement with the Go Safe with Ziggy resources and some of those who use the resources most may simply not be represented in the survey.
Telephone Interviews with Early Years Practitioners
Following the survey and analysis of early responses, a topic guide was developed for semi-structured telephone interviews with early years practitioners, which sought to explore in more detail the use and perceptions of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources.
Volunteers to participate in the telephone interviews were identified via the survey, with respondents being asked to indicate if they would be willing to take part in a telephone interview and, if so, to provide follow-up contact details. From 53 volunteers, a total of 39 were invited to take part. The selection was based on geography, SIMD rank, establishment type and broad differences in survey responses (favourable and less favourable feedback), to ensure that a good mix of views was canvassed. A total of 20 interviews were carried out.
6 Ante-pre-school refers to the penultimate year before children are eligible to start school (typically ages 3-4) while pre-school refers to the year immediately prior to commencing primary education (typically ages 4-5)
7 The 2009 Road Safety Early Years Resource Consultation: Analysis of Responses showed a similar response pattern with 70% of consultation responses received from nurseries/playgroups compared to 30% from primary schools/pre-5 units
All interviews lasted around 10 minutes. Detailed notes were written up immediately following each interview, and qualitative feedback is provided alongside the survey results presented in this report. As the selection of respondents was not proportionate to the overall survey sentiments expressed, but was designed to seek a range of views, some of those with less favourable views may be over-represented in the qualitative feedback overall, and this should be remembered when interpreting the data presented.
Focus Groups with Parents and Carers
A total of four focus group sessions were held with parents and carers of children in their early years. Meetings were held in four separate geographical sites, a mix of rural and urban, which were chosen on the basis either of their local authority being well represented or poorly represented in the annual distribution/uptake figures for the books. The groups were held at neutral venues, and in all but one case this was at the venues where parents/carers and their children already attended regular groups together (e.g. at playgroups in church/community halls). Across the groups, the range in age of children cared for was 0-12 years and there was a mix of parents/carers who had only one child, up to 4 children. This meant that, in many cases, parents were able to reflect on their experiences of receiving the books not only for their youngest children but also older siblings. A total of 37 people took part in the groups and this included mothers, fathers, grandparents and childminders. Unlike professional participants in the research, parents/carers were given a small cash incentive to thank them for their time and to cover cost of travel to the meetings. Sessions were audio recorded with permission and detailed notes were written up after the sessions, including illustrative verbatim quotes for inclusion in this report.
Workshops with Professional Stakeholders
Towards the end of the research, two separate half-day workshops were convened to bring together road safety professionals and early years practitioners. The purpose of the workshops was to share learning from the research to that point, and seek views on how to take forward the emerging findings. Participants were recruited via existing networks (e.g. all Road Safety Officers across Scotland were invited to attend), via the online survey (respondents could indicate if they wished to attend) as well as via open invitations issued to early years establishments in the areas surrounding the workshop venues. Both events took place in neutral locations over a period of three hours in the afternoon. Across the two workshops, a total of 25 delegates took part (11 in Aberdeen and 14 in Glasgow). The sessions included a mix of presentations from the researchers and interactive group discussions and activities to share and document views and ideas. Participants were invited to give verbal feedback in response to group questions on the day and these were also documented on flip charts and sticky notes which were taken away for later analysis.
1.4 Research Caveats and Report Presentation
It is worth noting that, given the relatively small response rate to the survey overall, and the small numbers of people involved in the qualitative elements of the work, the findings cannot be generalised too widely. In particular, the disproportionate and
Evaluation of Road Safety Scotland's Early Years Resource
Transport Scotland
varied level of response from around the country means that comparisons between areas should not be made.
While the overall response rate was lower than anticipated, it is worth emphasising that the online survey approach, with email invitations, represented the most cost effective means of ensuring that all primary schools and known early years establishments were contacted. Alternative postal or telephone survey approaches would have been considerably more resource intensive and would have required a sampling approach to have been taken instead of an all-inclusive approach. There is no way of knowing if the resultant sample would have been any larger than that achieved using the online approach, and so, although the response rate was low, it most likely represents the most effective and efficient means of generating the data that was required for the research.
It is also worth reiterating that the findings presented here represent only the views of those who opted to take part in the research and so there will also be a potential bias in the views expressed (i.e. we do not know the views of those who chose not to take part, and these may or may not differ significantly from the individuals who did respond).
Finally, the under-representation of schools should also be borne in mind. While the low level of response precludes any in-depth testing for statistically significant differences between groups of respondents (e.g. schools compared with preschools), the volume of data generated overall, and the level of detail provided by research participants still provides a relatively robust basis on which to evaluate the resources. The mix in different respondent groups reached across the research stages also means that the evaluation encompasses feedback from a wide range of users.
The remaining chapters detail the findings from across all of the research stages and are structured to provide learning in relation to the design, distribution and use of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources. Any differences in the views of different stakeholder groups are highlighted and, where qualitative evidence is cited, the strength or prominence of the sentiments expressed is detailed.
2 Development and Design of the Resource
2.1 Road Safety Education in Scotland
Immediately before the introduction of the Go Safe with Ziggy Early Years Resource in 2010, the main road safety education tool for 0-5 year olds in Scotland was the Children's Traffic Club in Scotland (CTCS). Established in 1995, the CTCS sought to develop skills and awareness of key road safety messages for pre-school children through provision of educational resources provided directly to parents and carers at home. The CTCS was a membership scheme, and every parent/carer was invited to register their child with the CTCS around their child's third birthday. The invitations were sent by post from Health Boards to all parents/carers of pre-school children in Scotland, although uptake was variable around the country.
The core resource for the CTCS was six workbooks, sent out directly to families who were registered with the club. The workbooks were interactive and factual worksheets were also provided to parents to help them in teaching their children about road safety and guide them in using the road safety tools.
Other partners were also involved in the distribution of CTCS materials and in encouraging use of the resources. This included:
- copies of the main road safety books being provided to nurseries and playgroups as well as song/story tapes;
- a dedicated childminder's pack which included road safety themed activities/stickers/story and song tapes; and
- sample copies of the CTCS books being sent to Health Visitors along with registration forms so that they might encourage parents and carers to engage with the scheme.
In 2005, data showed that the uptake of CTCS membership in Scotland was around 50% of all parents and carers of three year olds and the proportionate uptake had declined since the initiative started in 1995. There was also wide variation in uptake around the country. In particular, uptake was lower in areas of high socio-economic deprivation.
In 2006, research was commissioned by Road Safety Scotland to better understand why levels of engagement were not as high as was hoped, and to explore differences in uptake based on social deprivation 8 . This research identified that some of the main barriers to joining the scheme were:
- poor adult literacy and other language barriers, including English not being the first language in some households;
- the reliance on parents/carers needing to be proactive in joining the club;
8 ODS (2006) Increasing Membership of the Children's Traffic Club in Scotland in Areas of High Deprivation, Scottish Executive Social Research, http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2006/07/17113255/0
- low levels of encouragement from nurseries/playgroups to get parents/carers to join, with better promotion of the initiative from Health Visitors;
- problems with the distribution of invitations to join the club, with high levels of home movement, particularly among families living in areas of deprivation meaning that invitations were being missed. Others simply did not recall receiving the membership forms;
- rigidity in the membership process, with only a short window to join the club, and all membership requests needing to be sent by post; and
- problems with awareness of the initiative and an unidentifiable theme/logo.
Encouragingly, this early research also indicated that road safety was considered to be an important issue among parents/carers and they were keen to ensure that their children received appropriate road safety education. Views on the resources that were part of the CTCS were also positive - particularly the gifted books and stickers that accompanied them. The main reservations regarding the resources were the perceived out-datedness of the characters in the books (i.e. balloon characters), the need for simpler texts and book layouts and the heavy reliance on parents to work directly with the children using resources - something that children could learn from more independently might be welcomed. Comments were also made that while the stories for children were engaging, the factual notes for parents were not and they were unlikely to read them.
Other comments included a need for memorable messages from each book, with a focus on just one or two key points being emphasised instead of multiple messages which might easily get confused. Support in using the resources was also welcomed, as well as online or interactive materials to support the printed books.
On the recommendation from this research, the Scottish Government approved the development of a new road safety resource for children in early years. In developing the new resource, Road Safety Scotland and the Scottish Government took forward a consultation with stakeholders to explore preferences in the ways that pre-school road safety education could be taken forward 9 . This engagement revealed some key points on the preferred content and format of any revised early years resources, including that:
- joint approaches were preferred, where lessons learned in pre-school establishments could be reinforced in the home environment;
- resources needed to be simple, accessible and age appropriate. Previous resources, such as the CTCS were seen as too lengthy, too complicated and with no clear or identifiable lead character;
9 ODS Consulting (2009) Road Safety Early Years Resource Consultation: Analysis of Responses, http://www.roadsafetyscotland.org.uk/publications-and-statistics/road-safety-early-years-resourceconsultation-analysis-responses
- books needed to be robust in their design and accompanied by supporting resources, such as online and interactive resources. Songs, stories and activities to engage children were key;
- resources needed to be available in accessible formats and additional languages, including Gaelic, and the messages conveyed needed to reflect the diversity in residential settings that children come from (i.e. urban and rural);
- provision needed to be universal and not based on 'opt in' approaches – access to resources needed to be automatically available to all; and
- links between the resource and the Curriculum for Excellence were needed to allow teaching professionals and parents/carers to understand how road safety education fits within the broader early years education objectives.
This earlier research ultimately led to the development of the Go Safe with Ziggy series of books and accompanying resources.
2.2 Exploring the Full Range of Resources
The core of the 'Go Safe with Ziggy' resource is a series of six books, these being:
Ante-pre-school year (age 3-4)
- Ziggy and the Lollipop
- Ziggy's Sunny Holiday
- Ziggy Visits Granny
Pre-school year (age 4-5)
- Ziggy's Halloween Wish
- Ziggy Goes Zab-a-ding-a-Wheeeee
Primary 1 (age 5-6)
- Ziggy and Maggie Start School
Although the books are numbered 1 to 6 on their spines, they do not follow a particular sequence. Further, although different books can be ordered for each of the two different ages of children at different times (i.e. Ziggy and the Lollipop for antepre-school age children), this split is simply to ensure that distribution is staggered in a systematic way over two years. All books can be used by either the older or younger aged children over time.
The main character in each book is Ziggy, an alien from the planet Cosmos, who has come to learn how to 'Go Safe' on and around the road. The other main characters in the books are two children (Andrew and Maggie) and their mother. The family take Ziggy with them on outside journeys to learn about road safety together.
Each of the books is available in large copy format ('big books') for use as a teaching resource by professionals in early years' establishments and primary schools, as well as small books for the home to be used by children and their parents/carers. The books are also available in Gaelic and Scots, and audio copies of the books are accessible via the 'Go Safe with Ziggy' dedicated website 10 . The website itself contains dedicated areas with tailored resources for educators, parents and children (the 'Ziggy Zone'), which contain:
- Educators - image/sound/video galleries, activity idea cards, story audio files and links to CfE and to other road safety organisations;
- Parents - key road safety messages and guidance for parents/carers as educators, information about the little books for home and links to road safety organisations; and
- Children's Ziggy Zone - links to watch videos of other children engaged in road safety education or activities, online copies of the small books to read and several interactive games related to the Ziggy books.
The website also provides access to copies of three additional books that are designed for children in the younger years (the 'Out and About' buggy book for infants, 'Spot the Traffic' and 'Cross the Road with Ziggy'). While the first of these is available in hard copy, and is included in the Scottish Book Trust's (SBT's) Bookbug baby bag 11 , the two additional Ziggy titles are available as online resources only.
A final feature of the website is that it provides access to the 'Ziggy's Fun Day Out' story creator which allows children to write a road safety story with their peers and with the help of early years practitioners using an online template. For all stories submitted, classes receive a 'My Journey with Ziggy' pack complete with a Ziggy soft toy. The idea behind the resource is that the soft toy can then be taken home by children, in turns, to prompt them to share their road safety learning with parents/carers. Examples of stories that have already been submitted by other early years establishments can also be accessed online. The 'My Journey with Ziggy' pack was launched at the beginning of September 2015, and a promotional flyer was included with the Autumn 2015/16 order form issued to early years establishments by Education Scotland at the end of August the same year. Primary schools were also mailed separately by Education Scotland to promote the resource. It, therefore, represents the newest addition to the Go Safe with Ziggy package.
2.3 The Resources in Context
Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) 12 is Scotland's curriculum for children and young people aged 3 to 18. The early level spans pre-school and primary and is designed to meet the needs of most children from age 3 years until the end of Primary 1. The core messages of CfE for the early years are:
10 See www.gosafewithziggy.com
12 See educationscotland.gov.uk
11 The Bookbug baby bag is gifted to parents via Health Visitors for children up to the age of 1. It contains books, CDs, puppets and other resources to support and encourage reading between parents/carers and their children from birth
- active, experiential learning;
- a holistic approach to learning;
- learning through play.
- smooth transitions; and
Curriculum for Excellence also stresses that learning experiences should be shaped by the interests of children and the Go Safe with Ziggy resources were developed with this is mind, recognising that effective learning will be different between children. Education Scotland further outline in their approach to early years education some of the core approaches to learning that are effective in the early years, including, among other things:
- Active learning - the use of real life and imaginary situations to engage children's thinking;
- ICT in Education - using information and communication technologies to share educational messages;
- Creativity - focusing on the identification and analysis of problems, learning from mistakes and using the imagination to explore new solutions;
- Outdoor Learning - use of different outside spaces to encourage new thinking; and
- Co-operative and collaborative learning - working with others, and without supervisor intervention, to analyse and solve problems together.
The design of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources reflects much of this existing knowledge on 'what works'. The main aim of the Go Safe with Ziggy books is to "engage and inspire young children and the adults around them to go on their own road safety learning journey, through real experiences, alongside playing, talking and reading" 13 . It therefore encompasses both the 'active learning' and 'outdoor learning' principles. The inclusion of online resources as part of the Ziggy brand ensures that children in their early years are offered the chance to learn road safety using ICT, and the range of art activities, puzzles and problem solving games included in the Ziggy Zone also encourage 'creativity'. The books aim to provide key road safety education messages to children, their parents/carers and early years practitioners, and to encourage interactive learning about how to 'Go Safe', again ensuring that 'co-operative and collaborative learning' is encompassed.
In 2008, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) published a briefing paper 14 for those involved in helping children and young people to stay safe, more generally, which included ten principles of effective safety education, to:
- encourage the adoption of, or reinforce, a whole school approach, within the wider community;
- use active approaches to teaching and learning (including interactive and experiential learning);
- involve young people in real decisions to help them stay safe;
13 See www.gosafewithziggy.com
14 RoSPA (2008) Effective safety education: a briefing paper for all those involved in helping children and young people to stay safe, RoSPA: London
- assess children and young people's learning needs;
- teach safety as part of a comprehensive personal social and health curriculum;
- use realistic and relevant settings and resources;
- work in partnership (with supporting agencies such as the police);
- address known risks and protective factors (including gaps in knowledge, skills, parental rules, attitudes, and so on);
- address psychosocial aspects of safety (e.g. confidence, resilience, selfesteem and self-efficacy); and
- adopt positive approaches which model and reward safe behaviour, within a safe, supportive environment.
Again, the design of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources reflects much of this good practice. The approach that was developed for the new RSS early years resource focusses on introducing new books on a regular basis over the early years period, with books that can be used both at home and in educational settings to ensure cross-over of learning in both environments. This is designed to maintain strong links between home and nursery/school and ensure a consistency in the messages that children receive. The use of home links such as this is often cited as an example of best practice in early education, and research has shown that encouraging parental engagement through establishing links between home and school has a large and positive impact on children's learning 15 .
Although most of the book content is aimed at children and is designed for their learning, many messages in the books are also aimed at parents/carers. Supporting factual information and guidance is provided in the books for parents to improve and reinforce their own road safety awareness. The books are designed to be both an educational resource, and a fun, interactive resource for children to enjoy. Again, there is a considerable body of research evidence that shows that reading for pleasure impacts positively on educational, personal, emotional and social development 16 . Research has also shown that reading engagement is more important for children's educational success than familial socio-economic status and that parents play a critical role in fostering a love of reading 17 . The design of the Go Safe with Ziggy books to engage both parents/carers and children in a shared book, follows this ethos.
15 Goodall et. al. (2010) Review of Best Practice in Parental Engagement, Department for Education: London
17 ibid
16 Department for Education (2012) Research evidence on Reading for Pleasure, Department for Education: London
2.4 Why Develop an Early Years Road Safety Resource?
Before going on to explore the findings from the research, there is value in reiterating the rationale for the development of the Go Safe with Ziggy resource.
Data published by Transport Scotland 18 shows that there were 1,034 child casualties 19 on Scotland's roads in 2014 (the latest year for which data is available), representing just under 10% of all road casualties at the national level. Serious casualties represent around 16% of all child casualties and there has been a general downwards trajectory over the last decade or so for serious child casualties (from 372 in 2004 to 171 in 2014). The number of child fatalities remains small year on year, with an average of 6 children aged under 16 killed in the period 2012-14. Pedestrian casualties make up the greatest proportion of casualties for children (followed by car passengers and cyclists) and, in 2014, there were 501 child pedestrian casualties which represented around 29% of all pedestrian casualties of all ages.
Looking specifically at the early years, Figure 1 below shows that the overall number of reported casualties for children aged under 5 has declined over the last ten years, both among males and females, and that there has also been a narrowing of the gap between boys and girls involved in road casualties in recent years.
Overall, although the child road safety targets as set out in Scotland's Road Safety Framework to 2020 21 have not yet been met, positive progress is being made. The
18 Transport Scotland (2015) Reported Road Casualties Scotland 2014 available at: http://www.transport.gov.scot/sites/default/files/documents/rrd_reports/uploaded_reports/j397988/j397 988.pdf
20 Transport Scotland (2015) Key Reported Road Casualties Scotland 2014, available at http://www.transport.gov.scot/sites/default/files/documents/rrd_reports/uploaded_reports/j379866/j379 866.pdf
19 Child casualties relate to those aged under 16 only
Road Safety Framework: 2015 Annual Report 22 highlights that there has been a 61% decrease in the number of children killed since 2004-08; exceeding the 2020 target of 50%, as well as a 47% decrease in the number of children seriously injured since 2004-08; slightly below the 2015 milestone (50%), with the 2020 target being a 65% reduction on the baseline. Importantly, the targets reflect that child road safety is a long-term challenge and that delivering and promoting road safety education is a long term commitment.
Early years road safety education forms part of a wider community and parental responsibility to ensure that children are safe on the roads 23 . It provides only the first step in a life-long road safety learning journey. It is against this backdrop that Road Safety Scotland seeks to ensure that the Go Safe with Ziggy resources continue to be designed, distributed and used to maximum effect so as to impact, wherever possible, on the safety of children on Scotland's roads both now, and in the future.
21 Scottish Government (2009) Scotland's Road Safety Framework to 2020, available at: http://www.gov.scot/Resource/Doc/274654/0082190.pdf 22
Transport Scotland (2016) Road Safety Framework: Annual Report 2015, available at:
http://www.transport.gov.scot/sites/default/files/documents/rrd
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rts/j419424/j419
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23 See, for example, the Kids in the Car parental influence campaign at: http://dontriskit.info/kids-in-
the-car/
3 Distribution and Ordering
3.1 Understanding the National Distribution Process
Since the resource was launched, there have been a number of different distributions of the various elements, as follows:
- Big book packs - an initial distribution of the 'big books' to be used in educational establishments was undertaken in the 2010/11 academic year, to accompany the launch of the resource. All primary schools and nursery classes should have received the books. A second launch took place to registered childminders in May 2012, in collaboration with the Scottish Childminding Association (SCMA) who distributed them directly to their registered minders. More recently, big book packs have been made available on an ad hoc basis to any community setting where parents/carers attend with their young children and big book packs can be ordered directly from Road Safety Scotland.
- Little books for home - order forms are sent to all early years establishments across Scotland, which are included in the Education Scotland database, in August and February each year (with 3 books available to order in Autumn and 2 in Spring). Road Safety Scotland also add to that distribution list the contact details for playgroups and other community based groups where children in their early years may attend. This is important since it seeks to make the books available to children who may not have contact with any other formal pre-schooling (e.g. nurseries), and so would not be exposed to the books that way. The form allows copies to be ordered in English and Gaelic for both ante-pre-school and pre-school children. Establishments are also encouraged to order enough books to allow copies for new children who may join the establishment at a later date in any given year.
Whilst additional copies of both the big and small books can be sent on request at any other time in the year, this is relatively ad hoc and Education Scotland distribution staff reported that there is little demand outwith the main order timetable.
Distribution staff consulted as part of the evaluation confirmed that the current process runs smoothly with few problems. Only a small number of books are returned each year, and this is usually due to buildings that house nurseries/playgroups being temporarily closed for business at the time that delivery is attempted (for example, church halls that house toddler groups). Establishments that have been permanently closed are removed from the database as this becomes known.
The only book not to be distributed in this way is the sixth book in the series - 'Ziggy and Maggie Start School' - which has been distributed for the last two years, in most local authorities, via the Scottish Book Trust's Bookbug Family Pack. This has been gifted at the start of the school year, typically as part of Book Week Scotland, and usually directly by schools, and contains other books and resources appropriate for children in this age range. Moving forward, this mechanism will no longer be used and this final book will be distributed in the same way as the other titles.
3.2 Uptake of the Resources Over Time
Distribution data held by Education Scotland's distribution centre provides the main source of information on levels of uptake of the books both nationally and between local authority areas.
Data was provided for the evaluation on the numbers of order forms despatched and the numbers returned for both 2013/14 and 2014/15 (including both the Autumn and spring despatches). Partial data for 2012/13 was also provided, covering one distribution only. Table 1 below shows that the return rate has remained steady for all distributions, at around 47%. Further analysis of the data showed that this percentage remained reasonably steady for both the Autumn and Spring distributions in all years.
Table 1: Number and Percentage of Order Forms Despatched and Returned, 2012/13 to 2014/15 24
| | School Year | | Despatched | | Returned | | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012/13 | | 3,420* | | 1,581 | | 46% | |
| 2013/14 | | 6,557 | | 3,085 | | 47% | |
| 2014/15 | | 6,406 | | 2,985 | | 47% | |
*Covers one distribution only
Across the two full years (2013/14 and 2014/15), a total of 355,684 books were ordered (175,838 in 2013/14 and 179,846 in 2014/15). The number of Gaelic texts ordered in both years was low (2,192 in 2013/14 and 2,825 in 2014/15). This represents just over 1% of all books ordered. Interestingly, the 2011 Scottish Census found that around 1.1% of the population spoke Gaelic 25 and so this level of ordering seems proportionate.
Figure 2 below shows the numbers of each of the resources that were issued to early years establishments for the previous two years, based on the orders placed. It shows that, across both years, there were greater numbers of the two pre-school books (i.e. Ziggy's Halloween Wish and Ziggy Goes Zab-a-Ding-a-Wheeeee) issued compared to the ante-pre-school books.
24 Based on data supplied by the Education Scotland distribution centre for each period
25 See: http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/news/census-2011-release-2a
As part of the survey, early years practitioners were also asked which of the small books for home they had previously ordered. Twelve respondents did not indicate which of the small books, if any, they had previously ordered. Among the 267 who did provide a response, the book that had been ordered the most was Ziggy and the Lollipop followed by Ziggy's Halloween Wish and Ziggy Visits Granny (shown in Table 2 below). Each of these are made available via the August order form, and the reported uptake of these three books was higher overall than the two books made available in the spring session.
Table 2: Which, if any, of the following small books have you ordered before? (n=267)
| | Response | | Number of | % of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Respondents | Respondents |
| Ziggy and the Lollipop | | 184 | | |
| Ziggy’s Halloween Wish | | 179 | | |
| Ziggy Visits Granny | | 159 | | |
| Ziggy’s Sunny Holiday | | 134 | | |
| Ziggy Goes Zab-a-Ding-a-Wheeeee | | 122 | | |
| Don’t know/not sure | | 56 | | |
| None of the above | | 13 | | |
This provides a slight contrast to the Education Scotland order data which shows that, in the previous two years, there were greater numbers of the two pre-school books issued compared to the ante-pre-school books, although Ziggy's Halloween Wish features in both sets of figures. The discrepancy is likely to result from the nature of the sample who replied to the survey, compared to those who returned book order forms. It should be noted that the survey was carried out in the Autumn, and so findings may also be influenced by respondents recall of only the most recently ordered books. Together, however, the two data sources do perhaps indicate that Ziggy's Halloween Wish is one of the most popular books in the series, and this was also borne out in the telephone interviews with staff, discussions with parents and during the workshops (discussed below). Indeed, perhaps the main message that seems to be being retained from across the series of books is to dress brightly and be seen - one of the messages from Halloween book. Again, however, this may be because this was the most recent book that respondents are likely to
have used at the time of the fieldwork, and so may still have been fresh in their memories.
Almost half of those who said that they had previously ordered some of the small books indicated that they had ordered all five of the books available (n=95). Few respondents indicated that they ordered only one of the book titles (n=6).
Interestingly, one in five survey respondents indicated that they were 'unsure' which of the books they had ordered. This may be as a result of the person completing the survey not being directly responsible for ordering the books (64% of those who said that they were not sure also indicated that they had never personally completed an order form). For the remaining respondents, it may indicate misunderstanding about the different titles that are available.
Of the 13 respondents who indicated that they had not ordered any of the above titles, most said that this was because they were not aware of the resources (n=9).
At the time of writing, around 200 of the new 'My Journey with Ziggy' packs had been issued. Information about the uptake of this resource was not included in the survey since the survey was designed and distributed only weeks after the resource had been fully launched.
3.3 Uptake of the Resources by Area
Uptake data was also provided at the local authority level, to show which individual establishments had ordered books. This does not show the exact numbers of books ordered, but shows those areas where any books were ordered. While the average uptake is around 46/47%, analysis of uptake data for the 2013/14 and 2014/15 26 distributions by local authority shows that uptake ranges from as little as 30% in some places compared to nearly 70% in others.
Again, it is important to note that uptake alone cannot be assumed to be a measure of how well utilised the books are at the local level, and those areas where uptake is low may, indeed, have greater use of the books by individual establishments. What this data does show, however, is where there may be room for targeted promotion of the resources in the future to encourage uptake among establishments and improve access to the resources among children.
3.4 Links Between Uptake and Deprivation
Based on postcode data that is held as part of the Education Scotland distribution database, it was possible to explore uptake in terms of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) zone in which establishments are based for the two years 2013/14 and 2014/15. The individual SIMD rank was established for each establishment, which were then clustered based on the 2012 SIMD quintiles (1 to 5) where 1 represents those areas with the greatest levels of deprivation (the 20% most deprived communities), and 5 represents the least deprived areas (the 20% least deprived communities).
26 Averages exclude the Autumn 14/15 figures since an incomplete dataset was available for that distribution
Table 3 below shows that there is a reasonable spread in the SIMD ranks of establishments on the Education Scotland database. There are more establishments in SIMD quintile 3 compared to all others (25%) with the least in quintiles 5 then 1. Uptake across establishments in different deprivation clusters seems to largely mirror their representation in the database overall (i.e. it is proportionate to the number of establishments in each quintile). Within each quintile, ordering also varies little from the national average of 47% with no real deviations.
Table 3: Uptake of Books by SIMD Cluster Group (2013/14 to 2014/15)
| | SIMD 2012 Quintile | | % | | Average % | | Average % Uptake |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Establishments | | Uptake (across | | (within Quintile) |
| | | | on Database | | database) | | |
| 1 (20% most deprived) | | 18% | | 16% | | 47% | |
| 2 | | 18% | | 19% | | 50% | |
| 3 | | 25% | | 24% | | 47% | |
| 4 | | 22% | | 24% | | 52% | |
| 5 (20% least deprived) | | 17% | | 17% | | 46% | |
As part of the survey, accurate postcode information was also provided from 195 respondents (70%), which allowed their individual SIMD rank to be identified. Responses were again clustered based on the 2012 SIMD quintiles, and the proportionate breakdown of survey respondents in each group is shown in Table 4 below).
Table 4: Responses by SIMD Cluster
| | SIMD 2012 Quintile | | Number of Responses | | % of Responses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (20% most deprived) | | 31 | | 16% | |
| 2 | | 28 | | 14% | |
| 3 | | 46 | | 24% | |
| 4 | | 52 | | 27% | |
| 5 (20% least deprived) | | 38 | | 19% | |
Again, there was a reasonable spread of responses from across the different SIMD zones with the largest proportion (27%) coming from those living in Zone 4 areas and the least from Zone 1 areas. Overall, the distribution of survey responses matched closely the distribution patterns for uptake recorded by Education Scotland.
This data suggests that there is not necessarily any notable difference in the uptake of books among establishments based on the deprivation zone in which they are based. What it does show is that uptake is perhaps marginally lower at both ends of the deprivation spectrum, rather than being isolated only at the most deprived end. This is encouraging insofar as previous research has indicated that uptake may be lower in areas of poverty. This data suggests that access is more widespread, based on ordering activity from establishments alone. Of course, while the SIMD of an establishment can be used to explore uptake at the establishment level by deprivation, it is recognised that not all children attending any given establishment will live in the same area nor have a home address of the same SIMD rank.
3.5 Uptake of the Resources by Urban/Rural Classification
Analysis of uptake data by urban/rural classification also shows that uptake across the 2013/14 and 2014/15 distributions was proportionate to the number of establishments in each type of geographical domain. Table 5 below shows that there are substantially more establishments on the Education Scotland database that are based in Large or Other Urban areas compared to other types of areas (making up 58% of all establishments overall). This is perhaps not surprising given that there will likely be larger numbers of children resident in these areas. There are very few 'small town' establishments on the database and just under a third are based in accessible rural or remote rural locations. When looking at ordering practices within clusters, the average uptake ranged from 44% in large urban areas to 52% in accessible small towns and accessible rural areas. While this range is quite large, in most cases, there was little variance from the national average uptake of 47%. Indeed, overall, there is nothing in the data to suggest that establishments in any particular type of geographical region are consistently more or less likely to order the books.
Table 5: Uptake by Urban/Rural Classification (2013/14 to 2014/15)
| | Classification | | % on | | Average % Uptake | Average % Uptake |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Database | | (across database) | (within cluster) |
| Large Urban Areas | | 32% | | 29% | | |
| Other Urban Areas | | 27% | | 29% | | |
| Accessible Small Town | | 8% | | 9% | | |
| Remote Small Town | | 5% | | 5% | | |
| Accessible Rural | | 16% | | 17% | | |
| Remote Rural | | 13% | | 12% | | |
| Total | | 100% | | 100% | | |
3.6 Perceptions and Possibilities for the Ordering Process
As part of the online survey, information was sought on who takes responsibility for completing the small book order forms in nurseries and schools. Table 6 below shows that, across the sample, almost half indicated that this was undertaken by the nursery/school Head Teacher or Manager (47%). One in five said that the forms were completed by administrative staff and one in ten said that it was completed by a class teacher. In most cases where someone else was mentioned as being responsible for filling in the book order forms, this was a Deputy Head or other member of the senior management team.
Table 6: Who in your school or nursery is responsible for completing the book order forms? (n=249)
| | Response | | Number of | % of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Respondents | Respondents |
| Head Teacher/Manager | | 118 | | |
| Administrator/Office Staff | | 49 | | |
| Class Teacher | | 30 | | |
| Other | | 31 | | |
| Not sure | | 21 | | |
Ease of Completing the Book Order Forms
Survey respondents provided feedback on how easy/difficult it was to complete the book order form (n=268). While 30% of those who responded had never completed a book order form directly, among those who had (n=188), the majority indicated that the form was very easy (77%) or quite easy (19%) to complete.
Supported and Preferred Methods of Ordering
Of the 265 respondents who provided an answer, there was little difference in support for either ordering the small books by post compared to online (as shown in Table 7 below). Slightly more respondents indicated that they would support ordering by email compared to either of these two alternative methods.
Table 7: Which of the following ways of ordering the small books for home would your school/nursery support? (n=265)
| | Response | | Number of | % of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Respondents | Respondents |
| Order by email | | 197 | | |
| Order by post | | 170 | | |
| Order online | | 167 | | |
When asked which of the following ways of ordering would be their preferred option, there was a clear preference for ordering electronically, with 41% indicating that they would prefer to order by email, and 36% indicating they would prefer to order online. Only 12% of the total sample indicated that post was their preferred choice, while a further 12% indicated no preference. It is worth noting, however, that the survey was administered online and so those who completed the survey may be more disposed generally towards using electronic communications than those who did not. They may also be more likely to have access to the internet/email than those who did not take part and this may be a confounding factor in interpreting these responses.
3.7 Understanding Local Distribution Processes
As part of the survey and interviews, information was also sought on what happens to the books once received by the schools/early years establishments (i.e. to explore onward distribution to parents carers). Parents and carers were also asked during
the focus groups about how (if at all) they had received the books, and their views on the local distribution practices.
Small Book Distribution to Parents/Carers
Among those who provided a response to this question in the survey, the data shows that, in most cases, the small books are given directly to parents/carers to take home on behalf of their child. Just under half of respondents indicated that they send home the books in children's bags. Many establishments use a combination of handing out books and putting them in bags, as well as leaving 'spare' copies to be picked up at reception. Table 8 below shows the responses relating to how books are distributed. Totals here do not add to 100% as respondents were invited to select multiple different answers, if applicable.
Table 8: How are the small books for home distributed to ensure they reach the children in your establishment and their parents/carers? (n=204)
| | Response | | Number of | % of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Respondents | Respondents |
| Given directly to parents/carers | | 126 | | |
| Sent home in children’s bags | | 90 | | |
| Other (please specify) | | 22 | | |
| Left in the school/nursery for parents/carers to pick up | | 20 | | |
| We do not distribute them – we keep them in the school/nursery | | 3 | | |
Other means of distributing the books included books being left in children's personal boxes or equivalent, being given as part of talking homework or as part of home visits.
While the distribution processes that are being used at the local level seem to be working well, most practitioners confirmed during interview that they had no direct feedback from parents/carers on what they thought of the books or if/how they were being used at home:
"When we read the 'big books' to the children, quite often we hear "I used to have that book", which makes us wonder why they do not anymore. Are parents not reading them with the children at home....are they being binned?" [Nursery, Survey]
Some suggestions were made by practitioners and parents alike that posters aimed at parents dropping off/picking up children would help to raise awareness of Ziggy and road safety more generally. Some suggested that letters home to parents, from Road Safety Scotland or the Scottish Government (rather than the school or nursery), might prompt some parents/carers to take more interest in the resources:
"It might be useful to draft a letter which could be used with parents for this purpose outlining the main aims of the particular book and directing them to how they can support their child through the book." [Nursery, Survey]
Comments were also made in the survey and in interviews that online resources were more likely to be used by parents/carers than the small printed books:
"Is the website mentioned in the small books? Perhaps some parents/carers would engage with this better." [School, Survey]
Overall, it was felt that more could be done to promote the online resources with parents/carers either as part of the small books or via separate communications. Although some nurseries indicated that they had included information in their own newsletters, this practice was rare and ad hoc, and it was suggested that a more standardised way of communicating with parents may be needed.
Participants in the focus groups who had received copies of the books from nurseries reported mixed local gifting practices. In most cases, books had simply been sent home in children's bags with no covering note or explanation - the children were expected to convey the message behind the books being gifted. In other cases, books had been made available for parents/carers to pick up, and often it was a free choice as to which books they chose:
"We [pre-school children] were given a choice….It was Granny or Lollipop." [Parent, Focus Group 4]
As with early years practitioners, some suggestions were made that a more personal approach, including a letter to parents explaining the purpose of the books, might ensure better use. At the moment, the 'loose' distribution meant that some books were being neglected:
"They should hand books directly to parents, because sometimes [it] can lay in his tray for a few days before I've even noticed it, or he [the child] can put it down somewhere. If they handed it to you, that would be easier for me, because I'm struggling with kids and bags and then things get left in the car." [Parent, Focus Group 2]
There was a relatively even split between those who had and had not previously seen the books. Those with older children at school were more likely to have previously seen the books, as well as those where the child attended a nursery placement (and had received the books there). The most recognisable books seemed to be Ziggy's Halloween Wish, Ziggy and the Lollipop and Ziggy Visits Granny, and this mirrors the distribution and survey data presented above. Again, it is worth noting that all of these books are gifted during Autumn and so parents were potentially more likely to have seen them in the weeks leading up to the research being carried out.
Overall, parents reported that they liked the idea of the books being provided for free, and would always take the books offered by school or nursery. They were especially likely to take the Ziggy books because they were recognisable as part of a series of books:
"We know they like them, we know they are already familiar with them so it is adding to an existing collection." [Child Minder, Focus Group 3]
Several parents also commented that receiving the books as a 'gift' from nursery made then seem more important and so the children took greater care and ownership of the books:
"If it comes from nursery it is special, anything that comes from nursery is special… It makes it feel more valuable because her teacher has given her it to look after." [Parent, Focus Group 2]
On the whole, parents were enthusiastic about receiving the books through nurseries, but some proposed that it would be better to get all of the resources in one pack, to ensure that everyone got all of the books.
The one issue that did emerge from parents and carers was how long they keep the books. Given that the books were free, there were suggestions that the longevity of keeping the books at home was perhaps limited:
"Everyone likes a free book…but, if I'm being honest, if I'm cleaning out my bookshelf, things like this are the first to go." [Parent, Focus Group 2]
Several parents also reported that they had received multiple copies for different children, and sometimes copies via different outlets for the same child (e.g. via a playgroup and nursery). In these cases, spare copies were usually binned meaning that each household usually had only a single copy, rather than one copy per child.
P1 Family Pack Distribution
As discussed above, for the previous two years, the 'Ziggy and Maggie Start School' book has been distributed via the Scottish Book Trust's Bookbug P1 Family Pack (although, at the time of writing, this arrangement was about to end). Among the 116 establishments 27 that responded to the survey, the P1 packs were typically sent home in children's bags (see Table 9 below). This is presumably because of the lower levels of direct parental contact with primary children compared to nursery children, who are likely to be physically signed in and out of nursery.
Table 9: How do you distribute the Primary 1 Family Pack in your school? (n=116)
| | Response | | Number of | | % of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Respondents | | Respondents |
| Sent home in children’s bags | | 92 | | 79% | |
| Other (please specify) | | 19 | | 16% | |
| Given directly to parents/carers | | 16 | | 14% | |
| Left in the school/nursery for parents/carers to pick up | | 1 | | <1% | |
| We do not distribute them – we keep them in the school/nursery | | 1 | | <1% | |
27 It is not clear why some of the pre-school establishments provided responses on how they distributed this pack, but this may indicate that packs are being distributed earlier than intended or that establishments misunderstood what was being asked
Other means of distribution included books being handed out during a special assembly and being gifted by the local library Bookbug co-ordinator. Two respondents indicated that the books were gifted as part of wider Book Week Scotland celebrations.
A small number of respondents indicated as part of the survey that they did not receive the P1 family packs or P1 Ziggy book, and that they were unaware of this resource (despite teaching Primary 1 aged children). As one survey respondent noted:
"You probably should do something to improve the publicity about the distribution. I have been aware of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources for several years and remember handing out the little books some years ago. However, I was not aware that they are still available for P1 children. The information in this survey was my first indication that Ziggy books were included in the Scottish Book Trust's Bookbug packs. I am quite familiar with these packs but have NOT been aware of the Ziggy books being included." [School, Survey]
This was also evidenced in some of the telephone interviews, where staff who had worked between nursery and school were unaware that there was a P1 stage book in the Ziggy series. Some comments were also made in the survey, and in the telephone interviews that the P1 book might be better to hand out before children leave nursery, to assist in the transition period to school:
"The starting school book would be great as a transitional aid for pre-school children within the nursery rather than once they have started primary school." [Nursery, Interview]
A separate evaluation of the whole P1 family pack commissioned by Scottish Book Trust in 2014 28 also reported that, 97% of teachers surveyed said that they had read "all/some of the books" from the pack in class, and 31% said that they had specifically used the Ziggy and Maggie Start School book. Qualitative feedback from children involved in the evaluation also suggested that they were already familiar with the Ziggy character before the book had been gifted. This suggests that some pre-school exposure must have taken place, through use of the big books in preschool establishments and/or small books for home.
3.8 Other Feedback on Distribution and Ordering
While no further specific questions were asked regarding ordering and distribution in the online survey, the telephone interviews and workshops revealed some misunderstandings regarding the small book ordering process. Several front-line staff were unaware of how the books reached the establishment, or how they could order more. Some comments were also made that it would be helpful to have contact, even if by email, throughout the year to remind and prompt staff to order and use the books.
28 Blake Stevenson (2014) Evaluation of the 2013 Bookbug Primary 1 Family Pack, Scottish Book Trust, Edinburgh
Some highlighted that the timing of the current distribution was not ideal and suggested that it would be better to have a more flexible ordering process:
"It would be easier if the books were sent to nursery as a pack and we could distribute them to the children at a seasonally appropriate time. For example, some of our ante-pre-school children don't start until January so it isn't valuable or relevant to give them the Hallowe'en book until the following October in their pre-school year. However, if the books were distributed by number [on the spine of each book] this wouldn't happen." [Nursery, Survey] "Make resources available at the start of the academic year and allow us to choose when to teach it. We use child-led responsive planning and have already covered road safety when then children were interested in it, long before the books came out." [Nursery, Survey]
As a result, some respondents said that they preferred to use the online resources, which could be used at any time, and they also preferred the immediacy of the online resources (i.e. not having to wait for books to arrive).
Finally, several respondents in the survey and who took part in a telephone interviews and workshops indicated that they would like to be able to order new 'big book' packs as part of the annual ordering process, since their old books had become worn.
3.9 Distribution and Ordering Going Forward
The research seems to indicate that the ordering and distribution processes are, at present, relatively straightforward, but that there may be room for minor improvements to maximise uptake of the books.
Database improvements
The current database held by Education Scotland is in Excel format and requires to be manually updated and refreshed as new intelligence is received regarding the opening or closure of establishments. Given that the current distribution of order forms is by post, there is also no way of knowing if order forms that are not returned are due to lack of interest or closure of schools/nurseries.
This research exercise alone identified that there were numerous establishments listed on the Education Scotland database that were different from those listed on the Care Inspectorate database, suggesting gaps in some establishments who could potentially be eligible to receive the order forms (and books) who are not being reached.
The research also identified that some of the establishments listed on the Education Scotland database had moved, changed name or had closed. Several of the early years establishments listed had the same addresses as schools where the two were co-located (1186). There were also a number of duplicate entries (63 in total). This means that any analysis of uptake figures (such as that carried out above) is likely to be skewed or distorted since the true number of individual establishments who are invited to order the books each year cannot be accurately ascertained.
As a first step to improving distribution, and also better understanding which establishments in each area are ordering or failing to order books on a regular basis, an upgrade or remodelling of the distribution database could be considered that incorporates a means of regularly and consistently recording uptake by individual establishments over time. While there would be a resource implication for this practice, in terms of staff time required to manually upload and update information on a continuous basis, it is suggested that this would provide perhaps the most cost effective means of identifying priority areas for targeted promotion activity to improve ordering and uptake going forward. As the database is not overseen by Road Safety Scotland, however, the value of this commitment would need to be realised by Education Scotland too.
Online or Electronic Ordering
Given the apparent preference for electronic modes of ordering revealed in the survey, it may also be worthwhile exploring a move from paper based ordering systems to electronic systems to allow quicker and more efficient distribution of forms and books. This could include order forms sent by email and/or online ordering, both of which may allow less scope for order forms to be lost. Moving to such an approach would require an initial one-off exercise to establish the email addresses of all those establishments currently listed, and ongoing updating and refreshing over time (e.g. annually) to ensure that the list remains current. Again, although this would be resource intensive up front, in the longer term, it seems that it would be a more cost effective way of ensuring that the database is current. School addresses (which make up a large proportion of those listed on the database) are unlikely to change often over time, and so following up nurseries and community based groups is likely to be the biggest challenge.
Other suggestions were made for a single stage ordering process at the start of each year, instead of twice each year, to reduce the administrative burden on schools/nurseries. While suggestions were also made for an 'open' and 'ongoing' ordering facility, this seems less attractive since the research revealed that receipt of the order forms sometimes acts as a reminder or prompt to staff to re-engage with the books and schedule some road safety education into their timetables. This could perhaps be overcome if an electronic system was adapted wherein email reminders could be sent at low cost around the themes/times for which books are appropriate (e.g. Halloween, Summer Holidays, and so on).
Improving Communications
An emerging finding from the qualitative components of the research was that communications regarding the books are, at present, lacking a 'personal' approach. Order forms are issued without covering letters and are also not sent to a designated person within establishments. This means that there is scope for them to be opened by unintended recipients or otherwise misplaced.
Suggestions were made for order forms to be issued directly by Road Safety Scotland, or with a covering note reminding staff of the importance of road safety education and the full range and remit of the Go Safe with Ziggy resources. Similarly, reminders from known local authority staff (e.g. Directors of Education or Road
Safety Officers) who are familiar to schools/nurseries may improve uptake, it was felt. The clear challenge with this is that some local authorities no longer have dedicated RSOs and others have very limited resources/time to dedicate to early years road safety education.
Suggestions were also made for a 'guide for the gifter' which would include notes for schools/nurseries on the background and rationale of the free books, and the best ways to ensure onward distribution and use. A similar approach is used by Scottish Book Trust in the distribution of their Bookbug Family packs and may provide a model to explore going forward.
Localised Distribution
Several participants at the workshops indicated that localised distribution of resources may be more effective than centralised distribution going forward, although the cost implications of this approach were also recognised. Overall, it was suggested that local authority staff, including local Road Safety Officers (RSOs) had a better awareness and understanding of local establishments, and could also monitor the opening of new establishments (or closing of old establishments) more easily. This would also allow them to monitor poor uptake in particular communities, and to carry out targeted promotional work in those areas.
An alternative may be to retain centralised control, but to introduce a mechanism whereby local authorities can be notified of poor uptake in their area where appropriate, as a prompt for localised promotion activity or reminders (e.g. by annual email). At present, it was suggested, local authority staff, including RSOs had only limited awareness of uptake of the resources in their own areas, due to the centralised nature of the ordering and distribution processes. This makes it difficult for them to challenge and address non-use. While RSOs are currently invited to contact Road Safety Scotland to enquire about uptake in local establishments, this is not a widespread practice and so the introduction of a regular, centrally initiated 'non-uptake' monitoring mechanism may be useful in improving uptake in the future.
Alternative Distribution Routes
Common to all stakeholders involved in the research was the suggestion that alternative, complementary distribution methods should also be considered in the future. Most commonly, this included using libraries to make books available and to raise awareness of the resources, especially for parents and carers whose children did not attend pre-school care.
An alternative suggestion was for Health Visitors to be involved in distributing or raising awareness of the resources with several parents indicating that they had used their visits to Health Visitors in the early years as a source of information about health, wellbeing and education themed resources.
Finally, there was considerable support for the continued use of outlets such as the Bookbug bags to be used for the distribution of books. Bookbug had a strong and positive image as an early years resource provider among parents and practitioners and most felt that this was probably the best way of ensuring that parents whose children did not attend pre-school or nursery would access the books. Bookbug
resources were popular, it was suggested, and always used. The limitation of this approach is that control over such 'third party' distributions is not within the control of Road Safety Scotland and so there is a danger that consistency in approach over time might be lost. One example of this is the decision by Scottish Book Trust (SBT) to remove the P1 Ziggy book from their family pack from 2016 (having included it in the bag for the previous two years).
Administrative Changes
The order forms, at present, are clearly branded, provide a link for further information about the resources and contact details which can be used by recipients to find out more about the resources. While the forms do not appear to require any substantial amendments, some suggestions for minor changes include:
- feedback from distribution staff suggests that there might be some confusion among those completing the form and that sometimes large numbers of Gaelic copies are ordered, when establishments intended to order English versions of the books. Adjusting the layout of the form might overcome this problem, although it should be stressed that is not something that happens with significant frequency;
- including on the order form some indication that copies of the big book pack can also be ordered. This would be particularly useful as a prompt for those establishments who have lost or misplaced their original copies to access the full resource and start using the class based books again. This may, of course, result in numerous additional requests for big book packs, and so the cost implications would need to be carefully considered; and
- redesigning the form to make it even more explicit which books are intended for which age of child since feedback suggests that confusion still occurs in this regard. Indeed, some practitioners queried whether there was a necessary divide between the two years and if it would be better to allow schools and nurseries to order all of the books and decide locally how to distribute them, especially given that the books are not designed to be incrementally challenging to read as children developed. This is discussed in more detail in the following chapters.
4 Exploring How the Resources are Used
The research also sought to develop an understanding of how the resources are currently used. Findings from across the different research strands are included below, highlighting the most common themes to emerge.
4.1 Use of the 'Big Book' Packs
As part of the online survey, just over 60% of respondents indicated that their establishment still had a copy of the 'big books' available for use with their children. Just over a quarter said that they did not and 13% said that they were not sure. There were no clear differences in responses between those that worked with Primary 1 aged children and those that did not.
The majority of respondents (69%) said that they had used the big books with their children in the last five years (see Table 10). This included some who said that they no longer had the books, and so suggests that the books had been in their possession at some point in the past, but were no longer at the establishment. Indeed, some practitioners reported in interviews that they only had some of the books remaining, and were unsure what had happened to the others from the set.
Table 10: In the last five years, has your school/nursery used the big books with the children? (n=276)
| | Response | | Number of Respondents | | % of Respondents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yes | | 191 | | 69% | |
| No | | 40 | | 14% | |
| Not Sure | | 45 | | 16% | |
Among the 40 respondents who said that they had not used the big books in the last five years, the majority indicated that this was because they were not aware of the resource (n=27) or no longer had the books (n=4).
Among those who said that they had used the big books with their children in the last five years (n=191), most said that they used them to read to groups of children in the classroom/nursery (97%), as shown in Table 11.
Table 11: How you have used the big books in your nursery or school? (n=191)
| | Response | | Number of | | % of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Respondents | | Respondents |
| Read to groups of children in the classroom/nursery | | 186 | | 97% | |
| Made available for children to ‘read’ or ‘look at’ alone | | 116 | | 61% | |
| Used as part of a game/activity focused on road safety in the classroom/nursery | | 93 | | 49% | |
| Used as part of an outing/journey outside of the classroom/nursery | | 58 | | 30% | |
| Shared reading between older and younger children | | 28 | | 15% | |
A large proportion (61%) also reported that they leave the books in the classroom/nursery to be read independently by the children. This was confirmed during telephone interviews, where several respondents indicated that the books are included as part of their reading library in the classroom, are left on display or are kept in an accessible reading corner:
"We also encourage the children to investigate and 'read' the big books to their friends on the floor." [Nursery, Interview]
Other respondents reported that they used the big books as part of assemblies, for children to use as a prop to tell the story themselves and with parents as part of 'stay and play' parental involvement sessions.
As part of wider feedback in the research, some comments were made that the big books were unwieldy and the large soft-back format made reading them to groups of children a challenge:
"Big books are very long and floppy, so when adult is reading the story it`s difficult to hold and turn page at same time, so children are a little distracted by that." [Nursery, Survey]
It was suggested that most books that are used for group reading are A4 in size, and that smaller hardback books, spiral bound flip books or board books would be better as a group resource.
One childminder who took part reported that storage of the big books was also problematic:
"When I was a registered childminder I got a delivery of huge books, massive, in a clear bag… I have to admit, because I had the huge big ones, and a bookshelf doesn't accommodate big books, I prefer this size. So if I could have got the batch as a small set I would have looked at them more frequently. I gave my big books to the private nursery so they had an extra set." [Child Minder, Focus Group 3]
This contrasted to another childminder who took part who commented that she had used the big books over a number of years and that they had been very popular with children because they were so big and this made them unusual and appealing:
"They've never had a book that size before. They like to lie on the floor and spread them out." [Child Minder, Focus Group 3]
While there were perhaps some mixed views on the format of the big books, it seems that they are being well used in most cases where establishments or individual carers have them.
4.2 Use of the Small Books for Home
Feedback on how the books were being used at home was sought from parents/carers who took part in the focus groups and had previously received them via their children's school/nursery.
Most of those who had received the books said that they had kept them, although not all said that they were well used. The approach to using the books seems to be very child-led and most parents said that they would only read the books if their child asked them to or selected them for their reading time together. There were mixed experiences on whether children did or did not choose the books:
"He will choose them, I'm not expecting him to choose them after we have read them once or twice, but he does. He quite likes Ziggy." [Parent, Focus Group 1]
"I definitely used them when she was wee. I did make an effort to read them, and we went over it a few times, but now they are just kept with the other books." [Parent, Focus Group 2]
"Mine are mixed in amongst other books, and they do sometimes pick them out, but not often." [Parent, Focus Group 4]
Parents/carers typically said that they read the books together with their children when they first received them, and then left them readily available as children got older to use independently:
"I've used them with all my kids, but after they go to school, they're old enough to look back at them themselves." [Parent, Focus Group 3]
Other suggested that, over time, books were used most often as a reference tool or follow-up to unsafe behaviours, as a refresher to remind children of what they were doing wrong:
"You know you've got something in the house that, if you need to remind them, "You're forgetting about holding hands again", then you've got a book to show them again." [Parent, Focus Group 3]
Most of the parents/carers who took part also said that, although the books were a welcome reference tool, they considered that active learning was the best way to teach road safety messages, and that they needed to be accompanied by outside learning to be effective, wherever possible:
"You need to read the book and show them as well, otherwise it doesn't really work. Some people just take the car everywhere, so they don't practice walking near busy roads." [Parent, Focus Group 4]
Overall, parents and carers expressed that the small books acted well as a prompt to remind them to teach their children road safety behaviours. Most parents already engaged in road safety education with their children anyway, but a reported strength of the books was in making this fun rather than presenting it as a disciplinary activity.
4.3 Use of the Online Resources
Awareness of the Website and Online Resources
There was an even split between the number of respondents to the practitioner survey who said that they had previously visited the Go Safe with Ziggy website and those who had not (49% of respondents in each case). The remaining 2% were not sure.
Use of the Online Resources
Table 12 shows the most commonly used online resources were the online stories and games (each used by around two thirds of respondents).
Table 12: Which, if any, of the following 'Go Safe with Ziggy' online resources have you used with the children in your establishment? (n=132)
| | Response | | Number of | % of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Respondents | Respondents |
| Online stories | | 86 | | |
| Online games | | 84 | | |
| Ziggy Zone videos | | 43 | | |
| Activity idea cards | | 35 | | |
| Audio stories | | 28 | | |
| None - just looked at what was available | | 21 | | |
| Sound and image library | | 18 | | |
| Other | | 8 | | |
As previously mentioned, wider feedback received during interviews and in the survey suggests that some teachers would like to see greater promotion of the online resources, since they perceived that the online activities and audio/visual resources might better capture children's attention:
"I feel ICT software would be better utilised by the children than the books." [School, Survey]
"The children would really enjoy animated versions and this would support the engagement of all pupils." [Nursery, Survey]
"The staff and children love the interactive books at the [website]." [Nursery, Survey]
Several respondents praised the resources that could be used on the smartboard and there were also comments that the audio books were enjoyed by the children. In the survey and the workshops, there were several comments that a smartphone or tablet app would be well received.
Similar views were expressed by parents and carers who believed that apps were the way forward for educational resources for children, given the growing popularity and use of smart phones and tablets in the home:
"I think most children now come from a house where there is either a smartphone or a tablet, and so an app would be a really great idea." [Parent, Focus Group 2]
"A free full-on educational app would be great." [Parent, Focus Group 4]
"Playing with the iPad is a treat, so making it available as an app would make it [road safety education] something they wanted to do." [Parent, Focus Group 1]
There was some discussion about the problems with using the internet with children in this age group and one group of parents/carers suggested that the option of apps was preferable because the children were less able, or less likely, to accidently navigate away or access other (inappropriate) sites. Some indicated that they would feel safer leaving their children to play independently with an isolated app rather than allowing them to play freely on the internet.
Parents felt that having the resources available in a range of formats was ideal as children learn in different ways and this facilitates different learning opportunities. A number of the fathers/male carers in particular highlighted that they would be more likely to use audio books compared to written books. Some suggested that audio books or podcasts could be played in the car to reinforce safe travel messages.
One issue to emerge across the research was that the audio stories and online visual stories are not currently linked in a way that makes it easy to read and listen to the stories at the same time. This was perceived to be a weakness by practitioners and parents alike. There was some discussion among parents about being able to access the audiobook as a podcast to allow the children to read and listen independently, with the message "When you hear this ding please turn the page", or the child being able to open the book as an app and turn the page to hear what it says. This was considered especially valuable for those unable to read the words and so unable to follow the text at the same time as the audio file plays. The cost of developing a linked resource or an app that would provide this function does, however, need to be borne in mind and considered alongside the additionality it would bring.
Reasons for Not Using the Online Resources
The main reasons given for not previously using the online resources across the survey and interviews was a lack of awareness. This was mentioned by 68% of nonusers in the online survey, as shown in Table 13 below. One in five survey respondents said that they did not have time to use the online resources, and one in ten said that they did not have access to a computer in the classroom/nursery. This suggests that, although awareness is the biggest barrier, there may also be some practical and logistical barriers to greater use of the online resources too. This is interesting to note against the other finding that a Ziggy app might prove popular since use of any digital application requires access to digital resources, such as a computer, smartphone or tablet. It is reasonable to expect that the finding regarding limited access to computers might be replicated with an app, due to some schools and nurseries (as well as parents and carers) not having access to the required technology.
Table 13: What are the main reasons why you have NOT previously used the online 'Go Safe with Ziggy' resources?
| | Response | | Number of | % of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Respondents | Respondents |
| Was not aware of the online resources | | 107 | | |
| Too busy/not enough time | | 31 | | |
| No access to computer/internet in class | | 19 | | |
| Other | | 13 | | |
| Did not consider them a useful resource | | 4 | | |
| Did not consider them appropriate for our children | | 3 | | |
The lack of awareness was again reiterated during interviews and workshops, with practitioners highlighting that they had only found the online resources and information about how to use them accidentally, and some interviewees commenting that they had not known about the online resources until taking part in the evaluation survey. Some had since visited the site and several also mentioned that they would be visiting the site after having completed the survey.
Very few parents or carers were aware of the online resources, and none reported that they had used them. Despite this, there was considerable support for the idea of online resources, and most parents/carers said that they would have visited the site before if they had known about it. Although the website is signposted in the small books for home, it was suggested that this needed to be much more prominent, or that separate communication was required from schools/nurseries to alert parents.
4.4 The Ziggy Soft Toy and Journey Pack
Few of the practitioners and parents/carers who took part in the research had heard of the Ziggy soft toy and Journey Pack, probably because it is a relatively recent addition to the range of Go Safe with Ziggy resources and was introduced very shortly before the research began. Indeed, only one respondent indicated in the survey that they had taken part in the 'Ziggy's Fun Day Out' exercise to upload their photos and make their own book online. Several of those who took part in a telephone interview also mentioned that they had taken part in creating their own story online using the story creator and received a 'My Journey with Ziggy' pack (complete with the Ziggy soft toy), and provided very positive feedback on the experience:
"We sent our story to the website and received our cuddly Ziggy. The children are currently taking him home on a rota basis, and sharing their knowledge with the parents and family members. Learning about road safety with Ziggy has been very worthwhile and the children are all using their knowledge in practical situations." [Nursery, Interview and Survey]
All practitioners who took part in the workshops liked the idea of the Ziggy soft toy and take home bag/story pack, especially as this might help to engage parents/carers better with the road safety message. This was seen as a particularly useful resource in areas where literacy at home might be an issue, or in households where parents chose not to read with their children.
Parents and carers also suggested without prompting that a 'take home' soft toy would help with home links, and were surprised to find out that this already existed. Parents and practitioners alike suggested that soft toys for all of the main characters from the books would be well received by children, who could use them to engage in 'role play'.
4.5 Individual Projects
Various examples were given in the online survey of how the Go Safe with Ziggy resources are being used in innovative ways to engage children. This included:
- art and craft sessions;
- visits from community police and crossing patrol staff to read the books and reinforce taught messages;
- inviting Junior Road Safety Officers (JRSOs) or primary school 'buddies' to read and share the books with younger children; and
- Ziggy appearing in Christmas nativity scenes.
Several establishments said that they had 'painted on' roads in the playground and roll out zebra crossings which they used to reinforce the messages in the books. Most establishments said that they used the resources alongside practical trips outside of the classroom, for example, on walks to the local shops. Some also used role play based on the Ziggy stories when out and about or took their Ziggy soft toy on journeys:
"Ziggy goes out with the children on their weekly walks, we have a road safety champion who takes Ziggy and together they keep the group safe while out and about. The book and Ziggy then go home with that child to reinforce the learning." [Nursery, Survey]
A number of establishments said that they had organised displays as part of open events or workshops for parents/carers at which Ziggy had been a key focus:
"We recently ran a Stay & Play for Parents with all the books on display. We used the interactive whiteboard to discuss the road safety points within the book with the children and their parents." [Nursery, Survey]
Interestingly, where respondents provided details of individual projects they had run, these mostly related to the title "Ziggy's Halloween Wish". Several also mentioned that this was the first book that they introduced to children and so tended to make this a bigger focus than later books. Having a book tied to a specific event was also seen as an appealing feature and some commented that it was easier to use this book as part of a wider event/activity than some of the later books in the series.
In one area, a dedicated early years project had been set up which was using road safety to increase numeracy skills. In this area, volunteer school crossing patrollers were working with children in their early years to carry out class-based and outdoor numeracy activities, using the Ziggy Visits Granny book (e.g. pattern matching, counting, measuring). Take home bags had also been developed featuring Ziggy toy activities and an activity book for parents/carers and children to complete when they
were travelling outdoors together. The project sought to increase parental and child discussions and understanding of road safety at the same time as encouraging numeracy skills, and involved collaboration from the local authority Road Safety Officer and the local Early Learning Development Co-ordinator. The volunteer staff who were involved in the project reported positively on the experience and the project had also attracted widespread community attention. Although only one project was running at the time of writing, it was hoped that the learning from this initiative would be shared with other groups within the locality and that they would embed the learning into local practice.
Overall, feedback from the research suggests that both the big and small books are being used as intended, although there is less engagement with the online resource. This is not as a result of lack of interest, however, rather a lack of awareness of the full range of resources that are available.
5 Overall Perceptions of the Resource
Across the research, participants were asked about the extent to which they perceived the books to be 'fit for purpose' for their intended audience, in terms of content, language and structure. This included questions to each of the different stakeholder groups (early years practitioners, parents/carers and road safety professionals), recognising that they each may have different perspectives on what would make the books user friendly and appropriate as both learning and recreational tools.
5.1 Ratings for Engagement
As part of the survey of practitioners, feedback on the Go Safe with Ziggy books was generally positive, with 75% of respondents overall indicating that they felt the children in their establishment engaged well or very well with the books. Less than 5% of the total sample indicated that the children did not engage well with the books (as shown in Table 14 below).
Table 14: Thinking about both the big and small books, how well do you think the children in your school/nursery engage with the books? (n=263)
| | Response | | Number of Responses | | % of Respondents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Very Well | | 110 | | 42% | |
| Well | | 88 | | 33% | |
| Okay | | 55 | | 21% | |
| Not very well | | 8 | | 3% | |
When looking separately at the overall ratings provided by establishments that taught Primary 1 aged children and those that did not, the proportion of those who said that the children engaged very well was slightly higher for those with older children (78%) compared to those teaching only pre-school and/or ante-pre-school children (69%).
The parents and carers who took part in the focus groups were all very positive about the books and considered them to be engaging:
"Every page makes you want you to turn to the next, it is not like you get halfway through and think, you know how with some books you think "I really want this book to end", and you squeeze a few pages together to skip." [Parent, Focus Group 4]
5.2 Individual Features of the Books
Survey respondents were asked about five different features of each the books: appearance, length, age appropriateness, format and usefulness. Ratings for all features were very positive overall, with over 75% of respondents rating each feature as either 'good' or 'excellent' (see Figure 3 below). While ratings were high for all features, the length and age appropriateness of the books were rated less favourably overall while the format, usefulness and appearance of the books (e.g. images and illustrations) received higher ratings.
Most Likable Features of the Books
Overwhelmingly, respondents said that the thing that children liked most about the books was the Ziggy character:
"Ziggy - an alien is always a winner!" [Nursery, Survey]
In particular, several practitioners mentioned that the children liked the idea of being able to 'help' Ziggy and also feeling that they knew more about road safety that he did:
"Teaching Ziggy who doesn't know anything about road safety - they feel they know more than him and can help him." [Nursery, Survey]
"They like to show that they have more knowledge of Road Safety than Ziggy." [Nursery, Survey]
"Children identify with and like the character of Ziggy. They like to help Ziggy." [Nursery, Survey]
Similarly, several parents commented that the 'silliness' of the Ziggy character appealed to their children. The benefits of children observing Ziggy's learning process was considered to be valuable as it was a way of reinforcing the message without the parents being the sole bearer of the message, which could be perceived as "nagging":
"I think it is nice that they are getting the message from a book rather than you just 'going on at them' about things all the time." [Parent, Focus Group 4]
The children accepted that Ziggy needed to learn just like they did and also felt good at times that he was learning things that they already knew about. One of the parents suggested that children learn best through teaching someone else and that is what they are doing with Ziggy.
Several practitioners and parents alike also mentioned that the children liked the humour and the recognisable language/catch phrase that they associated with Ziggy. While humour was a positive feature for the children, respondents also commented that they perceived the books to achieve a good balance between accessibility to children and the seriousness of the messages being conveyed:
"Stories can be quite funny but with a serious note." [School, Survey] "The books are a fantastic way to broach the subject of safety with the children, allowing them to understand the dangers and manage the risks." [Nursery, Survey]
Other likeable features included that the child characters in the story were the same age as those the books were designed for, and that this meant that the children could relate to their experiences. In addition, several respondents commented that having the story available in different formats (such as book and audio) was something that the children liked:
"It's really good to have them in different formats as you can go back to them in a different format and they still seem a bit fresh. For example, I have used the big books in lessons and then revisited the material some time later using the online format." [Nursery, Survey]
A number of comments were also made in the survey that the children loved being able to have a copy of the book to take home and the fact that their learning at home could be linked to their school/nursery experience of the book:
"Having worked with the book in class pupils are often excited and motivated to share the book at home too." [Nursery, Interview]
"The children love to share the books at home and talk about what they have learnt at nursery." [Nursery, Interview]
"Children love getting a book to take home that they are familiar with and can talk to mum and dad about." [Nursery, Survey]
Parents also liked the idea of links between nursery/school and home, but felt that the success of this approach was heavily dependent on parental interest, which was difficult to influence:
"Half the parents wouldn't read the books. Some parents would be keen on doing it and see that's a really important message, but a lot of them wouldn't." [Parent, Focus Group 2]
Transport Scotland
Several comments were made about the value of the repetition in the books (for example, the characters, Ziggy's language and general format) and it was felt that this helped the children identify all of the books as being part of a road safety themed series:
"I like the fact that they all revolve around Ziggy - this allows the children to become familiar with the character and link him with road safety." [Nursery, survey]
"They like the characters being the same in all stories." [Nursery, Survey] "They really engage with the characters and the sayings that they come out with - they get to know repetitive words which help them to learn." [Nursery, survey]
Another common response from both early years practitioners and parents/carers was that the use of real life photographs made the scenarios in the stories seem real for children, and that this was a strength of the resources:
"The real life illustrations are excellent promoting the real life understanding of the road safety message." [Nursery, Interview]
"I really like the photographs, the real life pictures, that's a really good idea…Sometimes at this age, I think that illustrations and cartoons don't work, but they do understand photographs." [Parent, Focus Group 2]
More general comments included that the children liked how colourful the books were and that the pictures/illustrations held their attention. The interactive nature of the books was also considered to be a positive aspect. Some mentioned that the Scottish settings and Scottish language used made the books relatable. In practical terms, the size of the small books was also described as a child-friendly feature: "small enough to hold in their wee hands."
Least Likable Features of the Books
When asked specifically about the least likeable feature of the books, around a third of survey respondents cited that the books were too long/too wordy. This was suggested to be especially true for ante-pre-school children:
"At times the stories can be too long, in particular for ante pre-school children". [Nursery, Survey]
"The children find it difficult to sit and listen to the whole book." [Nursery, Interview]
"They like that Ziggy is an alien but the stories are a bit long for the age group and they lose concentration.” [Nursery, Survey]
Similar views were expressed by several of the parents/carers who took part in focus group sessions:
"Lovely [books], and lovely pictures, and very engaging, but some of them are too much and the children just lose interest half way through." [Parent, Focus Group 2]
"For flicking through, it's great, but as a story it's a bit too long." [Parent, Focus Group 3]
Some school and nursery staff did note that the books may be more suitable for the pre-school children compared to ante-pre-school, but the mixed nature of many nursery based groups/classes made it difficult to separate the two for group reading activities. Whilst this is useful to note, it is a challenge that is not easy to resolve given that many pre-school establishments have children of different ages and different needs attending at the same time.
Several survey respondents commented that, because the books were so long, they tended to shorten or paraphrase the stories themselves. This was also mentioned during interviews with some teachers/nursery staff:
"The length of some stories can prove too long for some of our children: we adapt them accordingly." [Nursery, Interview]
"I tend to paraphrase the stories as they can be too wordy to use in a big group but this works fine. I think for some 3 year olds the books are a bit too complicated even one-to-one with parents." [Nursery, Survey]
"As I read them with the children, I find that I miss out some of the pages. The messages are either repeated, or the content is meaningless, or too sophisticated for their age group." [Nursery, Survey]
More specifically, some comments were made that the story-lines were overly complicated and sometimes confused the children:
"I feel the books are quite "busy" and long for the children to sit and remain fully engaged with. A simple message of safety has been slightly over complicated through plot and illustration (based on my experience reading them with the children in my setting over the years)." [Nursery, Survey]
"The length of the stories are too long for children aged 3-4 years old. Their attention levels fade after only a couple of pages into the books." [Nursery, Interview]
The side stories that run in parallel with the main road safety stories in the books were also seen as confusing to young children, and as being potentially distracting by a minority of the survey respondents:
"The books are very long for ante pre-school children and the additional information about Scottish songs and sun awareness, for example, has impacted the lasting impression of the story for some children with them
talking more about wearing sun cream than being safe crossing the road." [Nursery, Survey]
Some professional respondents also commented that some of the language, subtle jokes and use of humour was too sophisticated for young children, and that this may be a barrier to better engagement.
While most practitioners said that the alien character was a strength of the resource, several others commented that this sometimes confused the children, and some of the ideas were described as being quite abstract. The alien focus was also seen as distracting from the core road safety messages of the books in some cases, although it must be recognised that for a similar number, this was an attractive feature of the books. On balance, views regarding the alien character and the side stories were mostly favourable, but this nonetheless highlights one area where there was polarity in the views expressed:
"They are not relating to the Ziggy character. One child asked if Aliens come to help him across the road. Would be better if the books were based on real life and not include Aliens as the focus turned more to space than the message we were trying to get across about road safety." [Nursery, Survey]
The language in some of the books was described as "strange" and "odd" by quite a few respondents. Several comments were also made that the books may be in need of updating, either because the stories were not contemporary or because they felt that children with older siblings would already be familiar with the stories and that something new would better grab their attention:
"Needs to be a bit more current topic wise (the granny story is a bit outdated)". [Nursery, Interview]
"…they are the same stories every year - it would be good if there was some new story lines as the children do get bored of the same stories all the time." [Nursery, Survey]
"We have lots of families who find that the older siblings already have the books so perhaps a cycle of different books would mean it less likely that children already have the same book in the house. "[Nursery, Survey]
It is important to note that, despite this criticism, several telephone interviewees commented that they felt it was still important for children to have their 'own' copy of the book, rather than having to share and that the gift of giving a book to each child separately was very valuable. This contrasted with the views of parents (discussed above) who most often said that they were reluctant to keep multiple copies of the same books in the house, and so had discarded older copies of the books as younger siblings had brought home fresh copies.
Several of the practitioners who provided negative feedback did also comment that the books might be better suited to one-to-one contact and that as a resource to be used at home, they would probably work well:
"One parent commented that her child really enjoyed them so perhaps they are better on a one to one basis at home." [Nursery, Interview]
"The story can be a bit long for some of the children, but because they have the books at home they become familiar with the story." [Nursery, Interview]
Overall, those who provided negative feedback usually tied this to the length and complexity of the books. Again, it is worth reiterating that some of those who took part in the follow-up telephone interviews were selected specifically because they had provided less favourable views as part of the survey, and so some of the negative comments regarding the resources may be over-represented here. Feedback from both the survey and the telephone interviews was, on the whole, positive and the limitations of the resources presented above are included to highlight where minor tweaks or adjustments to the resources might potentially be made to improve on what was already considered to be a good resource overall.
5.3 Perceived Usefulness as a Teaching Resource
Feedback on the overall usefulness of the books as an educational resource for teaching road safety education was very positive. Overall, 89% of survey respondents said that it was quite useful or very useful. Only 5% of the total sample perceived that the books were not useful (shown in Table 15 below).
Table 15: Overall, how useful would you rate the 'Go Safe with Ziggy' books as an educational resource for teaching road safety messages to children in early years settings? (n=270)
| | Response | | Number of Respondents | % of Respondents |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Very useful | | 179 | | |
| Quite useful | | 62 | | |
| Okay | | 17 | | |
| Not very useful | | 10 | | |
| Not useful at all | | 2 | | |
Again, when looking separately at establishments that taught Primary 1 aged children and those that did not, 94% of those who did said that they found the resource quite or very useful, compared to 88% of those who taught only pre-school or ante-preschool children.
Interviews confirmed that teachers perceived the resources as helpful overall for teaching road safety education. That being said, several comments were also made that much of the teaching relied on "common sense" or learning from their own childhood, rather than being linked explicitly to the books. Overall, teachers and nursery staff commented that they liked the fact that the books were clearly linked to the Curriculum for Excellence, but were not dictated by it. The adaptability afforded by the resource was welcomed.
5.4 Retention of Key Messages
In assessing whether the books were fit for purpose, the evaluation sought to understand whether the key road safety messages contained in the books were
being retained by practitioners, parents/carers and children. The technical book review revealed that the books each contained different road safety messages, as well as repeating some core messages, (e.g. finding safe places to cross, use of pedestrian crossings/the 'green man', holding hands, and so on). Across all of the books, the point is also emphasised that children do not need to understand all of the content of the books, and that the main message is that children should learn to hold hands and wait before crossing the road. The contents of each book and the messages they contain is summarised in Appendix A.
There was mixed feedback on whether both the main message and individual messages in the books were always appropriate and clearly conveyed. Some practitioners felt that the main message should be to stop, look and listen and, indeed, some said that this was the main message that they taught to children in their establishments. Others said that the message should include a prompt for children to think before they cross roads and should also be more explicit about where children should wait (i.e. behind the kerb). Some participants questioned how easy the concept of 'waiting' was for children and felt that stop provided a clearer message to this age group. Parents, in contrast, seemed to stress that holding hands was the main message that they wanted to see conveyed:
"At this age, its 'holding hands' that's the most important thing – 'You're either holding hands or you're not walking", that kind of thing." [Parent, Focus Group 4]
In speaking with parents and carers, the other main road safety messages that are taught to children, and which they felt should feature in the books, appear to be:
- not to run near roads;
- to stop at the edge of the kerb;
- that the grown up should be on the side of the pavement nearest the road;
- not to play with car seats/seatbelts;
- to look left and right while crossing the road; and
- to wait for the 'green man' (at crossings).
The desired messages seem to be the same for both older and younger siblings and parents felt they were all covered by the existing books, albeit subtly, in some cases.
While parents/carers and practitioners agreed with most of the main messages conveyed in the books, and could see their importance, all agreed that the messages were quite complicated at times, and could be challenging for young readers to take on board. The independent book review also suggested that some of the books, in particular Ziggy Visits Granny and Ziggy's Summer Holiday, may contain too many messages for one book and may be too sophisticated for younger readers. The book review also revealed that it was not always clear what the main messages from each book were, and that, unless parents/carers read the guidance notes at the end of the books, some of the more subtle messages could potentially be missed. This was also noted by workshop participants.
Indeed, parents and carers in particular stressed that it would be useful if the main road safety theme of each book could be flagged on the front cover (e.g. in bullet point form), so that they could easily select the books that met their needs. The titles of the books alone did not always provide a clear indicator of the main road safety messages that they contained. There were comments that the books were used in cases where children had demonstrated unsafe behaviours to act as a refresher, for instance, if children had failed to stop before crossing a road, and so knowing which book to refer back to 'at a glance' would be helpful.
Despite the complexity of some of the messages in the books, some parents commented that they felt that the books challenged them to think about what they needed to teach their children. For example, although they were aware of driveways crossing pavements and watching out for their children, they had not necessarily thought to teach their children about being aware of this. In this respect, the books were educational for parents too.
Overall, it was not clear which, if any, of the main road safety messages were being retained by the parents/carers who took part, nor was there anything to clarify whether the road safety messages were being retained by young children. Instead, it seems that the books are being used as a reference tool or a refresher for adults to remind themselves of the 'types' of messages that that they should be sharing with their children. This is not necessarily a weakness of the resource, and instead highlights how, in line with the principles of Curriculum for Excellence, the resource is encouraging adaptive and flexible teaching and can be used responsively depending on children's interests and behaviours. There is, however, perhaps scope to make the key messages more explicit in some cases.
5.5 Raising Awareness
Across the research strands, one common theme to emerge was a lack of awareness either of the resource (overall) or of specific component parts of the Go Safe with Ziggy package (especially the online resources). Even among those who currently use the books and are familiar with the resource, there was patchy awareness of the wider offering. For parents and carers in particular, all familiarity was from the books alone and there was a commonly shared view that increasing awareness of the full range of resources was key to maximising use.
Parents most often said that they had only limited awareness of the books, and this was based purely on the copies received from nurseries. They did not know or understand the rationale behind the books in some cases and felt that some accompanying information issued by schools/nurseries, the Scottish Government or Road Safety Scotland could be beneficial.
While several parents/carers and professionals suggested that TV advertisements were probably the best way of achieving national awareness (and most could remember road safety TV advertisements from their own childhood), they recognised this was expensive. A potentially lower cost alternative that was suggested by parents/carers and practitioners was a Ziggy animation or You Tube video which children could access either at home or at school/nursery.
Practitioners suggested that there was scope for Ziggy to feature as a link resource on the websites of other early years providers/organisations (again, Bookbug was cited as an example of a resource that had a high profile and made good use of links on other websites). Specifically, using the national GLOW 29 network was suggested as a means of reaching schools and using Mumsnet was suggested as a way of reaching parents/carers. Another group of parents who regularly met as part of a toddler group suggested that social media was a good way to make local parents/carers aware of the resources.
Finally, several workshop attendees suggested a national re-launch of the resource, but stressed that this would need to be accompanied by a new addition to the resource in order to make it more appealing to practitioners. They also recognised the cost implications of this, however, and so a targeted re-launch in areas where uptake is low may be an alternative option.
5.6 Other Suggestions for Maximising Utility and Engagement
Simplified Books for Younger Readers
There was consensus among practitioners and parents/carers that road safety education could begin at an earlier age than 3, and many suggested that a simpler, abbreviated Go Safe with Ziggy book would be welcomed for children under 3. Although the 'Out and About' buggy book was seen as meeting this need to some extent, it was felt that there was room for a book to bridge the gap between the baby and pre-school years (i.e. for those aged 1 and 2). Indeed, parents in particular stressed that a book aimed at children aged 12-18 months would be helpful when children were leaning to walk and having their first outdoor independent walking experiences. Introducing the Ziggy character at this early age would also mean that children were familiar with the character before they received the first ante-preschool book. While there are two online books that perhaps fill this gap ('Spot the Traffic' and 'Cross the Road with Ziggy'), hard copies of these books, available via Health Visitors or libraries was seen as a possibly valuable addition to the Ziggy package.
Language Barriers
Although not explored specifically as part of this evaluation, comments were made by parents and early years practitioners that a textless version of the books would be welcomed for children and parents experiencing literacy or other learning barriers. Comments were made that, because the books are relatively text heavy compared to other pre-school story books, this may be particularly off-putting to parents/carers who cannot read. This book could also be used for children under 3 and adapted by parents/carers and educators to meet the learning stage of the child. This was something welcomed by nurseries working with children aged 0-5. A textless version of the books was also suggested as being useful to enable early years practitioners to work with children for whom English is not their first language.
29 GLOW is a digital environment for learning that is available across Scotland and funded by the Scottish Government. It presents schools with a purpose built digital learning solution which supports the delivery of Curriculum for Excellence
Rewarding Good Practice
During the workshops, examples were given of other initiatives that reward schools for taking part, and also reward examples of good practice. In such cases, the rewards were often nominal (e.g. a paper certificate to signify that the school/nursery was actively participating). Feedback suggests that this acts as a good incentive to participation for establishments. Other forms of incentives or prizes were also discussed in workshops, including an annual national or local prize for those evidencing use and impact of the resources.
External Visitors
The main other comment received through the research was that schools and nurseries would like to have visits from a Ziggy character to their school. Several respondents indicated that a visit from a life size Ziggy would really reinforce the messages being taught from the books:
"Visit from characters to nurseries would be great! They could act out the stories for children and bring them to life." [Nursery, Interview]
As an alternative to having Ziggy characters visit establishments, some suggestions were put forward that it would be good if an independent visitor (for example, a Road Safety Officer) could visit the school and share the stories, since children were more likely to listen to a 'new face' conveying the stories. While external visitors seem to be a popular option, it is important to note that no consideration was given in responses to the resource implications of funding these activities. If the cost of such visits was to be paid for by establishments, for example, it is not clear if they would still be popular. An alternative may be for school/nursery staff to dress up as Ziggy (and this was reported by more than one authority) or for Junior Road Safety Officers to play a role in speaking to younger children as 'special visitors'. These provide lower cost alternatives, but may still require significant time and financial resources. They are also options that would need to be initiated and co-ordinated locally, since Road Safety Scotland has no jurisdiction to dictate the use of local staff time or resources.
Staff CPD
Although the interviews generally revealed that staff were comfortable with the resources and confident using them as a teaching resource, some suggestions were made for an accompanying CPD event/activity to keep Ziggy fresh in people's minds, and ensure that staff (particularly new staff) were aware of the full range of resources available.
A CPD event would also potentially provide an opportunity to share some of the innovative practice that appears to be operating around the country, and to further advertise and raise awareness of the online resources. Suggestions were made that this would ideally be led by Road Safety Scotland or local Road Safety Officers, via in-service training. That being said, the cost of providing such events was also recognised as being potentially beyond existing budgets and would also need to be considered against the 'added value' it would contribute, since it seems that most staff who engaged with the research, are already comfortable with their knowledge and use of the resources. Perhaps, the real value would be for newly trained staff and those not currently using the resources.
Notes for Parents
The evaluation revealed that the factual notes for parents that are included in the books may not be being used. Indeed, parents/carers commented that they were unlikely to read the parental notes and concentrate only on the story. Some suggested that trying to incorporate factual guidance in the books may also be a distraction or off-putting feature for both children and adults.
That being said, it was recognised by parents/carers and practitioners that road safety education for parents was essential in reinforcing the messages to children. Early years' practitioners attending the workshops commented that they had witnessed many examples of poor parental practice with regards to road safety, with commonly reported issues including:
- children being allowed to alight vehicles directly onto busy roads, instead of exiting on the pavement side;
- inappropriate use of car seats;
- children being walked on the outside edge of pathways or on kerbs/roads, instead of on the inside of the pavement; and
- children being allowed to run in car parks;
- lack of helmets for children using scooters and bikes.
Stressing parental responsibility was something that all practitioners felt was key, and so there were suggestions that separate parental 'road safety guides' should perhaps be introduced to complement the Ziggy books or replace the guidance already published within them.
Other Collateral
Finally, across the research, requests were made for additional collateral under the Go Safe with Ziggy brand. There were requests for florescent reflectors, stickers, keyrings, wristbands or other collateral to help engage children in the road safety themes. Posters for each of the different books, and for Ziggy's Road Safety Mission overall were suggested as being useful for nurseries/schools to catch parents attention. That being said, some respondents did indicate that if a project or resource became 'overcomplicated' it could put people off using it.
While these types of additional support resources do already exist, and Road Safety Officers have direct access to these for local use, there was limited awareness of what was currently available among those delivery road safety education in nurseries and schools. This suggests that more could be done by RSOs to promote them locally or, in areas where RSOs are no longer available, to let establishments know directly about the full range of resources that exist (e.g. as part of the book order forms).
6 Discussion
6.1 Key Findings
The research has provided considerable insight into how the books are being distributed and used, and also provides valuable feedback on the way that the books are designed and their appropriateness for the early years audience. The main findings in relation to the distribution, use and content of the resources are detailed below.
Distribution and Uptake
- Although the existing distribution process seems to operate well, there is some confusion regarding how and when the books should be ordered and there may be some preference for making the ordering system more flexible throughout the year, including the capacity to order full sets of books at a single ordering point. Given that uptake is usually higher for the existing Autumn distribution, the start of the academic year would seem to be the most appropriate time for a single order approach, if adopted.
- There appears to be a preference for online or email ordering. Although evidence from the survey may have been confounded by the research approach used (i.e. an online survey), qualitative interviews and workshop contributions confirmed that this might be a preferable option going forward.
- The average uptake of the small books among early years establishments is around 47%. While there do not appear to be any clear links between geography or deprivation and uptake, there are clearly some local authorities where ordering activity is consistently higher or lower than the national average.
- There might be scope for collaborative work between Road Safety Scotland, Education Scotland and the Scottish Government to refine and update the existing database of early years establishments that is held and managed by Education Scotland, to ensure that it is up-to-date, and that ordering data is more accessible and can be monitored more regularly to identify areas where uptake is poor. In addition, further exploration could be undertaken to identify contributing variables where uptake is identified as consistently high (i.e. to identify 'what works'). There may also be scope to cross-reference the existing database with those held by, for example, the Care Inspectorate, to ensure that the offer of books reaches the widest audience possible.
- There may be scope for more proactive involvement by RSOs in the regular monitoring of ordering activity at the local level. The intelligence that is already held by Education Scotland regarding who is ordering the books in each local authority is perhaps not being used to maximum effect (i.e. to inform targeted promotion and encourage wider use of the resource).
- The distribution of order forms could potentially be accompanied by more direct communication and information about the online resources, support
resources and the main aims of the books to ensure that the full range of resources are being used to their full potential.
- Awareness of the online resources was found to be particularly poor and there is scope for better signposting of these, perhaps via the distribution and ordering process. Signposting the website more clearly on the small and big books seems key to ensuring that parents are aware of the online resources.
- Local practice for distributing books to parents varies and there is some evidence that a more personal approach to distribution, including guidance or supporting information to parents may ensure that the books are used as intended.
Use
- While most establishments still have and use their big book packs, there seems to be some desire for the big books to be replenished since the original copies have been misplaced or become worn in several establishments. A preference for hardback, spiral bound or board books seems to be evident among a reasonable number of staff, since the format at present can be unwieldy, and may be one of the main things that puts teachers off using the big books at present.
- The small books appear to be well received overall. The Halloween book appears to be one of the most popular and is well used for organising classroom based activities, possibly because it comes at the start of the year and has a clear theme.
- Some of the small books appear to be ordered more by establishments than others and to be more recognisable to parents/carers and practitioners alike. It is not clear form the research why this is the case. Given that each of the books contains different road safety messages, there may be scope for ensuring the other books achieve equal distribution to ensure that the messages contained within them are not being missed.
- The big and small books are being used to complement outside active learning and are being used in a range of innovative ways. There is perhaps appetite from staff to reinforce the messages from the books with more interactive talks, and while there may be a preference for this to include visits from external partners, the proportionality and cost implications of this would need to be considered.
- Parents and carers report a child-led approach to using the books, where children act as the main prompts for use. The books are also being used as a reference in cases where children fail to act safely.
Content and Design
- Most respondents who took part in this research reported that children liked the Ziggy character and generally appear to engage well with the style of the
books. The Ziggy brand is clear and recognisable and the use of repetition across the series of books is welcomed.
- Over 75% of survey respondents rated the appearance, length, age appropriateness, format and usefulness of the books as either 'good' or 'excellent'.
- A number of respondents identified the length of the books and the sophistication of some of the stories as potential limitations. Feedback suggests that this is especially true for ante-pre-school children and means that early years practitioners and parents are adapting the books to meet their own needs. This in itself is not necessarily a limitation, since the books were designed with the Curriculum for Excellence in mind, which encourages nonprescriptive learning based on children's individual interests/preferences. It may, however, be acting as a barrier to more frequent use, in some cases.
- The online resources, soft toys and interactive resources all received positive feedback from those who had used them and there is potential for greater use of these by raising awareness of the full range of Ziggy resources, especially among parents and carers.
- There may be scope to expand the Ziggy series to include younger readers and bridge the gap between the existing 'buggy book' and the ante-pre-school year. Parents, in particular, stressed that a book aimed at children aged 12-18 months would be helpful when children were leaning to walk and having their first outdoor independent walking experiences. Introducing the Ziggy character at this early age would also mean that children were familiar with the character before they received the first ante-pre-school book. While there are two online books that perhaps fill this gap ('Spot the Traffic' and 'Cross the Road with Ziggy'), the value of making hard copies of these books available could be further explored.
- Although a new addition to the Go Safe with Ziggy resource, the journey pack is already being well received and, based on comments from professionals and parents alike, it appears to further improve the home links agenda.
- There was a strong desire from all stakeholders to see an accessible app that can be used in both the education and home environment. This may have value beyond the resources already provided online, since it may be perceived to be a safer, stand-alone resource that children could use independently. It could also be developed to not require internet access, although it would require a smartphone or tablet. Success, however, would be contingent on raising awareness of any such development, to prevent similar barriers that currently exist regarding awareness and use of the online resources being repeated.
Overall, the findings from the evaluation suggest that the Go Safe with Ziggy books are a strong and much appreciated resource, that are being used, for the most part, to encourage active approaches to teaching and learning (including interactive and experiential learning). There may be some scope for small adjustments or enhancements to both the distribution process and the content/format of some of the resources to maximise their use but, on the whole, the resource is well received as a road safety tool for the early years.
6.2 The Findings in Context
The Go Safe with Ziggy resources were developed following a consultation with key stakeholders on what they wanted from an early years resource 30 . The evaluation suggests that the new resources have been successful in meeting many of the desired criteria that were set out. This includes achieving a core recognisable character in Ziggy who provides a strong link between the separate books and acts as a recognisable brand. The books cover both urban and rural settings and the key messages are clearly linked to Curriculum for Excellence to make clear how the books fit in the wider educational context. The availability of resources in different formats is welcomed and the use of home links is supported. All of these were requirements revealed by the earlier consultation.
The requirement for a resource that children could learn from more independently was also highlighted from previous research and this seems to be something that the Ziggy resource is achieving. The 'free' use of the big books in nurseries that was described here evidences that children are using the books independently as well as with adults. At home, children are being encouraged to lead the choice of books and copies are left available for children to use as and when they want for home-based reading activities. Independent use is encouraged after P1 for children as they grow older. The suggestion for an app indicates that there is a preference for encouraging additional independent learning, if possible.
Perhaps the one area where the new resources do not appear to reflect the preferences expressed in the previous consultation is the length and complexity of the texts, especially those where multiple messages are conveyed within a single story. Whilst some of the books do contain only 2-3 key messages, others are more diffuse and this might not meet the expectations of parents/carers, as expressed in earlier research. Limiting all of the texts to a smaller number of key themes may be more effective in ensuring that young readers take away the key messages. Whilst the books also offer 'side' stories to engage children, these also possibly detract from the main messages, and may be unnecessary if condensed versions of the books were sought.
The research into the CTCS 31 also showed that factual notes for parents were not being read, and this seems to remain true of the Ziggy resources. The design of a covering letter explaining the rationale and purpose of the books was suggested by participants to help to bridge this gap, but this would need to be tested to understand its likely efficacy. It may be that parents and carers prefer to use their own existing road safety knowledge when sharing the books with children, but this does mean that there is potential for some 'current' road safety education messages (such as appropriate use of car seats and so on) to be lost.
30 ODS Consulting (2009) Road Safety Early Years Resource Consultation: Analysis of Responses http://www.roadsafetyscotland.org.uk/publications-and-statistics/road-safety-early-years-resourceconsultation-analysis-responses,
31 ODS (2006) Increasing Membership of the Children's Traffic Club in Scotland in Areas of High Deprivation, Scottish Executive Social Research,
http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2006/07/17113255/0
Previous research 32 showed that uptake of CTCS membership in Scotland (the road safety programme for this age group that preceded Go Safe with Ziggy) was around 50%. This is similar to the percentage uptake in small books that was found in this study, based on Education Scotland distribution data, although it is recognised that there are some limitations to the reliability of this data (discussed above). Given that feedback is largely positive among those who do already order and use the books, the main challenge seems to be in encouraging more widespread uptake.
Encouragingly, unlike the previous research, there is little in the analysis that points towards differences in ordering by deprivation or rurality. Variance, instead, appears to be at the collective local authority level. This research was not able to identify with confidence the reasons behind the books not being ordered to all educational establishments despite universal entitlement. This is largely because the majority of practitioners who engaged with the survey had previously ordered the books due to the research design. Of the small number in the survey who had not ordered the books, the main reason for not doing so was a lack of awareness. This suggests that awareness raising in targeted areas may be the first step to increasing overall uptake, working with individual local authorities that currently appear to be engaging less well.
Previous research 33 has also shown that there is generally a need for more dissemination of good local practice in road safety education, training and publicity. This was echoed by those who attended the workshops, as well as among some survey and telephone interview participants and there seems a genuine appetite for CPD activity among early years teachers to learn more about what is available and how it is being used elsewhere. It is recognised that much of this good practice is already documented as an online resource for educators but, again, lack of awareness of the online resources means that this may not be being used to maximum effect.
Finally, one of the questions for the evaluation was to consider whether the Go Safe with Ziggy resources are perceived as offering 'value for money'. It is recognised that it is difficult to place an economic value on resources of this kind, and that much of the value can only be seen in the long term, with children remembering the messages and staying safe. Linking the success of the resources to any decrease in child road causalities is perhaps tenuous, since it is recognised that children's safety as pedestrians and road users is influenced by many factors beyond their own control (including other road users). It does seem, however, that there would be merit moving forward in trying to capture feedback on a regular, localised basis on what children and parents are taking from the books as a measure of the potential impact they may be having. This is missing at present and so makes an assessment of the impact and value of the resource difficult to achieve.
32 ibid
33 MVA Consultancy (2009) Building on Success: Improving the Delivery of Road Safety Education, Training and Publicity, Department for Transport: London
6.3 Strengths and Weaknesses of the Resource
Table 16 summarises the main strengths and weaknesses of the resource identified from the research, reflecting the views of the full range of different stakeholders who took part. Most of the strengths relate to the style and design of the books, while the weaknesses relate mostly to communication/awareness barriers.
Table 16: Summary of Strengths and Weaknesses of the Resource
Strengths
Weaknesses
- The Ziggy character, catchphrases and branding
- Book design (graphics and images)
- Universal availability (to those who order)
- Adaptability
- Multiple formats (accessibility)
- Links to Curriculum for Excellence
- Interactive resources
- Length and complexity of some of the stories for some of the younger, ante-pre-school children
- Confusion/inconsistency with some of the main road safety messages
- Problems identifying the most appropriate person within establishments to direct communications
- Home links
- Lack of awareness of full range of resources
6.4 Opportunities and Challenges Moving Forward
Table 17 highlights the main opportunities and challenges moving forward, taking into account what parents/carers and professionals have reported. Several opportunities for further developing the resources were raised across the research strands, and there seems to be a genuine enthusiasm for the resources to continue to evolve and expand into new mediums. While this is a positive finding from the work, it must be recognised that the time and other financial resources that would be required to deliver against some of the wishes expressed by parents and practitioners alike are considerable. There is also a risk that resource is invested in developments or additions which are not used or under-used meaning that the costs outweigh any additional road safety returns. Inspiring changes to the ways in which the existing resources are used as well as raising their profile to strengthen their presence in the curriculum may be more realistic solutions.
Table 17: Summary of Opportunities and Challenges Moving Forward
Opportunities
Challenges
- Use of social media or apps for awareness/promotion/access
- Featuring the link to online resources/website more clearly on the hard copy books
- Involvement of other professionals in the promotion of the initiative (e.g. Health Visitors)
- CPD/Sharing Good Practice
- Incentivising or rewarding use/participation
- Updating and monitoring distribution lists
- Identifying new establishments to be included on the database
- How to increase awareness of the full range of resources
- Engaging parents and monitoring use of the resources at home
- Measuring impacts
It is recognised that any resource will only ever be as good as the parent/practitioner who employs it, and so ensuring that books continue to reach the right people, and that their importance is communicated and understood remains the main challenge moving forward.
6.5 Conclusions
Overall, the Go Safe with Ziggy resource is well liked, and has many strong and attractive features compared to the resource that preceded it. There is a strong brand and a recognisable character that children, educators and parents on the whole seem to be engaging with well. The design of the books evaluated positively, with the length and complexity of the books being mentioned by some as providing the only barrier to use among the younger aged children. Parental understanding of the purpose and rationale for the books could be improved, but neither of these issues seem to be creating significant barriers to use. The full range of resources is also welcomed, but some materials are perhaps being under-utilised due to a lack of awareness.
Based on the feedback gathered, the resource itself requires little in terms of redesign or development. One suggestion would be the simplification of storylines and main road safety messages for the youngest children. It seems that the new additions to the Ziggy package, including the journey pack, are likely to help engage users even more, and the online stories for children between the baby and preschool years seem to be a move in the right direction to fill a gap identified for this age group.
The biggest challenge, moving forward, is in ensuring that the right people are made aware of the full range of resources, and are encouraged to order them. Updating and refining the ordering and distribution process seems to be key to maximising the future success of the resource and helping it realise its full potential. This will ensure that children in their early years, and their parents and carers, continue to learn the importance of 'going safe'.
Appendix A: Summary of Stories and Road Safety Messages
Title and Story Theme
Main Road Safety Messages
Ziggy and the Lollipop:
The main story covers the family's journey to school accompanied by Ziggy. This story covers safe walking on the pavement as well as safe road crossing behaviour/use of a lollipop person/crossing patrol officer.
Ziggy's Halloween Wish:
The story focusses on the importance of visibility when walking/travelling at night. The story revolves around a night-time journey made at Halloween and the need for pedestrians and road users to make themselves seen to traffic.
Ziggy Visits Granny:
The story specifically addresses use of size/age appropriate car seats and proper use of seatbelts. The book also focusses on walking in the countryside and the need to face oncoming traffic when walking and standing back when cars pass. There are also messages around holding hands where there is no pavement, finding a safe place to cross and ensuring that you are visible to traffic.
Ziggy Goes Zab-a-ding-aWheeeee:
The book has three main sections: the first introduces the importance of wearing a protective helmet, the second focusses on use of the pedestrian crossings and the final section demonstrates that wearing a helmet allows children to safely enjoy using bikes/scooters.
Ziggy's Sunny Holiday:
The story focusses on the dangers of getting out of the car/using the 'safe side' and safe behaviours in car parking areas. The initial part of the
- it's safer to hold hands
- when you stop, keep your toes behind the kerb
- as you walk along, look out for driveways
- always wait before you cross
- a lollipop person helps children to cross the road safely
- look and listen for traffic
- we have to look and listen for all sorts of traffic, not just cars
- it's important to find a safe place to cross even if that means walking a bit further
- stop and wait with your toes behind the kerb
- look both ways and keep listening for traffic
- always wait until it is safe before your cross
- dressing brightly helps drivers to see you
- it's important to sit in a car seat that fits your size
- being securely clicked in is the safest way to travel
- on roads with no pavements, it's safer to hold hands
- on roads with no pavements, always walk on the side the traffic is coming towards you and stand in when vehicles drive past
- zebra crossings help us to cross the road safely
- it's safer to wear a helmet when you're on a bike
- use a crossing to get across the road if you can - even if it means walking a bit further along
- remember to wait and hold hands until you see the green man
- check that all traffic has stopped before you go straight across
- the park is a safe place to play in
- it's safer and smarter to sit nicely in your car seat
- always wait until the grown-up with you tells you it's safe to go before you get out of your car
Title and Story Theme
book also builds logically on the main messages presented in the previous books. A further theme that is introduced is inappropriate driving, and teaching children that not all drivers follow the rules of the road/stop at traffic lights.
Ziggy and Maggie Start School: The book does not have a single road safety message, nor does it introduce any 'new' road safety messages, but instead reiterates almost all of the learning from previous books in the series.
Main Road Safety Messages
- car parks can be dangerous
- it's safer and smarter to stay close to the grown-up with you at all times
- always find a safe place to cross, even if this means you need to walk a bit further
- check that all the traffic has stopped before you go straight across, even if the green man is on
- it's always safer to walk a bit further to use a proper crossing if there is one, like a Zebra, Pelican or Puffin crossing or to cross with a Lollipop person
- hold hands and wait with your toes behind the kerb
- look both ways and listen for traffic
- if you're using a crossing, always wait until the traffic has stopped, even if the green man is on
- when it's safe walk straight across and keep looking and listening as you go
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DUMPSTERS & WATER POLLUTION
It's truly amazing just how many dumpsters there are in a typical watershed. There will be one to a dozen for every office, shop,
restaurant, convenience store, supermarket, etc. If just one in twenty dumpsters is leaking then this could make for a large amount of water pollution. Fortunately, keeping dumpsters benign comes down to a few easy maintenance steps.
Most dumpsters are located in areas open to the public so it's also easy to identify those which are wellmaintained and those needing greater attention. We suggest you pass this factsheet on to dumpster ownersrenters in your watershed. If a dumpster looks wellmaintained then include a Thank You note. If you find problem indicators, then point this out, but make it clear you are a volunteer and not an official. Refer the owner-renter to the local health department or code enforcement agency if they want an official opinion.
MINIMIZING DUMPSTER WATER POLLUTION
The following steps will reduce the potential for dumpster pollution:
1. Keep the lid closed to prevent rain entry;
2. Whenever possible, locate dumpsters away from storm drain inlets;
3. Dumpsters should sit on a paved surface, not on bare soil;
4. Dispose of kitchen and restaurant wastes (e.g. fats, oils, and grease) in special grease dumpsters;
Inlet & Dumpster Leak
5. Ensure trash, grease, etc. doesn't overflow;
6. Avoid disposing of liquids in a dumpster;
7. When cleaning the dumpster interior minimize the amount of water used and discharge the liquid to a sanitary sewer (if permitted); and
8. Get a dumpster replaced when it begins rusting, cracks appear or other damage occurs which may allow liquids to seep from the dumpster.
LOCATING PROBLEM DUMPSTERS
Drive the roads throughout your watershed and see if dumpsters are present at apartment complexes, office buildings, shopping centers, restaurants, stand-alone businesses, convenience stores, government offices, etc. Usually dumpsters are located behind buildings. Newer ones may be screened from view with fencing. Please do NOT enter areas marked Private, No Trespassing, and so forth .
ASSESSING DUMPSTERS FOR PROBLEM INDICATORS In addition to looking for the eight minimization items to the left, check for indicators that the dumpster has reached the actively polluting stage. Look for liquid seeping from the container or stains showing where liquid had seeped downhill to the nearest storm drain inlet or waterway.
White stain is from dumpster leakage
THANK YOU FOR WELL-MAINTAINED DUMPSTERS
Consider something like a thank-you email or letter sent to the owners of well-maintained dumpsters. Say that you are a volunteer working to keep local waters safe for people and fish. Part of your volunteer activities include a survey of dumpsters for pollution reduction measures. If your local or state government has prepared a dumpster factsheet then include a copy or this factsheet with your correspondence. This simple step of thanking someone for doing the right thing can provide many benefits lasting far into the future. See an example email-letter on the next page.
GETTING POLLUTING DUMPSTERS FIXED
As with all pollution sources, you have two options for achieving correction:
* Contact the owner of the establishment served by the dumpster; or
* Report the problem to a government agency (health department, code enforcement, etc.).
If you contact the owner-renter then assume they are not aware that a problem exists. Assume also that they will respond reasonably if you are reasonable and courteous. Make certain that they know you are a concerned citizen, not a government official. Urge them to contact the local health department or code enforcement agency if they want an official opinion on the condition of their dumpster. Provide them with a copy of any government factsheets available or this one. Allow a week or two to correct serious problems. The correction for a leaking dumpster is usually a new container. A larger dumpster or an additional one may be needed where the current container is overflowing. You will find a sample email-letter to the right.
Rain can enter open dumpsters
THE DUMPSTER DATABASE
CEDS has created a database where you can record your findings. If enough folks enter data then it may serve as a way of identifying localities with an unusually high number of problem dumpsters. This would then allow the Chesapeake Bay advocacy community to provide the additional support needed to achieve correction. Similarly, localities with a low number of problem dumpsters are likely taking steps that deserve public recognition and which others should emulate. To add your findings to the Dumpster Database go to: ceds.org/dumpster This factsheet can be downloaded from: ceds.org/audit
THANK Y OU EMAIL-LETTER
Dear Ms. Smith:
I'm a volunteer with the Jones River Watershed Association. Our goal is to restore all of the River and her tributary streams to a condition we call Child Safe & Friendly Waters. Extensive pollution currently keeps these waters from being a place where our kids can play. A small part of this pollution comes from poorly maintained dumpsters. I and a number of other volunteers recently participated in a survey of the watershed to assess the condition of many dumpsters. We were delighted to see that those serving (establishment name) have benefitted from good maintenance. The enclosed (attached) factsheet provides further detail on dumpster maintenance. On behalf of the Association and our children I offer our heartfelt thanks for keeping your dumpster in good condition. Sincerely, Jane Doe
PROBLEM FOUND EMAIL-LETTER
Dear Ms. Smith:
I'm a volunteer with the Jones River Watershed Association. Our goal is to restore all of the River and her tributary streams to a condition we call Child Safe & Friendly Waters. Extensive pollution currently keeps these waters from being a place where our kids can safely play. A small part of this pollution comes from poorly maintained dumpsters. I and a number of other volunteers recently participated in a survey of the watershed to assess the condition of numerous dumpsters. We believe we have found the following issues with the dumpster(s) serving (establishment name):
* lid was open which could allow rain to cause liquid to flow from dumpster; and
* dumpster has begun to rust which could lead to holes allowing contaminated liquid to flow from the dumpster.
We are volunteers, not government officials. If you would like an official opinion on the condition of the dumpster then I suggest contacting the Jones County Health Department. The enclosed (attached) factsheet provides further detail on dumpster maintenance.
Sincerely,
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Physical Education Fitness Plan Study Guide
The following topics will be covered on the assessment:
* Components of health-related fitness (flexibility, body composition, cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, and muscular endurance)
* FITT Principle
* Training Principles
* Components of skill-related fitness (agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time, and speed)
* Careers in health and fitness
* Fitness assessments(e.g., Presidential Fitness Challenge)
* Fitness logs and goal setting throughout life
* Health and Fitness Plans
* Safety Principles
* R.I.C.E
* Warm up/Cool down
This packet includes the following documents to help you study:
1. Lake Washington School District Fitness Power Standards that will be covered on the assessment
2. Lake Washington School District Proficiency Scales for the standards that will be covered on the assessment
3. Information to help you study for the assessment
Addition information can be found at:
* Careers in health and fitness: https://www.shapeamerica.org/career/fields/
* Fitness assessments:
https://www.hhs.gov/fitness/index.html
http://www.apa.org/pi/aging/resources/guides/older.aspx
* Fitness and changes of life
1
Fitness Level II | Power Standards
3. Understands the components of health-related fitness and interprets information from feedback, evaluation, and self-assessment in order to improve performance.
4. Understands the components of skill-related fitness and interprets information from feedback, evaluation, and self-assessment in order to improve performance.
5. Develops and monitors a fitness plan.
Please note: Power standards 1 and 2 are movement standards so will not be assessed on the Fitness Knowledge Assessment.
2
Proficiency Scales | Fitness II
Power Standard 3: Understands the components of health-related fitness and interprets information from feedback, evaluation, and self-assessment in order to improve performance.
3
Proficiency Scales | Fitness II
Power Standard 4: Understands the components of skill-related fitness and interprets information from feedback, evaluation, and self-assessment in order to improve performance.
4
Proficiency Scales | Fitness II
Power Standard 5: Analyzes personal fitness information to develop and monitor a fitness plan.
5
1 Not At Standard
With help, partial understanding of some of the simpler and more complex content, details, vocabulary, concepts, procedures, processes, and skills.
6
The Five Components of Health-Related Fitness
Adapted from the Five for Life curricular materials
Understanding cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility and body composition, known as the Five Components of Fitness, is important for improving health and performance.
Cardiorespiratory endurance is the ability of the heart, blood, blood vessels and lungs to supply enough oxygen and necessary fuel to the muscles during long periods of physical activity. Participating in aerobic activities is the best way to improve cardiorespiratory endurance because they require the body to use large amounts of oxygen for sustained periods of time. With the increased need for oxygen, the heart must beat faster to pump more blood throughout the body. In turn, over time, the heart, which is a muscle, will become stronger and will be able to pump more blood with each beat, therefore, beating at a slower rate while circulating the same amount of blood. This increased efficiency enables a person to work, exercise and play more often and more vigorously for longer periods of time without getting tired.
Muscular Strength is the ability of muscles to push or pull with total force. Increasing muscular strength allows a person to lift, push, or pull with more force. This is a benefit in any athletic situation, but it is also important for other life situations like when the car has a flat tire or when the door is stuck.
Muscular Endurance is the ability of muscles to repeat a movement many times or to hold a position without stopping to rest. Improving muscular endurance allows a person to increase physical activity. A person with improved muscular endurance can accomplish more physical work by moving longer and taking fewer breaks.
Muscular strength comes before muscular endurance. Before a brick layer can stack hundreds of bricks a day, a brick layer must have the muscular strength to lift the first brick. Once a brick layer has the initial strength to life the first brick, the brick layer can begin to build muscular endurance.
One of the best ways to build muscular strength and muscular endurance is through resistance training, or activities that place an additional force against the muscle or muscle group. Some examples of resistance training include weight training, push-ups and crunches.
Muscles react positively to strenuous activity and negatively to inactivity. Therefore, the old adage, "Use them or lose them," is true. When the body is inactive, a large percentage of strength is lost over time. Likewise, as the body ages bone density tends to decrease which can lead to weak bones (osteoporosis). While resistance training, along with engaging in an active lifestyle, improves muscular strength and muscular endurance, it also can improve bone density. Therefore, building muscles provides health benefits that can last throughout life.
7
Physical performance will also be enhanced through the development of muscular strength and muscular endurance. As muscles become stronger and gain endurance, a person will be able to work, exercise or play more often, with more power for longer periods of time.
Resistance training to develop muscular strength and muscular endurance also helps improve or control body composition. As resistance training increases muscle mass, a part of fat-free mass, fat mass decreases. Because muscles use calories to work, the more muscle mass a person has, the more calories will be used. Using more calories reduces the number of calories stored as fat mass. Therefore, building muscular strength and muscular endurance is a lifelong habit needed to maintain or improve body composition.
Flexibility is the muscles' ability to move a joint through a full range of motion, and staying flexible is important to health and performance. As the body ages, the muscles, tendons, and ligaments stiffen, lose elasticity and become less flexible. As a result, a person's ability to perform movements may be hindered and may increased the risk of injury. Improving flexibility decreases a person's risk of injury, prevents post-exercise pain and helps relieve emotional tension.
Daily activities such as combing hair, tying shoes and participating in athletics require flexibility. Golfers need flexibility in the hips and shoulders to allow them to rotate the golf club farther and in turn hit the ball a greater distance. Softball and baseball players need flexibility in their shoulders and arms to that they can bring the ball back farther, which allows them to throw the ball harder.
Flexibility is required for everyday movements, from tying shoes to throwing a ball. If a person does not perform activities that improve flexibility, then one day the person may not be able to perform those activities. Therefore, activities to improve flexibility should be performed daily.
Dynamic and static stretches are safe and effective methods to improve flexibility. Dynamic stretches involve moving parts of the body continuously while gradually increasing reach, speed of movement or both gently throughout a full range of motion. Static stretches involve stretching a muscle to the point of mild discomfort for an extended period of time. These stretches can be performed as part of the warm-up and/or cool down phase of a fitness program or as a separate flexibility program.
Body Composition is the combination of fat mass and fat-free mass, including bones, muscles, organs, and water. Healthy levels of fat mass are essential for insulation, the protection of organs, the absorption of vitamins, nerve conduction and as an energy source. Body composition is usually referred to as a percentage of body fat.
A healthy level of fat mass for men is between 10% and 20% of total body weight and a healthy level of fat mass for women is between 15% and 25% of total body weight. Improving and maintaining body composition at healthy levels will reduce the risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, strokes, certain types of cancer and obesity.
8
The percentage of fat a person has is affected by two factors; the number of calories consumed (energy in) and the amount of activity performed and calories used (energy out). Both of these factors are controllable. A combined effort of eating a healthy diet (energy in) and increasing physical activity (energy out) is the best approach to maintaining a healthy level of body fat and improving or maintaining an overall body composition.
The benefit of understanding cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition, known as the Five Components of Fitness, is immeasurable and is important for improving health and performance.
Key vocabulary words that will be introduced during this unit are:
* Body Composition: The combination of fat mass and fat-free mass, including fat, bones, muscles, organs, and water.
* Cardiorespiratory Endurance: The ability of the heart, blood, blood vessels and lungs to supply oxygen to the muscles during long periods of physical activity.
* Flexibility: The muscles' ability to move a joint through a full range of motion.
* Muscular Endurance: The ability of the muscles to repeat a movement many times or hold a position without stopping to rest.
* Muscular Strength: The ability of a muscle or muscles to push or pull with its total force.
* Static Stretches: Involves stretching a muscle to the point of mild discomfort for an extended period of time.
* Dynamic Stretches: Involves moving parts of the body continuously while gradually increasing reach, speed of movement or both gently through a full range of motion.
* Resistance Training: An activity that places an additional force against the muscle or muscle group.
9
Training Principles
Adopted from the Five for Life curricular materials
When developing and implementing a personal fitness plan, it is important to understand the training principles: overload, progression, specificity, and rest and recovery. Understanding the training principles and how to apply those principles increases a person's ability to develop a fitness plan to meet personal goals toward improved health and performance. It also increases their ability to adjust those plans as necessary. A well thought out training program uses the FITT Principle to produce overload and includes progression, specificity as well as rest and recovery.
The training principles are used to help individuals achieve exercise goals in many different careers. Since the beginning of athletic competition, the principles of training have been used to improve performance. Strength coaches use them to design workout programs for top athletes. Two-tenths of a second in the hundred meter dash or two inches in the high jump might be the difference between being a good college athlete and an Olympian. One Olympic athlete reported that he trained for eight years to take 1.5 seconds off his 200 meter time. That improvement in time was the difference between being a good high school sprinter and an Olympic champion with a world record. Personal trainers use the training principles to help movie stars lose weight or bulk up as they prepare for roles in upcoming movies. Firefighters and police officers use these principles to maintain their fitness in order to perform their jobs.
The FITT Principle is a set of guidelines that help set up a workout routine to help get the most out of the exercise program. FITT stands for: frequency (how often you exercise), intensity (how hard you work during exercise), time (how long you exercise or how many repetitions you complete), and type (what type of exercise you are doing). For positive changes to occur in health and performance, the body must adapt to an increased demand in one of three variables of the FITT Principle. Increasing the frequency, intensity or time (FITT Principle) of an activity beyond normal performance provides a reason for the body to adapt or change to meet the new demand and make positive changes in health and performance. Training the body beyond normal performance demonstrates the principle of overload.
For example, to improve cardiorespiratory endurance, a person who runs a ten-minute mile three times a week could create overload by changing the frequency of a person's workouts from three to four times per week, increasing the intensity by running at a faster pace that a ten-minute mile, or increasing the time by running at the same pace but for a longer distance. Each of these changes would create an overload by placing a demand on the body beyond normal performance.
With overload, the body adapts slowly and makes small changes toward improvement over time. Therefore, it is important to use the principle of progression correctly. It would be unreasonable to expect the person who ran a tenminute mile three times a week, to increase all three FITT variables at once. Because the body requires periods of rest, running eight-minute miles five days a week would be difficult. The drastic difference in overload could lead to exhaustion or injury, causing the body to break down rather than adapt, thus preventing progression. To achieve desired results, the principle of progression, or gradually increasing frequency, intensity or time to create overload must be applied correctly, allowing the body to make subtle changes gradually over time.
Most athletes know that getting enough rest after exercise is essential to high-level performance, but many still overtrain and feel guilty when they take a day off. The body repairs and strengthens itself in the time between workouts, and continuous training can actually weaken the strongest athletes. Therefore, it is essential to incorporate the principle of rest and recovery into a workout schedule. Building recovery time into any training program is important because this is the time that the body adapts to the stress of exercise and the real training effect takes place. Recovery also allows the body to replenish energy stores and repair damaged tissues. Exercise, or any other physical work, causes changes in the body such as muscle tissue breakdown and the depletion of energy stores (muscle glycogen), as well as fluid loss. Recovery time allows these stores to be replenished and allows tissue repair to occur. Without sufficient time to repair and replenish, the body will continue to break down from intensive exercise. That is why is suggested that people work any muscle group between three and five times a week.
Besides overload, progression, and rest and recovery, it is important to consider the principle of specificity when designing a fitness plan to improve health and performance. The principle of specificity states that training is specific to the muscles used and the component of fitness trained. Therefore, jogging every day would not be the best way to improve muscular strength. Likewise, performing squats and lunges with resistance would not be the most effective way to improve cardiorespiratory endurance. It is important that the type of training performed matches the desired results.
Studies have shown that to achieve the greatest improvements in cardiorespiratory endurance, a person's heart should beat at and intensity of 65% to 85% of its maximum heart rate or and intensity level (RPE) of 4. To achieve this intensity, a person should perform large muscle movements that create an increased demand for oxygen. Activities such as jogging, power walking, skating, bicycling and swimming use large muscle groups, produce a demand for oxygen and therefore raise the heart rate.
Performing the above activities for a minimum of 10 minutes at a time and for a total of 60 minutes a day with a frequency of at least five exercise sessions per week, would be the best way to improve cardiorespiratory endurance and represents the principle of specificity.
Continuing to use specificity with progression, to create additional overload, will provide the best results toward achieving exercise goals. The body will not improve unless it is stimulated to do so. Therefore, it is important to provide an additional overload for new improvements to occur. As the body slowly adapts to the increased demands of the workout, it is essential to remain patient and consistent to see changes in health and performance. Using the training principles consistently in a fitness program will achieve the results desired in health and performance.
Key vocabulary words that will be introduced during this unit are:
* FITT Principle: The variables of frequency, intensity, time, and type.
* Intensity: Training load expressed as weight, speed, or heart rate.
* Overload: An increase in one or more of the FITT variables to provide and additional workload.
* Progression: Gradual increase in one or more of the FITT variables to create an overload.
* Specificity: Exercise training is specific to the muscles used and the component of fitness trained.
* Time: Minutes or repetitions.
* Type: Activity performed.
Components of Skill-Related Fitness
Adopted from the Five for Life curricular materials
In order for people to function efficiently and effectively without injury, to enjoy leisure, to be healthy, and to resist disease they need to be physically fit. Physical fitness is divided into five health and six skill-related components.
| Components of Health-Related Fitness | Components of Skill-Related Fitness |
|---|---|
| Cardiorespiratory Endurance Muscular Strength Muscular Endurance Flexibility Body Composition | Agility Balance Power Speed Coordination Reaction Time |
You have already learned about the five components of health-related fitness. This article goes into more detail about the six components of skill-related fitness.
Six Components of Skill-Related Fitness
There are six skill-related fitness components: agility, balance, coordination, speed, power, and reaction time. Skilled athletes typically excel in all six areas.
* Agility is the ability to rapidly and accurately change the direction of the body. Agility is important in sports such as tennis which requires players to change direction quickly to hit the ball.
* Balance is the ability to control or stabilize the body when a person is standing still or moving. Balance is important in sports such as dance, gymnastics, ice hockey, figure skating, and other sports requiring extreme control.
* Coordination is the ability to use the senses together with body parts in order to perform motor tasks smoothly and accurately. Coordination is important in activities such as dribbling a basketball, juggling, and is also vital for sports involving hitting objects.
* Speed is the ability to move your body or parts of your body swiftly. It is the amount of time it takes the body to perform specific tasks. Many sports rely on speed to gain advantage over your opponents. Sprinters, cyclists, soccer players, and swimmers are among the many athletes that rely on speed.
* Power is the ability to move the body parts swiftly while applying the maximum force of the muscles. Power is a combination of both speed and muscular strength. Fullbacks in football use power to muscle their way through other players to advance the ball. Other activities that require power include shot put, a volleyball serve, and a basketball dunk.
* Reaction Time is the ability to reach or respond quickly to what you hear, see, or feel. An athlete quickly coming off the blocks early in a swimming or track relay, or stealing a base in baseball needs quick reaction time.
Goal Setting for Life
Adapted from the Five for Life curricular materials
The long-term success of any plan is determined by setting and adjusting realistic short-term goals that can be achieved in 2-4 weeks and long-term goals that can be achieved in 2 months or more. As a person ages, maintaining fitness and health and performance becomes a primary focus. Therefore, creating a fitness and health plan and setting goals is essential for a person to maintain or improve overall health and performance.
To maintain or improve health, it is important to create a fitness and health plan that includes health habits such as nutrition, hydration, sleep and activity. As a person ages, the person's nutrition, hydration, sleep, activity and fitness needs change. As a result, it is critical to set and adjust realistic goals in these areas to maintain or improve health.
Life is more fun and more enjoyable for people who participate in activities in which they feel confident about their performance. Feeling confident about performance is also when motivates people to continue to participate in activities. Setting realistic goals for performance gives a person a sense of accomplishment when those goals are reached, enhances the enjoyment of participation in activities, increases the likelihood of continued participation and therefore improves performance. Because fitness, nutrition, hydration, and sleep also play a role in performance it is important to set goals in these areas as well.
Setting realistic goals in activity, as well as other health habits such as nutrition, hydration and sleep, play an important role in maintaining or improving health and performance.
Using the fitness measurements to set goals in the five components of fitness, then periodically practicing the measurements and re-evaluating the goals, allows a person to achieve short and long-term success in improving fitness and health and performance. Once a person understands the process of goal setting, or creating a plan for improvement, and how to work towards their goals, it can be used to help them maintain or improve fitness, health and performance for life.
Goal Setting for Life
Adapted from the Five for Life curricular materials
When setting short-term goals that can be achieved in 2 to 4 weeks and long-term goals that are achieved in 2 months or more, the Five for Life program used the S.M.A.R.T. Goal Setting Strategy. The acronym S.M.A.R.T stands for Specific, Measurable, Aggressive, Realistic, and Time-bound.
Goal Setting for Life
Adapted from the Five for Life curricular materials
An example of how to use goal setting is explained in the following scenario: Sam is a web developer who spends at least 8 hours a day sitting behind a computer, eats fast food every day and occasionally plays basketball for fun. Even though Sam is only 28 years old, he is beginning to notice that he does not feel healthy, is having trouble playing a full game of basketball and is gaining weight. To regain his health and performance, Sam has set realistic short-term and long-term goals. His short-term goal is to feel better, and his long-term goal is to lose 10 pounds. He feels that a balanced plan for his health and performance would include the following: more movement and activity breaks during the workday, resistance training two times a week using the FITT Principle, eating less fast food and including more fruits and vegetables in his diet, drinking more water, playing basketball two times a week, and getting at least eight hours of sleep per night. Sam believes this balanced plan for health and performance will not only help him feel better but it will also help prevent heart disease, which runs in his family.
To organize the goals Sam has chosen, he is using the FITT tables below. Sam's goal for his resistance training plan is to tone his body by developing both muscular strength and muscular endurance.
| Component of | Frequency | Intensity | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fitness | (Sessions per Week) | (Resistance) | (Repetitions) |
| Muscular Strength | 2-3 | Heavy | 4-8 |
| Muscular Strength Muscular Endurance | 2-3 | Moderate | 9-12 |
| Muscular Endurance | 2-3 | Light | 13-20 |
Sam is playing basketball 3 times a week and taking 10-minute walks during his breaks five days a week to reach his cardiorespiratory endurance goals.
| Component of | Frequency | Intensity | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fitness | (Sessions per Week) | (% of MHR) | (Minutes) |
| Cardiorespiratory Endurance | 5+ | 65%-85% | 10+ |
After three weeks of following this balanced plan for health and performance, Sam felt better. He also noticed that he was back to playing a full game of basketball without becoming really tired. Sam believed he was able to achieve his short-term goal because he followed his plan and it was realistic and attainable. Sam continued to follow this plan and, after 6 months, had lost 10 pounds and he felt much stronger. Because Sam's plan worked, he adjusted his goals to continue his balanced plan for health and performance to maintain what he had accomplished.
Because the long-term success of any plan is determined by setting and adjusting realistic short-term and long-term goals, goal setting should be used consistently until it becomes a lifetime habit. Not only can it be applied to maintain or improve health and performance, but it can also be applied to any aspect of life including school, family, or careers.
Key vocabulary words that will be introduced during this unit are:
* Goal: A result towards which effort is made for maintenance or improvement.
* Goal setting: A plan for improvement.
* Long-term Goal: A result that can be achieved in 2 months or more.
* Short-term Goal: A result that can be achieved in 2-4 weeks.
* S.M.A.R.T. Goal Setting Strategy: A process used to set goals that are specific, measurable, aggressive, realistic, and time-bound.
Fitness Logging
Adapted from the Five for Life curricular materials
Activity, nutrition, hydration (the water you drink) and sleep are everyday habits. These habits will affect your health for your whole life. Your health and performance will depend on these behaviors. You can find out if your everyday habits are helping you by keeping track of them in a log.
This unit will teach you how to keep a Nutrition Log. Based on the data you gather in your Nutrition Log, you can make decisions that will help your fitness and health. Based on the data you gather in your Nutrition Log, you can make decisions that will help your fitness and health.
Nutrition
A Nutrition Log is a tool that helps you see what your eating habits are. It will also help you track how much food you eat from each of the five food groups. You will then be able to make informed food choices that will lead to a healthy diet. A healthy diet is a regular course of eating and drinking adopted by a person. It is important to start healthy eating habits now and continue them throughout your life.
A healthy diet provides your body with the nutrients it needs. Nutrients are substances in food that the body needs for energy, proper growth and maintenance. What you eat affects health and performance. Engaging in a healthy diet is beneficial. It allows your body to function properly and reduces the risk of heart disease. Most importantly, a healthy diet will provide energy for your body to perform at its highest level.
To build the habit of a healthy diet, you need to understand the USDA MyPlate and the Recommended Daily Amounts (RDA's) needed from each food group for your age, gender, and physical activity level. MyPlate is a USDA tool in the form of a placemat that separates food into five groups and provides guidance for healthy eating. The Recommended Daily Amounts are the appropriate amount of food eaten from each food group based on age and physical activity level.
MyPlate does not list oils but it is important to consume some foods that contain healthy oils. Oils contain fats and in limited amounts, fats are a necessary nutrient. However, consuming too many fats can lead to health problems.
Your Nutrition Log will provide detailed information about your daily diet. Making good food choices is essential to building and maintaining a healthy body. Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins supply energy to your body and are found in the food you eat. You need to eat the Recommended Daily Amounts of food to keep your energy level and to keep from becoming overweight or underweight.
Eating more calories than your body can burn will cause your body to store fat. Some stored fat is important for health, but too much stored fat will lead to being overweight. Not eating enough calories will deprive the body of the nutrients it needs and will lead to being underweight. Being overweight or underweight can be due to poor nutrition. Both will affect your health and performance.
Activity, nutrition, hydration and sleep are the everyday behaviors that affect long-term health. These behaviors strongly influence the health and performance of an individual. A person can determine if the person's habits are producing the desired health benefits by logging activity, nutrition, hydration, and sleep patterns.
Logs can help a person see how choices regarding activity, nutrition, hydration and sleep affect fitness and health. An individual can make a plan to improve fitness and health through lifestyle choices based on the information received from these types of logs. The improvement of health and performance will never fully be achieved without first understanding how activity, nutrition, hydration, and sleep work together.
Sleep
Sleep is important for health and performance. It is the time when the body repairs itself, grows, builds memories, and releases hormones that regulate appetite and affect BMI. Sleep also contributes to a healthy immune system.
Most teenagers need between 8 ½ and 9 ¼ hours of sleep per night. If the body does not get enough sleep and is unable to repair itself, the overall health of an individual will be compromised. Increased risks of obesity and heart disease have been linked to a lack of sleep, as have lack of energy and slower reaction times. The lack of energy and slower reaction times will ultimately affect performance, and have been linked to an increased risk of car accidents.
A lack of sleep, known as sleep deprivation, can also affect a person's emotions by feeling depressed, irritable, angry and tired.
Having a period of uninterrupted sleep gives the body the time it needs to revitalize and repair itself for improved health and performance. To increase the chances of uninterrupted sleep, it is important to follow the recommendations below:
Things to Avoid:
* Consuming caffeinated coffee, tea, soda/pop, and chocolate late in the day.
* Nicotine and alcohol.
* Eating, drinking, exercising within a few hours of bedtime.
* Heavy reading, studying, and computer games within one hour of going to bed.
* TV, computer, and telephone.
* Stress.
* Bright light in the evening.
Things to Do:
* Make sleep a priority.
* Understand the body's needs.
* If naps are going to be taken, make them short and not too close to bedtime.
* Establish consistent bedtimes and wake times.
* Stick to quiet and calm activities the hour before going to bed.
* Create a bedtime habit by doing the same things every night before you go to sleep.
* Relax.
* Keep a sleep log.
.
Through the use of a sleep log, a system used to monitor a person's sleep habits, it is possible to evaluate total length and patterns of sleep. This valuable information can be used to adjust sleep patterns and help students recognize how sleep can improve and maintain the health of an individual.
Activity, nutrition, hydration and sleep are the everyday behaviors that affect long-term health. These behaviors strongly influence the health and performance of an individual. A person can determine if the person's habits are producing the desired health benefits by logging activity, nutrition, hydration and sleep patterns.
Logs can help a person see how choices regarding activity, nutrition, hydration and sleep affect fitness and health. An individual can make a plan to improve fitness and health through lifestyle choices based on the information received from these types of logs. The improvement health and performance will never fully be achieved without understanding how activity, nutrition, hydration and sleep work together.
Hydration
Water is an important nutrient for health and performance. The body is made up, on average, of 60% water. Water helps regulate body temperature, provides a means for nutrients to travel to organs, transports oxygen to cells, removes waste from the body, moistens skin, helps muscles move, cushions joints, and protects organs.
It is recommended that a person drink one ounce of water for every two pounds of body weight daily. For example, a person who weighs 160 pounds should drink at least 80 ounces of water per day. Physical activity increases the amount of water needed to stay properly hydrated, and it is recommended that an additional eight ounces of water be consumed for every 20 minutes of activity that is performed.
Dehydration, when there is not enough water in the tissues of the body, is a problem because by the time a person feels thirsty, the person is already dehydrated. Signs of dehydration include dry lips, nausea, dark yellow, strong-smelling urine, not urinating as often, and constipation. Dehydration has been linked to many health concerns such as low energy levels, elevated blood pressure, circulation problems and decreased kidney function. Performance is affected through the loss of coordination and strength. Dry skin is a sign of dehydration and can have an effect on the body.
While water can be consumed through other food, such as fruits and vegetables like watermelon and cucumbers that are nearly 100% water by weight, using a hydration log allows a person to see the minimum amount of water intake in an average day. A hydration log, a system used to monitor a person's hydration habits, will give insight into drinking patterns, such as how much water is consumed and whether or not hydration needs are met. This information will allow a person to monitor and adjust water intake.
The benefits of drinking water are immeasurable, and staying hydrated improves health and performance.
Key vocabulary words that will be introduced during this unit are:
* Hydration: Providing an adequate amount of water to the tissues of the body.
* Hydration Log: A system used to monitor a person's hydration habits.
* Dehydration: When there is not enough water in the tissues of the body
Safety Principles
Adapted from the Five for Life curricular materials and OSPI released materials
All activities have an inherent danger that someone could trip, fall, or collide with another person. Any person who wants to participate in a physical activity should be aware that they have responsibilities to maintain a safe environment for everyone. Prior to taking part in a physical activity, participants should review the Five for Life safety code and consider solutions to potential dangers they might encounter while participating in the activity.
The Five for Life safety code is a four-step process that will help ensure safety while participating in physical activities.
* Check own personal space.
* Maintain control of own body at all times.
* Respect equipment, others, and self.
* Always follow directions.
Bones and Muscles: R.I.C.E
Adapted from the Five for Life curricular materials
The bones and joints of the skeletal system and more than 600 muscles of the system function together as the musculoskeletal system to produce movements such as sitting up straight, walking, running, jumping, and throwing. Because movement is basic to life, building and maintaining these systems provide long-term health benefits and enhance performance.
Building a strong musculoskeletal system provides long-term health benefits, including allowing a person to perform daily activities with greater ease and less risk of injury. Leading a lifestyle that includes a diet rich in calcium, avoiding behaviors such as smoking or drinking, and engaging in weight-bearing activities will increase bone density. Weightbearing activities such as walking, running, jumping, stair climbing, dancing, and resistance training add stress to the bones. This added stress causes the bones to adapt and become more dense and therefore stronger. However, taking part in any physical activity presents a degree of risk for potential injury.
Sometimes, bones can become displaced or moved from their normal position at a joint. This is called dislocation and is one joint issue that can affect movement and range of motion. Other joint issues include osteoarthritis, strains, sprains, or tendonitis.
Osteoarthritis is also called "wear-and-tear arthritis." It is the result of years of wear on the joint in which the cartilage that covers and protects the end of the bones softens and breaks down. When this occurs, bone tissue becomes exposed. As a result swelling occurs in the joint which restricts movements and causes pain.
Strains are a result of over stretching a tendon or a muscle and sprains are torn tendons or ligaments. These issues are often a result from over using a joint.
When one of these joint issues occur, it is important to rest, ice, compress (wrap) and elevate the injured area above the heart to reduce swelling, reduce pain, and being the healing process. The method of treatment is known as R.I.C.E:
R.I.C.E.: A formula in which each letter represents a step in the treatment of a minor injury: R=Rest, I=Ice, C=Compression, E=Elevation
* Rest- It is important to rest and immobilize the injured part.
* Ice- A sprain or strain should be immersed in cold water or covered with ice in a towel or plastic bag. Do this for 20 minutes immediately after the injury to help reduce swelling and pain. Apply ice several times a day. Leaving ice on any longer than 20 minutes or placing ice directly on the skin can damage the skin.
* Compression- Use an elastic bandage to wrap the injury. This helps to limit the swelling. Compression should not be too tight and should be taken off periodically so as not to restrict blood flow.
* Elevation- Raise the body part above the level of the heart to help reduce swelling.
The development of a strong and balanced musculoskeletal system will improve health and performance by preventing injuries to the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones. It can also help improve structure for good posture.
Warm-Up/Cool-Down
Adapted from the Five for Life curricular materials and OSPI released materials
It is important to warm-up the body, preparing it for activity and reducing the risk of injury. Warming up the body should include activities that elevate the heart rate, raise the core body temperature, and warm the muscles that will be used in the activity for the day. When thinking about what activities to engage in for a warm-up, consider three specific areas: type of exercise, duration, and intensity. Engaging in a light jog mixed with some skipping and sliding movements, while swinging the arms in an exaggerated way would be considered a good warm-up, as would jogging in place, followed by light calisthenics such as jumping jacks and dynamic stretching. Every warm-up will depend on the specific activities in which a person is engaging.
It is important to cool-down the body, after activity to help reduce the risk of injury. Cooling down the body should include activities that slowly lower the heart rate, slowly lower the core body temperature, and slowly cool down the muscles that were used during the activity. When thinking about what activities to engage in for a cool-down, consider three specific areas: type of exercise, duration, and intensity. Engaging in a light cool-down jog with some dynamic and static stretches could be considered a good cool-down, as would jogging in place followed by dynamic and static stretches. Every cool-down will depend on the specific activities in which the person just engaged.
Additional Concepts of Health and Fitness
Adapted from OSPI released materials
Physical Testing: is for every one of all ages and ability levels. Physical fitness tests help adults or kids push themselves to be more active. Physical fitness test typically ask participants to be more active and log activities. The President's Challenge is an example of a physical fitness test.
Metabolism: is the amount of energy required to maintain the body of an individual in a resting state. A person's
metabolism changes as they transition from early to late adulthood. Metabolism typically slows with age.
Consumerism: can be applied to the field of health and fitness. This is the idea that any person can buy a health-related product or service. Health-related consumerism can have positive impact like the promotion of active, healthier lifestyles. Health-related consumerism can also have negative impacts like the celebrity promotion of health products.
Sedentary vs. Non-Sedentary Lifestyle: is a lifestyle where a person is active vs. a lifestyle where a person does not take part in physical activity on a regular basis. One of the concepts of understanding and preventing disease is knowing how personal health practices (lifestyle) impact non-communicable diseases. A person with a sedentary lifestyle can have different non-communicable diseases than a person with a non-sedentary lifestyle (2.3.2) depending on prevention and causation factors. | <urn:uuid:c12e74b7-8d64-4ca8-8f9e-6dd855ef6647> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1630615625/lwsdorg/s1ctsbipr9xge3gejyrx/HS-Fitness-Assessment-and-Plan-Study-Guide.pdf | 2023-06-07T05:17:16+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00459.warc.gz | 518,918,190 | 8,214 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.967038 | eng_Latn | 0.998188 | [
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Ash Lea School
Positive Behaviour Policy
What we sometimes see as failure to behave properly, is actually a failure to communicate needs properly
Statement of Intent
At Ash Lea School we believe that behaviour is a form of communication which deserves an appropriate response. We believe that when a pupil displays behaviour considered challenging, this is our cue to take a closer look at the environment and see what we need to change.
In order for learning to be meaningful, first a child must feel ready to learn. If a child is unable to regulate their behaviour, then a child is unable to learn.
We believe in a restorative approach which supports pupils to understand their feelings, the consequences of their actions, and how to repair the damage caused.
Pupils and staff will be encouraged to work towards the goals of our school vision and school code:
Ash Lea Vision Statement Working Together to be our Best
School Code
Do the best that I can all of the time Listen carefully to what others have to say Help each other whenever I can Always be polite and friendly
Written by
Behaviour Lead ____________________________________________ (Luke Skillington)
Created on 09.07.21 Update due on 09.07.23
Signed by
Head Teacher _______________________________________________ (Kate Davies)
Chair of Governors ____________________________________________ (Jane Cooper)
Policy Development
This policy has due regard to all relevant legislation and statutory guidance including, but not limited to, the following:
Education Act 1996
Education Act 2002
Equality Act 2010
Educations and Inspections Act 2006
Health Act 2006
The School Information (England) Regulations 2008
Behaviour and discipline in schools' DfE (2016)
Sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges' DfE (2018)
Mental health and behaviour in schools' DfE (2018)
Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0 to 25 years' DfE (2015)
Use of reasonable force' DfE (2013)
Voyeurism (Offences) Act 2019
Understanding Behaviour in Schools: A Relationship-based Approach to Inclusion
This policy operates in conjunction with the following school policies:
School Code of Conduct Anti-Bullying Policy Pupil Health and Well-being Policy Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy Exclusion Policy Physical Intervention Policy Complaints Procedures Policy
Roles and responsibilities
"Behaviour management is a team sport. It needs a team discipline, ethos and look. To get the behaviour you want there can be no gaps between the adults on what matters. It is this consistency that is most important."
― Paul Dix
All members of staff, volunteers and support staff are responsible for promoting a supportive and high-quality learning environment, and for modelling high levels of behaviour.
Teaching staff are responsible for planning and reviewing support for their pupils with behavioural difficulties in collaboration with parents and, where appropriate, the pupils themselves. They are expected to set high expectations for every pupil and aiming to teach them the full curriculum, whatever the prior attainment.
The BAWB (Behaviour, Attendance and Well-Being) Team is responsible for overseeing the whole-school approach to behaviour and mental health, including how this is reflected in the school's Behavioural Policy and how staff are supported with managing pupils with SEMH.
The head teacher and the governing body are responsible for holding others to account in adhering to the policy, upholding and reviewing the policy, and ensuring high expectations of behaviour are continually prioritised.
NCC(2020)
The Curriculum
Curriculum content plays a very important role in the development of attitudes. Topics that enable pupils to explore their own attitudes and abilities are a vital part of the work offered. The curriculum also provides opportunities to present positive role models and to demonstrate positive recognition.
Personal, Social and Health Education permeate the whole curriculum. It is wider than any timetabled programme and is essential in supporting the development of the whole child.
The school's commitment to promoting positive behaviour should be evidenced in every activity that takes place on behalf of the school whether in the classroom, the community or during extra-curricular activities.
From EYFS through to Post 16, there are many opportunities taken to discuss and explore the role of being a good citizen, for example, in the semi-formal curriculum areas 'Me and My Community' and 'Me and My Body' and through the pre-formal threads 'to be me', 'to discover' and 'to be as independent as possible'
Staff are expected to ensure that the work offered to pupils provides them with meaningful opportunities for success, and motivates them to remain engaged in their learning.
Teaching staff will use the 'Zones of Regulation' to support pupils in understanding their emotions. Pupils will be encouraged to recognise how they are feeling and strategies they can use to manage their responses. The PACE Model (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy) can be used in order to build relationships with pupils and support them to regulate appropriately.
Trauma Informed and Relation-based Approach
We are proud to be Trauma Informed. For us this means that we have Trauma informed and relation-based approaches at the core of our whole school ethos and across our whole setting. Trauma informed and relationbased support is a dynamic, developmental approach to working with children that supports their emotional and social wellbeing. It is based on the latest research in neuroscience, attachment theory and child development, drawing on research into the role of creativity and play in developing emotional resilience. The school is working towards becoming an accredited Trauma informed school. We will:
respond to the needs of those children and young people who have unmet attachment needs, have experienced trauma and loss and have had adverse childhood experiences
provide a secure base to all our pupils where they can build the confidence to become independent learners
support the emotional well-being, development and learning of all pupils through secure relationships
build relationships with pupils based on a mutual respect, where the adult will be authoritative (in control) but not authoritarian (controlling)
be empathic and support pupils to manage behaviour, regulate emotions and build capacity for selfregulation
promote learning and repair through the use of restorative approaches
The school will use the PACE model (Dan Hughes) to promote the experience of safety in interactions with pupils.
Playfulness
Acceptance
Curiosity
Empathy
Using a light-hearted, reassuring tone - similar to parent-infant interactions - to create an atmosphere of safety and reassurance where no one feels judged and the child feels able to cope with positive feelings
Acceptance is about actively communicating that you accept the feelings, thoughts and internal struggles that are underneath the child's outward behaviour. It is not about accepting the behaviour itself but helping to teach the child to not feel ashamed by their inner turmoil.
Curiosity, without judgement, is how we help children become aware of their inner life. It's about wondering out loud without necessary expecting an answer in return. Phrases like "I wonder if..." will help the child to put a name to their emotions and thoughts
Feeling a child's sadness or distress with them, being emotionally available to them during times of difficulty shows the child that they are not alone and that the adult is strong enough to support them both through it.
Classroom Behaviour
"Getting the culture right is pivotal. With the right culture the strategies that are used become less important. The culture is set by the way that the adults behave."
― Paul Dix
Positive behaviour and self-regulation are key foundations of accessing a good education. Without an orderly atmosphere effective teaching and learning cannot take place. Pupils' behaviour can prejudice their own educational chances, and also the education of the pupils around them.
The role of the school goes beyond simply maintaining order. It should also play a vital role in promoting the spiritual, moral, cultural, social, mental and physical development of the pupils. Pupils need to know that, as they grow up, they will take on responsibilities in the community that go hand in hand with their rights. It is the aim of this school to assist pupils to grow up with a clear and acceptable view of what is right and wrong; appreciating the needs of others and of the society around them. Children learn by example as well as by rule. Staff at school have a substantial responsibility in setting a good example, although it is acknowledged that this will not be the only example that the pupil will follow.
Ash Lea School is committed to actively promoting the positive behaviour of all pupils who attend the school. The school believes that it should be fostering the following attributes in each pupil:
Respect for self and others
Self-discipline
Respect for property and the environment
Co-operation and collaboration with others
Self-motivation
Independence
A positive approach to life
Caring for self and others
The school recognises that, in order to develop positive behaviour by all pupils, the full co-operation of pupils, staff, parents and governors is necessary to ensure a consistent and fair environment, with standards that are clearly understood and acceptable to all.
Rewards and Praise
Ash Lea School believes that appropriate rewards for positive behaviour and attitudes are vital. It is acknowledged that each pupil is individual and that different strategies will need to be employed at different times.
Individual teachers will need to include in their classroom management a range of rewards that will meet the needs of all pupils. It is important that each class has its own clearly defined set of expectations according to the teacher, age group and pupils in that class.
The different types of rewards given at Ash Lea School include:
Positive attention and verbal praise
Entry into the 'good work book'
Sharing achievements with others
Recognising positive behaviour and achievements
Stickers, certificates and merits
Record of Achievement certificates
Letters, certificates, diary entries to parents
Individual systems for immediate rewarding of good behaviour
Expectations of Adults
Adults have the opportunity to model good behaviour and teach pupils how to manage their emotions. When managing challenging behaviour, it should be done in a controlled and rational way. Not allowing emotion to lead to explosive reactions, such as shouting, to a pupil's behaviours. The adult should expect to be in control, but not to control the pupil. They should always consider why a child is displaying a particular behaviour and what could be done differently in order to diffuse the situation. When an adult feels they cannot do this, it is time to step back and ask another adult to support. This is not viewed as failure, but as an ability to stay in control.
Habits of adults who manage behaviour well:
They meet and greet
They persistently catch individuals doing the right thing
They teach the behaviours that they want to see
They teach learners how they would like to be treated
They reinforce conduct/attitudes that are appropriate to context
They agree rules/routines/expectations with their class and consistently apply them with positive and negative consequences
They sustain a passion for their subject that breaks through the limiting self-belief of some learners
They relentlessly work to build mutual trust even when trust is broken, time is wasted and promises are not kept. They refuse to give up
They keep their emotion for when it is most appreciated by the learner
Non-verbal skills/attitudes that work with more challenging behaviours:
Showing humility
Changing anger to shades of disappointment (no shouting!)
Being cold rather than confrontational
Give clear cues when switching from the formal to the informal, from relaxed to business like
Work to create a certainty that poor behaviour will be addressed and relentlessly followed up
Patiently giving without ever expecting to receive
Showing empathy balanced with a determination to help the learner succeed
Earning respect not expecting it
Never laying your relationship on the line on a behaviour issue
Keeping your promises
At times ignoring defensive behaviours in the moment but not forgetting
Commitment to building an appropriate relationship
Refusing to listen to the doubters and moaners; refusing to give up on any learner
Consequences
The school believes that positive reinforcement is the most effective way of encouraging appropriate behaviour. However, there are occasions when it is in the best interest of the pupil, to apply consequences to behaviour. Staff will assess that students are aware that their behaviour is unacceptable, and that the behaviour is within the pupil's control, before a consequence is applied. Consequences will be used sparingly, sensitively and after due care and consideration.
The use of consequences should be characterised by certain features:
It must be made clear why the consequence is being applied
Wherever possible, consequences should be natural consequences linked to the actual behaviour in the moment e.g. if you're banging the iPad it will have to be taken away; if you're behaviours are too risky on the playground then you will have to stand with a staff member etc.
It must be made clear what changes in behaviour are required to avoid future consequences, and that these changes are understood by and in control of the pupil
Wherever possible, warnings / alternative strategies should be offered during an incident to support a pupil to make a different choice, change their behaviour for the better and avoid the consequence
Pupils should be supported in both proactive and post-incident work around positive and negative choices, and the impact of their decisions
It should be the behaviour that is addressed; pupils should NEVER be labelled or described in a negative way, and never be shamed or ostracised for their actions.
Consequences range from expressions of disapproval, through withdrawal of privileges, to referral to the Headteacher, letters to parents and, ultimately and in the last resort, internal exclusion. Most instances of unacceptable behaviour are relatively minor and can be adequately dealt with through minor consequences. It is important that the consequence is not out of proportion to the original behaviour.
Some consequences applied at Ash Lea include:
Minimising of attention / interaction / eye-contact
Immediate removal of object / activity being used inappropriately
Temporary removal of the pupil from the group until reengagement is possible
Alternative activity to replace a planned higher risk activity e.g. "we can't risk taking you swimming today as you are not listening to instructions that would keep you safe"
Reflection / thinking time
Expectation to clean up any mess or damage created
Loss / delay of a longer-term reward or privilege e.g. until the end of the week
Withdrawal to work in a separate area
Redirection to a more appropriate choice
Liaison with home to reinforce a consequence or address a negative behaviour
Loss of breaktime (e.g. to complete work or as a consequence of actions)
'3 strikes' system - reminder, warning then consequence (e.g. traffic light system)
Where the application of rewards and consequences are consistently ineffective, then careful evaluation of the curriculum on offer, classroom organisation and management, and whole school procedures should take place to eliminate these as contributory factors and ensure that the curriculum and environment is as meaningful as possible to meet individual needs. Additional specialist support e.g. from the Educational Psychologist or CAMHS may be beneficial, and this should be discussed with the Head Teacher and parents/carers prior to any referral.
Bullying – See Anti-Bullying Policy
The school does not consider bullying or harassment as acceptable. All incidents of bullying will be taken very seriously and will be investigated by SLT
Exclusions
The Governing Body has adopted the LA's arrangements for exclusion, a copy of which is available in school for inspection. Exclusion will only be considered as a last resort, after the school has taken all reasonable steps to manage any disruptive or difficult behaviour.
Physical intervention – See Physical Intervention Policy
Physical intervention is only ever used as a last resort. "Physical intervention" refers to the actions by which one person restricts the movements of another and implies that it is maintained against resistance. It should be consistent with the legal obligations and responsibilities of the school and its staff to provide care which is in a person's best interests. Physical intervention is never used as a consequence; only as a necessity.
Physical interventions may be appropriate to prevent or minimise risk or injury to the pupil themselves, other pupils or staff. It may be appropriate, on some occasions, in order to minimize significant damage to property which would result in others being denied access to facilities.
Physical interventions should only be used in conjunction with other strategies designed to help pupils learn alternative, non-challenging behaviours. These strategies and any planned physical intervention strategies should relate to individuals and be set out in a behaviour support plan, which is subject to regular review. Parents and carers should be informed of these strategies.
The use of physical intervention strategies for any pupil should be subject to risk assessment procedures, particularly concerning any medical contra-indications (e.g. heart conditions, breathing difficulties, digestion problems, a history of bone and joint problems or Down's Syndrome).
Physical interventions must only be used with minimum reasonable force for the minimum period of time consistent with the best interests of the pupil. They should not cause unreasonable risk, pain or injury (physical or psychological) to pupils or staff.
Any incidents which involve the use of physical intervention strategies should be recorded clearly and promptly on Behaviour Watch. Behaviour leads should monitor physical interventions and report any incidents which give cause for concern.
All incidents are reviewed on a daily basis by the Behaviour, Attendance and Well-being team (BAWB) (Luke Skillington, Caroline Morrison and Lucie Dale) and any actions followed up by them. The team will also support individuals and classes in order to ensure that physical intervention is the last resorts and all other strategies have been explored. The BAWB team will also review and report on a half termly basis on the use of physical intervention and use of safe spaces.
Staff who might be required to use physical intervention strategies should receive regular training on knowledge, skills and values. Training should be provided by an instructor with appropriate experience and qualifications. For Ash Lea School this person is Lucie Dale (firstname.lastname@example.org) Ash Lea School has adopted the Nottinghamshire County Council approach where this is done through CRB (Controlling Risky Behaviour).
Staff should only employ physical interventions that they have been trained to use otherwise, staff and pupils may be placed at risk.
Nottinghamshire Education Committee Code of Practice: Guidance on physical intervention between staff and pupils (January 2017)
Nottinghamshire Education Committee has produced a code of practice: Keeping Classrooms Safe for Learning and Teaching. The governors of Ash Lea School have adopted this guidance. All members of staff should familiarise themselves with the content of the guidance and use them as a framework for reference. A copy of the guidance will be kept in the main office, and on the schools OneDrive.
Safe Spaces – See Use of Safe Space Policy
School uses areas away from other pupils, where they can go for a limited period, in what are referred to at Ash Lea School as Safe Spaces. Schools must act reasonably in all circumstances when using such rooms. The school must also ensure the health and safety of pupils and any requirements in relation to safeguarding and pupil welfare. The use of Safe Spaces will be agreed in a pupils Behaviour Support Plan and be agreed with relevant staff and parents/carers.
It is for individual staff members to decide how long a pupil should spend in a Safe Space, and for the staff member in charge to support the pupil to calm. School will ensure that pupils are in the Safe Space no longer than is necessary and will always be supervised. Any periods of use in safe space must be recorded on Behaviour Watch and the BAWB team and head teacher informed through Behaviour Watch. The use of the safe space will also be included in the termly behaviour report to the governors with clear information about the impact of this strategy.
BSP (Behaviour Support Plan)
Behaviour support plans can support a cohesive approach towards the management of undesirable behaviours. They provide a consistent way forward with a way of working that is agreed by all who are working with the pupil. The plan should:
be clear and unambiguous
provide information about the child's 'flash points'
have the name of specific staff who will be in direct contact with the child
clearly prioritise the behaviours to be addressed
have a review date that is agreed by everyone
contain short term goals for achievement
The BSP may also be accompanied by a plan based on the 'anxiety curve'. This will show clear responses to behaviours that can be agreed with all staff. Consistency throughout the team is vital to using a strategy successfully and ensuring that any review of the plan is meaningful.
Recording Incidents
All incidents should be recorded on Behaviour Watch as soon as possible after. If the staff team have not been able to record in full on the day it must be verbally recorded to a member of SLT.
Behaviour Watch allows us to monitor the frequency, patterns etc. of behaviours on a regular basis. The BAWB team monitor individual recorded incidents on a daily basis and are able to follow up with class teams as well as a formal report which is presented to governors on a termly basis.
Classes may also keep their own records of attempted, or minor behaviours, to monitor patterns or use as evidence. These should only be kept if the information has a purpose and will prove meaningful and useful. | <urn:uuid:5940ce66-75a9-4d75-9cf9-7053b3c3b5d2> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.ashlea.notts.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Positive-Behaviour-Policy-2021.pdf | 2023-06-07T05:09:02+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00455.warc.gz | 686,691,534 | 4,339 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997945 | eng_Latn | 0.998552 | [
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LESSON PLAN Step 1
How Does Pollination Work?
Objectives
Procedure
I Identify the animal (bee) structures involved in pollination.
I Identify the plant parts involved in reproduction.
I Demonstrate how pollen moves from the male stamen to the female stigma.
1. Give each student a photocopy of Activity Page 1A. Have them study the line drawing of the flower. Ask them to identify and write down each plant part described below.
Materials
I A small dish or container filled with talcum powder. You can also use corn starch, flour, or different colors of chalk dust. I Cotton swabs
I Copies of Activity Pages 1A and B.
Subjects
I Science, language arts
* Female and sticky or feathery to trap pollen (the stigma)
* Female and contains the egg-producing ovary (the pistil)
* Female and holds up the stigma (the style)
* Male and produces pollen grains (the anther) 2. Give each student a photocopy of Activity Page 1B. Have them study the line drawing of the bee. Ask them to identify and write down the bee structure or structures that do the following:
* may carry pollen (bristles, legs and baskets, head)
* collect nectar (proboscis)
4 Smithsonian in Your Classroom
3. Divide the students into two groups: the pollinators (bees) and the plants. Give each member of the plant group a cotton swab and a small amount of "pollen" (talcum or other type of powder) in a container or dish. Instruct each member of the pollinator group to visit a member of the plant group and dip a finger into the pollen. At this point, ask the class to name the part of the plant that the pollinators touched (the stamen, which consists of the anther and the filament) to get the pollen on their fingers. Have them determine whether it is a male or female part. Ask the students what parts of the pollinators' "bodies" (represented by their finger) touched the stamen that could carry the pollen to the next plant. Ask what they were looking for when they got to the plant (nectar) and what appendage they used to get it (proboscis bristles).
November/December 1997
Plants and Animals: Partners in Pollination
4. Have each member of the plant group hold aloft a cotton swab. Explain that the pollinators have just visited one plant and will now move on to another plant of the same species. Instruct the pollinators to visit a different member of the plant group and rub some of the pollen they are carrying onto that plant's swab. Ask the students what part of the flower the swab represents (stigma) and whether it is a male or female part (female).
5. Have each group meet separately to discuss its specific role as a pollination partner and how it benefitted from the pollination process. Have each group select a spokesperson who will take notes and report the findings to the class.
ACTIVITY PAGE 1A
Flower Anatomy
Name each part of the flower
described below.
stamen
filament
stigma
style
ovary
pistil
anther
1. Female and sticky or feathery to trap pollen:
3. Female and contains the egg-producing ovary:
2. Female and holds up the stigma:
4. Male and produces pollen:
Smithsonian in Your Classroom
November/December1997
Plants and Animals: Partners in Pollination
5
ACTIVITY PAGE 1B
Bee Anatomy abdomen
thorax leg
pollen
basket (right
corbiculum)
leg
proboscis
(tongue)
head
abdominal
spiracle
Name the part or parts of the bee that do the following:
1. Collect nectar:
2. Carry pollen:
6 Smithsonian in Your Classroom
Plants and Animals: Partners in PollinationNovember/December 1997 | <urn:uuid:10e271ba-b6d4-4c47-af5b-a15e686d39be> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.smithsonianeducation.org/images/educators/lesson_plan/partners_in_pollination/pollination_lesson1.pdf | 2023-06-07T06:16:04+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00455.warc.gz | 1,069,424,994 | 839 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.962847 | eng_Latn | 0.997264 | [
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Water, Water Everywhere
History
Key Questions
1. What does BCE stand for?
2. What are the two parts that ancient Egypt was split into?
3. Why was the river Nile so important to the ancient Egyptians?
4. What was the name of Egyptians who used to write?
5. What is mummification?
Key Vocabulary
Ancient Egypt: One of the world's first civilizations.
Pharoah: Political and religious leaders of Ancient Egypt.
Tutankhamen: A famous Egyptian Pharaoh.
Artefacts: An object made by a human being.
Archaeology: The study of people and artifacts from ancient times.
Mummification: A process in which the skin and flesh of a corpse can be preserved.
Sarcophagus: A stone coffin or a container to hold a coffin.
Canopic jar: Jars used by ancient Egyptians to hold mummified remains.
Scribe: An ancient Egyptian who’s job it was to write down important information.
Papyrus: A kind of paper from the stalks of a reed called papyrus, or paper plant.
Hieroglyphs: A writing system that uses pictures and symbols instead of letters and words.
Pyramids: Egyptians built giant pyramids as monuments to the pharaohs.
Sphinx: An ancient Egyptian mythological creature, the great sphinx in Giza has the head of an Egyptian king.
Knowing more and remembering more at St Joseph's
Lead Subjects: Science; Art and Design; Geography; History
Art and Design
Key Questions
1. How did the ancient Egyptians represent faces?
2. What did the ancient Egyptians draw?
3. Why did the ancient Egyptians draw the things they drew?
4. How did the ancient Egyptians make their colours?
5. Describe a technique you have used in your art so far.
Key Vocabulary
Explore: Explore the roles and purposes of artists.
Line: An identifiable path that often defines the edges of a form.
Pattern: A design that repeats and can be found anywhere.
Texture: How something feels when it is touched. Artists use texture to help add dimension to a piece.
Form: A three-dimensional shape.
Smudge: To rub a line to create a blurred shadow.
Blend: A painting technique where two different colours are slightly mixed together when wet, giving a smooth transition from one colour to the next.
Mark: Marks can take the form of lines, dots, shapes, or patterns.
Mixed media: A visual art form that combines a variety of media in a single artwork.
Shape: The external form, the contours, or the outline of a subject.
Science
Key Questions
1. Name something which could be a solid, a liquid or a gas.
2. What is the scientific name for rain, snow and other water that falls from the clouds?
3. What is the process called when a liquid becomes a solid?
4. What is the process called when a solid becomes a liquid?
Knowing more and remembering more at St Joseph's
5. What is it called when water vapour turns back into water?
Key Vocabulary
States of matter: Materials can be one of three states: solids, liquids or gases. Some materials can change from one state to another and back again.
Solids: These are materials that keep their shape unless a force is applied to them. They can be hard, soft or even squashy. Solids take up the same amount of space no matter what has happened to them.
Liquids: Liquids take the shape of their container. They can change shape but do not change the amount of space they take up. They can flow or be poured.
Gases: Gases can spread out to completely fill the container or room they are in. They do not have any fixed shape, but they do have a mass.
Water vapour: This is water that takes the form of a gas. When water is boiled, it evaporates into a water vapour.
Melt: This is when a solid changes to a liquid.
Freeze: Liquid turns to a solid during the freezing process.
Evaporate: Turn a liquid into a gas.
Condense: Turn a gas into a liquid.
Precipitation: Liquid or solid particles that fall from a cloud as rain, sleet, hail or snow.
Geography
Key Questions
1. How is a river different from other bodies of water?
2. Where does the water come from? Where does it go? (Water cycle).
3. Where are the key rivers in the world, in the UK, and locally?
4. How did that river get like that? Why and how is it changing? Is the river still changing?
5. How do rivers affect people's lives and influence human activity?
Key Vocabulary
Bank: The riverbank is the land at the side of the river.
Basin: The land water must cross to reach a river. It collects all available water from tributaries, creeks and streams in its area.
Bed: The bed is the bottom of a river. A riverbed can be made of sand, rocks or mud depending on the river.
Delta: A wide muddy or sandy area where some rivers meet the sea. The river slows down and drops all the sediment it was carrying.
Erosion: A fast flowing river can damage the riverbanks and wash bits of them downstream, making the river wider.
Estuary: Where a river reaches the ocean and the river and ocean mix. Estuaries are normally wide and flat.
Meander: A river that follows a winding course.
Mouth: The end of a river where it flows into the sea, another river or a lake.
Source: The start of a river is its source. This could be a spring on a hillside, a lake, a bog or marsh. A river may have more than one source.
Tributary: A smaller river or stream that joins a big river. | <urn:uuid:1280999f-2567-4c4f-803e-2641bb785d39> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.st-josephs.leicester.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2023/03/Water-Water-Everywhere-Knowledge-Organiser.pdf | 2023-06-07T06:36:00+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00457.warc.gz | 1,088,765,274 | 1,206 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.996416 | eng_Latn | 0.997226 | [
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SURE KEY EXAMINATIONS BOARD
PRIMARY LEAVING EXAMINATION
MARCH 2021 ENGLISH OFFICIAL MARKING GUIDE
SECTION A: 50 MARKS
Sub – Section I Questions 1 to 50 carry one mark each
In each of the questions 1 to 5, fill in the blank space with a suitable word.
1. The teacher told us to sanitize our hands regularly.
2. The pupil under whose desk a cat lay ,is my cousin.
3. My broken car was towed away by a breakdown.
4. The / A ewe has given birth to five lambs.
5. The requiem mass for the late NUP Presidential bodyguard was led by Rev.Kiibi.
In each of the questions 6 to 15, use the correct form of the word given in the brackets to complete the sentence.
6. Kongo studies in the school near our home these days. (study)
7. Your story has been quite exciting (excite)
8. We have not begun our weekly exams. (begin)
9. One of John's relatives
is a tailor. (relate)
10. Pupils should always be thankful to their teachers for the knowledge they get. (thank)
©32022 Sure Key Examinations Board 0700758668
Turn Over
11. Peter and Joan have been happily (happy)
married since last year.
12. The hunter was injured during the poaching exercise. (injury)
13. That good book of theirs has a lot of information. (them)
14. The youngest girl in our family is friendlier than the others. (friend)
15. All schools in Uganda will hold religious functions this term. (religion)
In each of the questions 16 to 18, re-write the sentence giving the plural form of the underlined word.
16. The P.6 class has visited the radio-studio. The P.6 class has visited the radio-studios.
17. The fly did not drop in my tea. The flies did not drop in my tea.
18. Don't involve yourself in bad acts at school. Don't involve yourselves in bad acts at school.
In questions 19 and 20, arrange the given words in alphabetical order.
19. dipping , disc , die , dirty die, dipping, dirty, disc
20. niece , nearby , night , nearly nearby, nearly, niece, night
For questions 21 to 23, re-write the sentence giving one word for the underlined group of words.
21. Miriam has not remembered to hand in her book. Miriam has forgotten to hand in her book.
22. Our parents will visit us three times this term. Our parents will visit us thrice this term.
2
23. Odora is with a lot of interest in volley ball.
Odora is interested in volley ball.
For questions 24 and 25, write the short form of the given full forms.
24. afternoon. p.m
25. I would I’d
In questions 26 to 28, re-write the sentence giving the opposite form of the underlined word.
26. Mende’s sons are well behaved. Mende’s daughters are well behaved.
27. You will explain your late departure to the teacher. You will explain your late arrival to the teacher.
28. The nurse who talked to us was very unfriendly.
The nurse who talked to us was very friendly.
For questions 29 and 30, use the given word in a sentence to show that you know the difference in their meaning.
29. knit an idea of making or joining clothes together / idea of closeness in connection e.g. families ,friends etc
30. neat an idea of a person or something to be tidy ,good and clever. Or something without additives
Sub-Section II
For each of the questions 31 to 50, re-write the sentences as instructed in the brackets.
31. The waiter wanted to serve a customer. The waiter cleaned the plate.
(Rewrite as one sentence using: ………….in order that……….)
The waiter cleaned the plate in order that he could serve a customer.
32. Neither Kobe nor his wife goes to the market.
(Rewrite the sentence using: ……….and neither………..)
Kobe does not go to the market and neither does his wife.
3Turn Over
33. James reported John to the health workers as soon as he suspected him to be with signs of COVID 19. (Rewrite the sentence using: ….no sooner……..) James had no sooner suspected John to be with signs of COVID 19 than he reported him to the health workers.
34. Mabala started repairing my bicycle last month. He is still doing it. (Rewrite as one sentence using: ……………..since………………) Mabala has been repairing my bicycle since last month.
35. “We must wait for our parents at school,” said the pupils. (Rewrite the sentence using: The pupils said that………………) The pupils said that they had to wait for their parents at school.
36. Musumba wears glasses because he cannot see. (Rewrite the sentences using: ………unless…………..) Musumba cannot see unless he wears glasses.
37. No body came to see the sick person, did they?
(Rewrite the sentence beginning: Somebody …………………...) Somebody came to see the sick person, didn’t they?
38. Samson reads the news loudly. Mweruka reads the news loudly (Rewrite and join the sentence using ……as………as…..…..) Samson reads the news as loudly as Mweruka.
39. The farmer's animals liked him in spite of the fact that he was rude.
(Rewrite the sentence using: ………….but………………)
He was rude but the farmer's animals liked him.
40. The man sat on a wet chair. He jumped off immediately.
(Rewrite as one sentence using: Sitting………….)
Sitting on a wet chair , the man jumped off immediately.
41. We expect to go on a tour very soon.
(Rewrite the sentence using: …….look forward…………)
We look forward to going on a tour very soon.
42. The party will begin at midday. The guest of honour will arrive at ten to one in the afternoon. (Rewrite the sentences using: By the time………….) By the time the guest of honour arrives, the party will have begun. By the time the party begins, the guest of honour will not have arrived.
43. People make ropes out of sisal. People make ropes out of banana fibres. (Rewrite as one sentence using: ……………not only……….) People make ropes not only out of sisal but also out of banana fibres.
44. Water does not talk. It cannot thank people who use it. (Rewrite the sentences as one using: ………….would…………..)
If water talked, it would thank people who use it. Water would thank people who use it if it talked.
45. Sugar is an important need. Most people enjoy using it. (Rewrite as one sentence using: ……….which………) Sugar is an important need which most people enjoy using.
46. I don't want to write a letter. I want to send an SMS.
(Rewrite as one sentence using: …………..would rather…………..)
I would rather send an SMS than write a letter.
47. The old dishes were very dirty. The cook could not use them.
(Rewrite as one sentence using: ………….too……….to………..)
The old dishes were too dirty for the cook to use.
48. The Speaker of the Parliament talked to the members. She talked to them on Monday. She talked to them in the Parliament lobby. She talked to them angrily. (Rewrite as one sentence without using; ‘and’, ‘when’ or ‘where’)
The Speaker of the Parliament talked to the members angrily in the Parliament lobby on Monday.
49. The opposers collected many views. They understood the motion very well. (Rewrite the sentences as one using: The …………..the…………..)
The better the opposers understood the motion, the more views they collected.
5Turn Over
50. It was not necessary for the Imam to close the mosque.
(Rewrite the sentence using: …………..needn't…………….)
The Imam needn't have closed the mosque.
SECTION B: 50 MARKS
51. Read the story below and then answer in full sentences the questions that follow.
I am a resident of Zowo Sub – County. We consider ourselves lucky. All the roads were well made. We are proud of that. Motorists and cyclists enjoy high speed on these roads. But pedestrians have had great trouble. Crossing these roads has become a problem.
Many people have either been hurt or lost their lives. The speeding motorcycles are the major enemy. For that matter, it is a must that all those who travel by motorcycles must wear helmets on their heads. But the riders don't listen to that.
One day a motorcycle rider picked a passenger from the trading centre. After about a kilometre, they met a traffic officer. He was on a traffic police van. The rider remembered that he did not have a helmet on the head. This was not easy for him as he had to control the motorcycle. This scared the passenger she tried to jump off the motorcycle. Within a very short time, the motorcycle lost control. The two people lay down in the middle of the road. The rider calling for help, his right leg had got stuck in the behind wheel of the motorcycle. The helmet had squeezed the nose. The passenger sat down quietly but scared. She was not bruised.
When the traffic officers arrived, they drove the rider to hospital. The motorcycle was towed to the police station. The passenger decided to go back home by taxi.
(a) Where does the writer live according to the story? ❖The writer lives in Zowo Sub –county according to the story.
(b) Which people make the roads in the area dangerous?
❖ The speeding motorists and cyclists make the roads in the area dangerous.
6
(c) What do pedestrians in this area find difficult?
❖ Pedestrians in this area find crossing the roads difficult.
(d) What must motorcycle users do in this area?
❖ Motorcycle users must wear helmets on their heads.
(e) Where was the passenger going?
❖ The passenger was going back home.
(f) What reminded the rider that he was not wearing his helmet?
❖ Meeting a traffic officer reminded the rider that he was not wearing his helmet.
(g) How did the passenger show that she was frightened?
❖ The passenger showed that she was frightened by trying to jump off the motorcycle.
(h) Which body part of the rider was most painful?
❖ The right leg of the rider was most painful.
(i) Where do you think the motorcycle is now?
❖ I think the motorcycle is at the police station now.
(j) Suggest a suitable title to the story.
AN ACCIDENT, A CARELESS RIDER, ROAD ACCIDENTS ,CARELESS
DRIVING
An Accident, A careless Rider , Road Accidents, Careless Driving
7
52. The sentences below are not in correct order. Re-write them in the correct order to form a good story about "The Kind Conductor".
(a) Unfortunately, he fell asleep and almost passed his destination.
(b) When it arrived, it stopped and he boarded.
(c) Kyewazo was going to visit his grandmother.
(d) It was next to the driver's seat.
(e) So he had to take a bus.
(f) He then paid the fare and got a receipt.
(g) The conductor showed him where to sit.
(h) She lives a long way from his home.
(i) He walked to the bus stage and waited.
(j) But the conductor woke him up as soon as he reached the stage.
CORRECT ORDER
"The Kind Conductor".
a. Kyewazo was going to visit his grandmother.
b. She lives a long way from his home.
c. So he had to take a bus.
d. He walked to the bus stage and waited.
e. When it arrived , it stopped and he boarded
f.
He then paid the fare and got a receipt
g. The conductor showed him where to sit.
h. It was next to the driver's seat.
i. Unfortunately, he fell asleep and almost passed his destination.
j. But the conductor woke him up as soon as he reached the stage.
53. Gracolo Junior School held a Sports Day. Below is the information that was given to the guests who had come to attend. Study it carefully, and in full sentences answer the questions that follow.
SPORTS DAY PROGRAMME 3 RD FEBRUARY, 2021.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 9:30am | Arrival and registration of guests |
| 10:00am | Assembly followed by anthems |
| 10:20am | Welcome Speech |
| 10:30am | Games Activities |
| Noon | Receiving of the Guest of Honour |
| 12:10pm | Parade |
| 1:00pm | Lunch followed by serving cake |
| 2:10pm | Final Football match & receiving prizes |
| 3:15pm | Departure |
By: Joslin Kwagala
Sports-master
(a) Who received the above information?
❖ Guests at the Sports Day of Gracolo Junior School received the above information.
❖ The guests who had come to attend Gracolo Junior School's Sorts Day received the above information.
(b) What was the above information about?
❖ The above information was about a Sports Day Programme at Gracolo Junior School.
(c) What did the guests do after they had arrived?
❖ The guests registered after they had arrived.
9Turn Over
(d) According to the information, who led the anthems?
❖ According to the information, the head prefect and the choirmaster led the anthems.
(e) Who welcomed the visitors?
❖ The head teacher of Gracolo Junior School welcomed the visitors.
(f) Which activity did the Head teacher and the Head-prefect do together?
❖ The head teacher and the head prefect received the guest of honour together.
(g) Which activity did the guest of honour attend as soon as he came?
❖ The guest of honour inspected the parade /went through the parade as soon as he came.
(h) How long did lunch take?
❖ Lunch took one hour and ten minutes.
(i) What was the last sports activity?
❖ The last sports activity was the final football match/a football match.
(j) Who prepared this information?
❖ Joslin Kwagala ,the sports master of Gracolo Junior School prepared the information.
54. Read the poem below and then answer in full sentences the questions that follow.
A good family has happy members, That enjoy working together, They are admired by other families, Where sadness is the routine
The family is hardworking. Their gardens produce a lot of food, Good feeding is their song, And they all become strong and healthy.
10
The family will always be rich, Since they educate their children, Who make sure they have jobs, That pay them very highly.
The family has well behaved children, That wish their parents well, As the only way to thank them, For the protection and food they get.
(a) Where can we find happy people?
❖ We can find happy people in a god family.
(b) What is common in other families?
❖ Sadness is common in other families.
(c) Which families have a lot of food?
❖ Hardworking families have a lot of food.
(d) According to the poem, what does good feeding do to a person?
❖ According to the poem, good feeding makes a person strong and healthy.
(e) Which family has educated members?
❖ A rich family has educated members.
(f) According to the poem, how can one get a good job?
❖ According to the poem, one can get a good job by getting educated.
(g) Why should children thank their parents?
❖ Children should thank their parents because they get protection and food from them.
For each of the questions (h) and (i), give another word or group of words with the same meaning as each of the underlined words in the poem.
(h) sadness unhappiness/ sorrow
(i) get receive/obtain.
(j) Suggest a suitable title to the poem.
A HAPPY FAMILY/ A Happy Family/ FAMILY
55. Imagine you are Alex Oziri. You go to Kisoro Junior School, 11 Turn Over
P. O. Box 750, Ntinda. You would like your uncle to teach the COVID 19
preventive guidelines to the other family members whom you left at home. Write a letter to him about it. In your letter, mention atleast two guidelines you would like him to emphasize.
Tell him to send your regards to your parents and advise him to keep all the family members safe against the pandemic. Use your school address.
MARKING POINTS
❖ Writer’s address 01 mark
❖ Date 01 mark
❖ Salutation 01 mark
❖
Greetings 01 mark
❖ Main body: mention at least two guidelines 02 marks
❖ Send regards to your parents 01 mark
❖ Advise him to keep all the family members safe against the pandemic 01 mark
❖ Conclusion 01 mark
❖ Signing off ½ a mark
❖ Name ½ a mark | <urn:uuid:fda1245f-ec20-41a0-8174-d5ac3d958e70> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://professorfahiim.com/download/353/ple-mocks-resources/3103/sure-key-ple-2021-english-ii-guide.pdf | 2023-06-07T04:37:09+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00458.warc.gz | 514,935,753 | 3,691 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997796 | eng_Latn | 0.99932 | [
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Year 4 Reading Attainment and Progress Grid:
| Autumn | | | Spring | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sept | Baseline | T | | | | | |
| October | Assessment Week | T | | Assessment Week | T | | Assessment Week |
| December | PIRA test | T | April | PIRA test | T | June | PIRA test |
| | Assessment Week | T | | Assessment Week | T | | Assessment Week |
Reading Domain 2a: Give / explain meaning of words in context Reading Domain 2b: Retrieve and record information / identify key details from fiction and non-fiction Reading Domain 2c: Summarise main ideas from more than one paragraph Reading Domain 2d: Make inferences from the text / explain and justify inferences with evidence from the text Reading Domain 2e: Predict what might happen from details stated and implied Reading Domain 2f: Identify / explain how information or narrative content is related and contributes to meaning as a whole Reading Domain 2g: Identify / explain how meaning is enhanced through choice of words and phrases Reading Domain 2h: Make comparisons within the text
Comprehension
| | Autumn | Spring | Summer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comprehens ion and Understandi ng Reading Domains a, b, c, f, h Retrieval | Makes considered choices about books to read for pleasure. | Can explain why they have chosen a book and what they like about it | Can read a book, and explain, giving reasons, what they like and dislike about it. |
| | Demonstrate an understanding of a wide range of poetry, stories and non-fiction that they read independently, through identification of key aspects of the text, through explanation and discussion with others. | Demonstrate an understanding of texts they read independently, by identifying that some texts are structured differently. | Demonstrate a good understanding of age appropriate, challenging texts through identifying key aspects of fiction and non-fiction; offer simple explanations of how and why texts are structured according to their purpose. |
| | Demonstrate an understanding of a wide range of poetry, stories and non-fiction that are read to them, through identification of key aspects of the text, through explanation and discussion with others. | Demonstrate an understanding of texts that are read to them, by identifying that some texts are structured differently. | Listen to and discuss a wide range of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction and reference or text books. |
| | Increase familiarity with a wide range of books including fairy stories, myths and legends, and retelling some of these orally. | Can retell the key features of familiar stories. | Can retell well-known stories or stories with familiar formats. |
| | Recognise themes in books such as good v evil, journeys, changes, | Beginning to accurately summarise sections (paragraphs) of a text they have read. | Can summarise main ideas from more than 1 paragraph. |
| | Recognise different forms of poetry and discuss its key features – narrative | Recognise different forms of poetry and discuss how language is used – nonsense poetry and alliteration. | Recognise different forms of poetry and discuss its key features – Kennings and Calligrams. |
| | Prepare poems to read aloud and perform | Prepare poems to read aloud | Prepare poems to read aloud, share or perform. |
| | With support can use dictionaries to check meaning of words they have read. | Becoming more confident in using dictionaries to check the meaning of words they have read. | Can use dictionaries accurately to check the meaning of words they have read. |
| | Understands the conventions of text types taught this term – first person diary entries, subheadings for explanation texts, | Understands the conventions of text types taught this term – persuasive language in brochures, use of language in fantasy texts, for and against in discussion pieces, | Understands the conventions of text types taught this term – technical language for non-fiction, sub headings for explanation texts, rules for writing Kennings, the descriptive language for story writing, bullet point / numbers for instructions |
| | Can locate relevant sections of non-fiction texts to retrieve answers to specific questions, using contents pages | Can use non-fiction texts to retrieve and record answers to specific questions. | Can use non-fiction texts to retrieve and record answers to specific questions. |
| Inference Reading Domains d,e | Offer predictions on what might happen next based on what they have already read. | Make predictions on what might happen next from details stated and implied. | Make predictions based on their own experiences and using their knowledge of the text. |
| | Ask and answer questions, making simple inferences on what has been said and done. | Begin to infer character’s possible feelings and thoughts from actions in the text. | Offer plausible inferences from character’ s feelings, thoughts and motives, using evidence from the text to justify their opinions. |
| Language, Structure and Presentatio n Reading Domains a,g | With support, can discuss how an author has used key phrases to create an effect. | Discuss the style and type of vocabulary used by the author to support children’s comprehension of texts. | Beginning to comment on the effectiveness of the authors choice of language. |
Children can read effortlessly to decode word words in age-appropriate books. They can sound out unfamiliar words accurately without undue hesitation, and reads age-related texts with confidence and fluency for an increasing period of time, using intonation. They are beginning to explain unfamiliar words through their context or through dictionary use. They can discuss reading preferences and offer suggestions that would be appropriate for children of their own age. Children are able to discuss a variety of texts with others,
Children demonstrate a deeper understanding of the main themes/ conventions of books studied, through their discussions. They can retrieve answers to a range of types of questions and add detail into their answers to show their comprehension. They are predicting and inferring using the text as evidence and are able to summarise main ideas from each paragraph, using the over-arching theme as
Expected level:
Greater Depth:
demonstrating an awareness of how different texts are organised and the effect this has on the reader. They can recognise themes and patterns in stories with familiar formats and use non-fiction text conventions to retrieve and answer questions.
.
a guide. They are developing vocabulary and are using it to enhance their discussions and when answering questions. They can make links to other known texts and authors. | <urn:uuid:8384c4c1-ddf1-49c2-a856-6b41d53d92bd> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.orchardmeadowprimary.com/Portals/0/Reading%20%20Year%204%20Assessment%20grid_1.pdf | 2023-06-07T04:56:01+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00460.warc.gz | 1,012,092,669 | 1,381 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.989399 | eng_Latn | 0.995351 | [
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Sponsored Educational Materials
Teacher Lesson Plan 2
Objectives:
* summarize a poem
* determine the theme of a poem
3 Read the poem out loud once to model fluent reading, then have students read the poem out loud to a partner.
Materials: What Does This Poem Mean? Student Worksheet, teacher-selected poem for class analysis
Possible poems:
* "Life Doesn't Frighten Me" by Maya Angelou
* "Your World" by Georgia Douglas Johnson
Time: one 40-minute class period
Essential Question: How does analyzing a poem help us to understand it better?
Lesson Steps:
Explain to students that poetry is a way that writers express themselves. We often understand poetry better if we read or hear it several times and analyze it, or look closely at the meaning. 1
Have students complete the What Does This Poem Mean? Student Worksheet to apply these skills to a new poem. 8
Express Yourself Poetry Contest
Explain that understanding what happens in the poem is the first step in analyzing poetry. As a class, paraphrase the poem, either by assigning each stanza to a small group of students or by completing a think-aloud as a whole class. 4
If necessary, stop to define any terms in the poem that are unfamiliar to students. 5
Point out that understanding the feeling of the poem is an important step in analyzing it. Reread the poem, focusing on the question "What type of feeling or mood does this poem have?" Use think-pairshare to collect students' ideas. Invite students to circle the words or punctuation marks that helped create the mood of the poem. 6
Reread the poem, focusing on the question "What message is this poem sending?" Use think-pairshare to collect students' ideas, and mark the words and phrases that support the theme. 7
Your students could win a $400 Scholastic Gift Card OR an American Girl® 2017 Girl of the Year TM Gabriela TM Collection— plus, you receive a $100 Amex Gift Card!
Visit scholastic.com /poetryismypower
Display the selected poem, either written on chart paper or projected on a screen. 2
Made possible by:
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Void where prohibited. The Express Yourself Poetry Contest (the "Contest") is open to students in grades 3–5 who are enrolled in public schools, accredited private schools, or home schools in compliance with the laws of the students' primary state of residence ("Schools") and who are legal residents of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia (hereinafter referred to as "Student" or "Students"). Entries must be submitted on behalf of the students by teachers of any grade from 3–5, who currently teach in public schools, accredited private schools, or home schools in compliance with the laws of their primary state of residence, or parents or legal guardians. Official Rules at scholastic.com/poetryismypower.
Name
Poem
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American writer who used poetry to express herself. Read her poem "Autumn" and answer the questions about the meaning of the poem.
Read the poem one time. What happens in this poem? 1
Read the poem again. Circle three descriptive words. What moods or feelings do these words give the poem? 2
Read the poem one more time. Put a star next to two details that gave you a clue about the person speaking. What do these clues tell you about the speaker and what she is speaking about? 3
What do you think is the message or theme of the poem? Why? 4 | <urn:uuid:208e4d33-4704-4497-980b-f0564474e079> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.scholastic.com/poetryismypower/pdfs/DigitalLessonWorksheet2.pdf | 2023-06-07T06:28:20+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00461.warc.gz | 1,045,276,493 | 776 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.996478 | eng_Latn | 0.996647 | [
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Fair Trade & Health Care 101
Use these facts to educate yourself and others about how Fair Trade supports health care
Fair Trade promotes access to health care around the world. Fair Trade standards require health and safety protections, and communities use Fair Trade premiums improve access to health care, through projects like building clinics, hiring doctors and dentists, providing mobile health services and medical insurance.
Fast Facts
* The WHO Constitution states that the highest attainable standard of health is a fundamental right of every human being.
* Over half of the world's population doesn't have access to essential health services. 800 million people spend at least 10 percent of their household budget on health expenses, enough to push many into extreme poverty.
* Every day, around 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
* More than three million people die from vaccine preventable-diseases every year.
* According to the UN, there is a close connection between the strengthening of health systems and other development priorities.
Fair Trade and Health Care
* Farm work is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. It's ranked among the ten most dangerous in the U.S.
* Fair Trade farmers and workers receive vacation, sick and maternity leave benefits.
*
Workers at Fair Trade farms are guaranteed access to cool water and shade, to protect against heat stress.
* Fair Trade farmers and workers are provided with medical care in case of work-related illness or injury.
* Fair Trade standards require that pregnant or nursing women are not assigned hazardous work.
* From the purchasing of ambulances to the creation of employee health care benefits, communities have been able to use Fair Trade premiums to better health care conditions in their communities.
Fair Trade Premiums Support Education
* In Arizona, Wholesum Harvest invested in health insurance for workers, leading to an increase from 5 percent to 88 percent enrollment in the employee-provided health insurance program.
* In the Dominican Republic, cocoa cooperative CONACADO used Fair Trade premiums to pay for a clinic, free medical checks and clean water projects that are improving health in the community.
* In India, workers at the Sewpur Tea Estate use some of their premium funds to purchase medicines for the Sewpur Tea Estate hospital.
* In the Ivory Coast, enterprise cooperative ECOOKIM provides social support by assisting members with health care costs and providing hospital transport for seriously ill patients.
* In Ghana, the Kuapa Kokoo cocoa cooperative provides mosquito nets to the community of Kumasi to help combat malaria.
* In Pakistan, workers at a Fair Trade certified bedding factory used their Fair Trade premium to open and run a health clinic that is available to over 7,000 workers and their families.
Updated 2018 | <urn:uuid:930d5b4c-6fa0-4f2a-bab8-b1b844717f92> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://fairtradecampaigns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/CAM_FTHealthCare101_181105.pdf | 2023-06-07T05:36:13+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00461.warc.gz | 283,038,107 | 549 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.99724 | eng_Latn | 0.99724 | [
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Capturing Light In Oils
Capturing Light in OilsEcho Point Books & Media
One of the attractions of painting outdoors is the challenge of capturing the spirit of a place - changing light, weather and transient conditions demand particular painting skills if they are to be interpreted effectively. Leading painter David Curtis works on location, in all weathers, observing and capturing the subtle effects of light and mood. Oil paint is as good for painting on site as it is for large-scale painting in the studio; it is remarkably responsive; can be applied in many different ways; and it allows time to assess and modify work in progress. In this fascinating book, David Curtis shows how he achieves such expressive and original results using drawings, paintings and stage-by-stage examples. He gives detailed explanations of his two main working methods - for plein-air paintings and for studio compositions - as well as plenty of helpful guidance and advice on choosing materials, exploring techniques, selecting ideas, composition, colour and tone and associated topics. Drawing skills and interpreting the qualities of light are other key issues that he deals with, while his wonderfully evocative landscapes, coastal scenes, interiors and figure compositions provide much inspiration.
Artist's Painting Techniques is your practical guide to learning how to bring out your inner artist with a wide range of painting styles, whether you want to learn how to use acrylics, watercolors, or oil paints. With progression in mind, this master class will teach you the basic principles of painting and then inspire you to move on to new challenges and create masterpieces of your own. It explains which tools, materials, and methods should be used along the way, but lets you develop your artistic skills on your own terms rather than providing a series of steps to be followed. Whether you are a beginner wanting to take up a new hobby or an experienced artist who wants to expand your horizons and learn new styles, Artist's Painting Techniques will set you on your path to creativity.
Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.
Paint with passion, purpose and pleasure What do you want your landscape painting to say about this place, this moment? How do you use the visual vocabulary - line, shape, value, color, edges - to say it? With this book, your conversation with nature will direct your brush. With an exhilarating, synergistic combination of indoor and outdoor painting, Kevin Macpherson shows you how to create personal, poetic landscapes that capture the feeling of being there. Learn how to: • Use a limited palette in a way that is more liberating than limiting • Experience nature to the fullest and capture its vibrancy back in the studio through photos, sketches and outdoor studies • Cope with the fleeting qualities of atmosphere and light by establishing a value plan early and sticking with it • Incorporate impressionistic touches of broken color to give your landscape a depth and vibrancy that enhances its realism • Approach painting as a layering and corrective process that encourages non-formulaic solutions Stimulating warm-up exercises in the studio prepare you for your adventures outside, while eight step-by-step demonstrations show you how to put these methods into action. Throughout, Macpherson's own light-filled landscapes illustrate the power of these techniques. Full of fresh air and fresh art, Landscape Painting Inside and Out will guide and encourage beginners while challenging more accomplished artists to bring greater vitality and a more natural, less formulaic finish to their paintings.
For acclaimed artist John Hammond, a successful painting requires more than just technique: it must evoke both individual sensibility and a strong sense of place, whether it's the warmth of the sun on a beach or the natural glory of a flower meadow. In this stunningly illustrated guide, he takes readers on a tour of the wonderful possibilities of acrylics on canvas and reveals how to make visual magic happen. Through 100 of his own paintings, Hammond teaches artists how to find striking subjects to portray and to bring beautiful scenes to life through the use of design, color, and composition. At the end of each chapter, he provides a detailed "picture analysis" of one of his pieces that explains how the techniques he's described come alive on canvas.
In these pages, popular artist/instructor Susan Sarback puts aside abstract formulas and presents a different, immediate way to see and paint in color. Through this technique of full-color seeing, artists will expand their ability to see light and color in their environment, and to express this heightened visual awareness in their work.
One of the ground-breaking books on acrylics - new in paperback. Acrylics is now a very popular medium with artists of all abilities, especially with the advent of new and better acrylic paints. 'Capturing Light in Acrylics' (HB 07134 8863 8) was and still is one of the best books on the subject. John Hammond, a highly successful practising artist, shares his experiences and knowledge of this incredibly adaptable medium and offers helpful advice, instruction and inspiration. Particular attention is paid to the skilful interpretation of light to convey the mood and atmosphere of a place. The section on Practical Considerations includes details on materials, equipment and colour mixing; Interpreting Light
reveals the secrets behind light and tone, shadows, changing light and weather conditions; the Subjects and Inspiration sections cover choosing subjects, composition, working on location, landscapes, city views, boats and beaches, Mediteranean light and figures; and Developing Ideas details working with sketches, photography and studio painting. Practical explanatory text and inspirational illustrations combine to make this a valuable addition to any artist's bookshelf.
Legendary artist Paul Strisik was not the kind of artist you'd find cooped up inside a studio. As one of the great plein air painters of his generation, Paul preferred to be outdoors using the sun to light his subjects. His years of experience in capturing that natural light are offered here in Capturing Light in Oils.
Paint the beauty of each season! If the thought of painting landscapes in oils seems daunting to you, this book by veteran artist Tim Deibler will put you at immediate ease. Tim's practical, time-tested instruction combined with tips, exercises and beautiful examples of his work, will help you visualize for others how you see the world around you—no matter what season it is. Tim teaches you how to paint successfully by beginning with the basics. You will: Master the four keys—shape, value, color, and edges—no matter what your painting style or media preference might be Plan any painting by using various block-in methods: monochrome, complementary color, full-color, and light and shadow block-in, or directly painting on the canvas Discover the secrets of successful plein air painting—choosing the right equipment, picking the best time of day to paint and settling on the lighting elements you'll use Understand the angles, shadows and reflections of light through each season, and practice painting the same scene throughout the year With Land & Light Workshop: Capturing the Seasons in Oils, it's easy to make your work stand out—whether it's with the sizzling hues of summer or the chilled blue tones of winter! PAINTING: OILS. Often seen as dark and gloomy, oils can, in fact, be used to create colourful and light paintings that are wonderfully expressive. One significant characteristic of oil paint is its richness and depth of colour, something that is of particular interest to Nicholas Verrall. In this book, he discusses his working methods and the importance of colour, at the same time placing these issues within the general context of painting in oils, with all that this has to offer. Includes information, demonstrations and many inspirational finished paintings to help painters understand the value of colour in interpreting ideas with feeling and impact. It provides guidance on a wide range of skills, techniques and advice on subject matter and associated topics. Illustrated throughout. It shows how to use oils and create colourful, light and expressive pictures. Verrall is one of the UK's most respected contemporary figurative painters. It is presented new in paperback.
The nude has inspired artists for centuries and continues to inspire us today. Alongside a historical study of the nude in painting, this book introduces oil paint and gives advice on techniques when using this challenging and rewarding medium. Capturing the beauty of form and the delicate colours of the figure, it celebrates the powerful images that examine human relationships, personality and psychology. The topics included are instructions on materials, the colour palette and stretching your own canvas; the practicalities of working with a model in the studio; colour-mixing exercises that explore colour relationships and temperature, and finally step-by-step examples that demonstrate the progression of a painting. This beautiful and essential guide to painting the nude in oils is aimed at oil painters including beginners, more experienced, untutored groups, individual artists and art historians and is beautifully illustrated with 152 colour images.
These pages practically glow with Kevin Macpherson's rich and powerful paintings! He shares his techniques for quickly capturing the mood of a scene in bold, direct brushstrokes, with step-by-step instructions that make it easy—simply a matter of painting the colors you see. Follow his lead and you too, can create landscapes and still lives in a vibrant, impressionistic style.
Shows how to create successful oil paintings from stormy skies and dramatic landscapes to tranquil harbours and panoramic seascapes. Step-by-step demonstrations guide you every step of the way. "Every practicing artist, whether amateur or professional, knows that precise control of light and shade is essential to a mastery of their art, for light can create an atmosphere in a painting that is loud and dominant or one that is ethereal and utterly peaceful. Painting Light & Shade shows how the transparency of watercolor makes it the perfect medium for capturing the fleeting nature of light. Inside you'll find: step-by-step demonstrations that show you how to add dimension and energy to your work, and how to use light and shade to make your watercolors jump off the page; mini-demonstrations which explain specific techniques for capturing allusive or aramark areas of high and shade; and paintings by professional artists, each accompanied by a tonal sketch that shows you how to see and interpret tonal values, enabling you to incorporate them into your own paintings."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Peter Wileman is one of the most dynamic oil painters in the UK today and is currently President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. In Painting Light in Oils he demonstrates how to create atmospheric landscapes in oils with stunning effects. Light is what motivates so many painters. It excites the eye and radiates an energy that transforms an otherwise ordinary scene into something rather special. In his first book, Peter Wileman shows how he gets inspiration for his exciting landscapes and seascapes, working both on location and in the studio. Several step-by-step demonstrations show how he captures light and shade on his canvas with such amazing effect. There are also sections on tone and colour harmony, reflected and changing light and how to paint from both sketches and photographs. If you want to loosen up your oil painting and achieve landscapes and seascapes that are full of atmosphere, this is the book for you.
David Curtis is one of the most successful and loved artists in the UK. His books are bestsellers and in his latest publication he talks about the secrets of producing paintings with impact. Although his work is not showy, they are powerful and are much-sought after. His secrets for painting with impact are the sensitive consideration of balance and contrast in tone, colour, handling qualities and compositional elements. Whether you're working on location with a limited palette or in the studio with all the time and materials at your disposal, the author talks you through the ways to capture the essence of a subject matter and the mood or sense of the place, and always with a something that will grab the viewer. The key elements are covered: Selection – what to paint and if necessary how to simplify or dramatise those elements; Mood – creating a strong sense of mood through choice of medium, colour and painting technique; Colour – choosing the right colours to suit the intentions of the painting. The book discusses a range of inspiring locations, from marine subjects, beaches and harbours to city scenes, trees and the light of the Mediterranean.
Renowned artist Foster Caddell calls on his decades of experience to identify and solve some of the most common problems faced by artists. In this essential work, he guides readers through his "keys" for improving oil-based landscapes.
From dust jacket notes: " ... [N]oted landscape painter Paul Strisik takes the reader outdoors to watch over his shoulder as he demonstrates his skills at capturing the varied landscape around the country and in all seasons. Starting with a discussion of materials and equipment, the artist ... describes the equipment he uses in the field - compact, yet complete enough to allow Strisik all the variety of techniques he needs - as well as studio equipment and special painting gear for traveling. Further suggestions for types of brushes, holders, cleaners, palettes, easels, and more give the reader all the basics for getting started both at home and on location. The next portion of the book is devoted to
the esthetic aspects of landscape painting: conception, composition, and design. Strisik stresses selecting those elements of a scene which help the artist make a personal statement, rather than copying nature literally. He explains compositional principles and how to use them - distributing the weights in a picture, emphasizing the center of interest, knowing when and how to use cast shadows, leading the viewer's eye with lines of direction, and achieving variety and interest with counterpoint. All the visual effects of light luminosity, diffraction, reflected light, highlights, diffused light, atmospheric perspective, and many more - are explained in the third section, along with the basics of understanding color and value relationships. Particularly helpful are the many pointers on handling color within shadowed areas, painting objects in light without 'washing out' local color, and unifying the overall color feeling within a landscape. Finally, Strisik presents a series of full-color, step-by-step demonstrations showing how he develops his carefully planned compositional studies into finished paintings. Each demonstration displays the artist's many skills and techniques every step of the way ..."
Impressionism has inspired generations of painters and art lovers, but it has been regarded as a separate painting movement. Many artists believe that using impressionist color would interfere with important principles necessary for successful paintings such as drawing, design, and composition. Painting Impressionist Color demonstrates how Impressionism was a logical transition from previous painting styles and how those styles continue to play an essential part in all contemporary painting today.Painting Impressionist Color shows you how to use color to interpret the effect of light on your subject matter. It offers valuable lessons on how to improve your paintings as well as give you tools to help you continue learning. With nine step-by-step demonstrations in oil, acrylic, pastel, and watercolor, you will learn how easy it is to incorporate luminous color into your paintings in any medium. Painting Impressionist Color is a stand alone volume which will improve the quality of your paintings while bringing new excitement and beauty to your work.
Offers a guide to landscape painting, discussing the elements and principles of composition, brush techniques, drawing concepts, color palettes, and stages of the painting process.
Underpinning all good landscape painting is observation. Starting from this standpoint, this book introduces the artist to painting the natural and man-made landscape. Initially equipped with just a handful of pencils and paper to explore the world outside, it allows confidence to grow alongside an understanding of the art and craft of painting landscape. Written by artist Richard Pikesley, it demonstrates his approach and that of other contributors, who illustrate the diversity of paths that can be taken to achieve a passionate and personal response to the landscape. Richly illustrated with over 300 colour images, this book emphasizes the importance of observation, and advises on how to 'learn' the landscape; it teaches the rudiments of drawing, and develops confidence and technical understanding of the subject; it explains colour mixing on the palette, and how colour works in nature and is affected by sunlight. Also included is a guide to the materials, equipment and techniques of the landscape painter. Finally, there is advice on presenting, framing and displaying your work, and how to find exhibition opportunities.
From capturing light and reflections in water to building up the vibrant colors of a Mediterranean landscape or the delicate mood of morning mist, the three step-by-step demonstrations in this resource show aspiring painters how to get started with oils and create landscapes filled with compelling atmosphere and interest. Each of the three stunning designs is broken down into easily achievable small steps, ensuring that even novices will overcome common misconceptions associated with this advanced medium
A bulky, comprehensive book on oil painting various subject matter. Ever had trouble drawing ellipses, mixing skin colours or painting skies? This bumper oil painting book tackles 78 such painting 'peeves' with suggested solutions. The Ultimate Oil Painting Solution comprise three full-length art books: Why do my Clouds Look Like Cotton Wool? a problem-solver for landscape painting; Why do my Skin Tones Look Lifeless? a problem-solver for portrait painting, and Why do my Ellipses Look Like Doughnuts? a problemsolver for still life painting. Each book can be purchased singly if interested in just one subject area. However, purchasing the three in this bundle book will work out a little cheaper than buying the three books individually. Each book comprises 26 common 'peeves' (in the form of chapters) associated with the oil painting area concerned, and therefore you will find 78 such peeves and suggested solutions collectively within. The book has 73,000 words, 78 chapters and around 400 images. Each book also possesses a step by step painting demonstration associated with the subject area. These are Castlerigg Stone Circle (for landscape art); David's Oath of the Horatii (for portraiture) and painting strawberries (for still life). The 'peeves' selected represent common problem areas that students have experienced in my art classes. Such peeves include the rendering of foreshortenings, darkening skin colours, suggesting ripples in water, painting clouds, mixing greens, suggesting soft hair, painting noses, reflections in eyes, moisture on fruit, portrait photography, measuring tones, darkening snow colours and a myriad of other peeves. As each book are in themselves separate entities, where applicable, similar information is presented in context of landscape art, portraiture and still life painting, although the information is presented differently. Examples of this are the art materials needed for painting and the nature of pigments. However, such occurrences are mostly confined to the introductory chapters of each book and occur seldom elsewhere. Key chapters in this book cover the colour theory, perspectives, drawing ellipses, the golden section, tonal values, underglazing, art techniques, the nature of pigments, essential art materials, monochromatic painting, composing an arrangement, negative shapes, painting en plein air, drawing foreshortenings, creating mood, making a viewfinder, colour temperatures, drawing methods, the rules of reflections, painting on a budget, types of gessoes, skin colours and much, much more. The aim of this book is to find a 'cure' for a given issue and enable the developing artist to improve in the future. Most of all, to encourage creativity and growing confidence. Dimensions of print book: 10x8in and 234 pages.
and produce beautiful, detailed landscapes for the growing portfolios. Illuminating the interplay of light within the context of painting, each plan offers an imaginative use of color as well as an investigation into impasto?the thick application of paint directly to the canvas.
Celebrating the boats and coastal scenery that have long inspired artists, this book explains many aspects of painting the coast, from creeks and tidal rivers to bustling beach scenes, boats, and harbors—all with a strong emphasis on capturing light, mood, and atmosphere. Using watercolor, oil, and pastel, it looks in detail at the painting process and encourages both novice and experienced artists alike to venture forth to capture the drama and beauty of the coast and sea. Select topics covered in the guide include step-by-step demonstrations; exploring the importance of light and how to create harmony, tone, and color; emphasizing drawing, sketching, and plein-air painting; and instruction on painting water and skies, as well as coastal scenes. David Curtis outlines his approach to painting light-filled landscapes. He stresses the need to paint plein air, with little or no studio work, and discusses techniques and materials suitable for this approach. Detailed instruction on preparing the materials for painting, and advice on composition and tonal range are all designed to enable the artist to capture the light effect that formed their original inspiration. The book includes examples of Curtis's work, including five step-by-step demonstrations where the artsit puts into practice the advice he has given.
One of the attractions of painting outdoors is the challenge of capturing the spirit of a place – changing light, weather and transient conditions demand particular painting skills if they are to be interpreted effectively. Leading painter David Curtis works on location, in all weathers, observing and capturing the subtle effects of light and mood. Oil paint is as good for painting on site as it is for large-scale painting in the studio; it is remarkably responsive; can be applied in many different ways; and it allows time to assess and modify work in progress. In this fascinating book, David Curtis shows how he achieves such expressive and original results using drawings, paintings and stage-by-stage examples. He gives detailed explanations of his two main working methods – for plein-air paintings and for studio compositions – as well as plenty of helpful guidance and advice on choosing materials, exploring techniques, selecting ideas, composition, colour and tone and associated topics. Drawing skills and interpreting the qualities of light are other key issues that he deals with, while his wonderfully evocative landscapes, coastal scenes, interiors and figure compositions provide much inspiration.
A detailed overview of the traditional techniques of working with oils brings together the classic artistry of the past with breakthroughs in the materials of today, explaining how the Old Masters created their masterpieces, the key elements in painting one's own artwork, the importance of drawing, the principles of visual reality, the art of color, and other topics.
"Everything was alive, pulsing with light and color."—Susan Sarback This is more than a how-to-paint book. It's a how-to-see book...specifically, how to tune in to nature's glorious subtleties of light and color. Forget complex theories. "Full-Color Seeing" is based on direct observation. It's about overcoming preconceptions and perceiving true color based on the colors that surround it, the way light hits it, time of day, season, weather conditions, and too many other factors for a mere formula to incorporate. You'll learn to see your subject—any subject—just as life truly presents it to you. This is the secret to capturing the living, breathing sense of atmosphere so celebrated in the works of the Impressionist painters. A revision of Susan Sarbacks' illuminating Capturing Radiant Color in Oils, this book offers twelve more years of fresh insights, new paintings and expanded coverage on soft pastels. The concepts explored here have been handed down through generations of artists: Sarback was taught "Full-Color Seeing" by master painter Henry Hensche, who learned it from Charles Hawthorne, a contemporary of Claude Monet. This step-by-step approach will add greater vitality to your artwork and forever change the way you see.
Painters have long observed the way in which different places have their own special light, and nowadays air travel has made it even easier to compare the light of one country or region with that of another. This book shows, in words and pictures, how an artist reacts to light in some of the most beautiful, picturesque places in the world.
This new book is a comprehensive study of how oils can be used to capture light, colour and texture in a wide range of landscape settings. It even includes eleven step-by-step demonstrations and discusses the entire painting process, from materials, inspiration and subject selection through to the finished painting. Throughout, emphasis is given to the importance of good drawing, composition, tone and colour, and the need for constant assessment, all of which are vital to the success of any piece of work.
Create paintings with feeling The Painterly Approach bridges the gap between what you see as an artist, and what you feel. More than painting an appealing landscape, it's about making your viewer feel the wind, experience the dance of shadows and sunlight, and admire the wondrous intermingling of colors that attracted you to your subject in the first place. In this gorgeously illustrated book, Bob Rohm shows you how to see the world from a painterly perspective and translate it into expressive, poetic paintings that elicit an emotional response from your viewer. Clearly illustrates how to choreograph color, value, composition, texture and other fundamental elements to achieve those elusive qualities of mood and emotion Features 9 step-by-step demonstrations (in oil, pastel and acrylic) on capturing a vivid sense of time and place Covers brushstrokes, painting with a palette knife, edge control, shadows and other advanced art techniques This book focuses primarily on landscape painting but offers valuable lessons for approaching any subject in a personal and engaging way.
This volume teaches readers time-tested secrets for capturing the effects of light in oil and watercolour paintings both in and outdoors. It starts with guidelines for seeing light, identifying its characteristics, how it falls and how you can learn to use to simplify lights and darks using simple exercises.
Oils give a rich, majestic quality to a painting but may often be deemed too tricky or ambitious to try. This practical book puts the joy of painting with oils within reach of all who want to develop their skills. Examples of landscape, marine, nude and equestrian paintings will inspire and show the rich diversity, texture and depth that oil painting can achieve. Written by a professional painter, it encourages artists of all levels to experiment with the medium and to develop their art. Contents include: the importance of drawings; a guide to oil paints suggesting a key range of colours; step-by-step examples with practical tips throughout; advice on composition, colour and light, and framing. An authoritative and beautiful guide to painting with oils, aimed at oil painters and, in particular, coastal and landscape - this new book will encourage artists of all levels to experiment with the medium and develop their art. Superbly illustrated with 108 colour images.
Copyright : www.treca.org
David Curtis is one of the most successful and celebrated artists working in the UK today. His books are bestsellers and in his latest book he discusses and demonstrates his approach to painting outside on location. He paints on site whenever possible as he finds that working directly from the subject gives his work a sense of immediacy, dynamism, light and drama. Many artists are interested in painting outside but lack the confidence to successfully work in this way. Here David shows how to develop the necessary skills. He looks at every aspect, from preliminary planning to appropriate painting techniques and, above all, how to capture the essence of the scene in front of you. He includes location sketching as well as advice on essential equipment to take with you. With practical advice and inspirational paintings covering a wide variety of subjects, Painting on Location will prove valuable to all those who wish to paint outdoors, whether to make finished paintings in their own right on location, or to use the experience and information gathered as a basis for further work in the studio.
Leading watercolourist reveals the secrets behind his atmospheric, light-filled paintings. Watercolour is ideal for capturing the transient effects of light and, with compact and lightweight materials, is the perfect medium for plein-air painting. Leading watercolour painter David Curtis is a strong advocate of working on site, observing and capturing changing conditions and effects. In this beautifully illustrated book, he explains in detail his two main methods for working on location - for quick, loose studies and for more controlled and detailed paintings. He also shows how to collect reference material on the spot and develop this into resolved paintings back at the studio. He provides helpful instruction on interpreting light effects, with strong guidance on choosing materials, exploring techniques, composition, tone and colour and associated topics. This invaluable advice is complemented by a wealth of sketches, finished works and step-by-step demonstration paintings to illustrate different points and inspire further ideas. Reference Light and Mood in Watercolour hardback (9780713489552). Leading watercolourist reveals the secrets behind his light-filled paintings. How to work en plein air to capture the transient effects of light. How to collect reference material on location but paint in the studio. Bestselling title new in paperback.
Discover a simple approach to capturing a world of beautiful skin tones Chris Saper takes the mystery and guesswork out of portrait painting while leaving its joy fully intact. Continuing the exploration started in the her first book, Painting Beautiful Skin Tones with Color & Light, this sequel offers step-by-step demonstrations that cover an even wider range of ethnic groups and ages. You'll get professional advice on working from life, using reference photos, and combining the two approaches to create realistic likenesses that say something about the way you view an individual's unique beauty and character. Inside you'll find: A series of 14 step-by-step demonstrations of 7 diverse subjects painted from life and from photos that illustrate the advantages of each approach Techniques for seeing and recording accurate colors at live sittings, and retaining that accuracy when working from photographic references Tips on posing and lighting your subjects using both artificial and natural light sources Expert advice for shooting, selecting and working from reference photographs, including how to compose dynamic multiple-subject portraits Techniques for painting eyes, eyeglasses, mouths, wrinkles and other defining details Though the demonstrations and examples are done in oils, Saper's techniques are universal. Regardless of your medium or skill level, the lessons inside will make painting skin colors easier, the process more enjoyable and your great results more predictable.
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STUDY MATERIAL
SEM-2
ENGLISH
| 1 | 1. | HOW TO AVOID FOOLISH OPINIONS | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| | 2. | CONVERSION OF WORDS | 13 |
| | 3. | COLLOCATIONS | 15 |
| | 4. | ONE WORD SUBSTITUTES | 17 |
| 2 | 1. | THE DOLL’S HOUSE | 25 |
| | 2. | ODE TO WEST WIND | 28 |
| | 3. | FLORENCE NIGHTINGLE | 30 |
| | 4. | SKIMMING AND SCANNING | 32 |
| 3 | 1. | THE NIGHT TRAIN AT DEOLI | 34 |
| | 2. | UPAGUPTHA | 37 |
| | 3. | READING COMPREHENSION | 39 |
| | 4. | NOTE MAKING/ TAKING | 44 |
| 4 | 1. | COROMANDEL FISHER’S | 47 |
|---|---|---|---|
| | 2 | EXPANSION OF AN IDEA | 50 |
| | 3 | NOTICES, AGENDA AND MINUTES | 54 |
| 5 | 1 | AN ASTROLOGER’S DAY | 62 |
| | 2 | CURRICULUM VITAE & RESUME | 65 |
| | 3 | LETTERS | 75 |
| | 4 | E-CORRESPONDANCE | 82 |
MODEL PAPER – 1
I) Answer any THREE of the following questions (3X5=15)
a. Summarize Russell's, "How to Avoid Foolish Opinion"
b. Write Noun forms for the following words by adding a Suffix:
i) Manage ii) free iii) pollute iv) create v) Maintain
c. Write one word substitutes for the following
i) A Government by one ii) One who looks at the bright side of things iii) A position for which no salary is paid iv) One who eats too much v) That which cannot be avoided.
d. Match the following into appropriate collocations:
A
B
i) Strong
ii) Happy
iii) some
iv) works
i) Privacy
ii) mistake
iii) ending
iv) coffee
v) Terrible
v) perfectly
e. Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance. Explain
II) Answer any THREE of the following questions; (3X5=15)
a. Compare Torvald's and Nora's attitudes toward money
b. How does Shelley describe the power of West Wind
c. Describe Florence Nightingale d. Define Skimming
e. Define Scanning.
III) Answer any THREE of the following questions (3X5=15)
a. What's the theme of "The Night" Train at Deoli?
b. Critically appreciate the poem "Upagupta"
c. Why does the narrator say it is a game in the Night Train at Deoli
d. Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
Slavery can broadly be described as the ownership, buying and selling of human beings for the purpose of forced labour. The institution of slavery is as old as civilization. Many nations and empires were built by the muscles of the slaves. Overtime people have found many reasons to justify slavery. Slaves were ususally considered somehow different than their owners. They may belong to different race, religion, nationality or ethnic background. By focussing on such differences, slave owners felt that they could deny basic human rights to their slaves.
i) What is the purpose of the institution of slavery?
ii) What is a slavery?
iii) How were the empires built?
iv) How were the slaves different from their masters?
v) Give the meaning of 'deny'
e. Make notes on the following passage.
Early rising is the secret for a happy life. We all wish to live long but we cannot.We go against Nature. Nature likes us to work during day and to rest at night. But we do not obey this law of Nature. We do not go to bed early. We read or write late into night. Some of us keep playing, dancing and drinking whole night. So, we do not rise early. Our health breaks down and we fall ill. Nature takes revenge. We have to suffer for our disobedience. But birds and animals are healthy. They do not need a doctor every day. They sleep early and rise early. This simple habit will give everything. So, it is said: "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"
IV) Answer any THREE of the following questions. (3X5=15)
a. Write a critical appreciation of the poem the Coromandel Fishers
b. Make hay while the sun shines. Expand
c. How does Sarojini Naidu a day in the lives of the fishermen?
d. Imagine that you are the manager of a company. You want to inform your employees of an important meeting. Write a suitable notice. e. Explain minutes.
V) Answer any THREE of the following questions (3X5=15)
a. Justify the title "An Astrologer's Day"
b. Prepare a CV for the post of a Sales Executive
c. Write a letter to your friend about Carona crisis at your native place
d. Write a resume for your dream job
e. Assume that you received the letter of appointment for the post of General Manager from Splendour Pvt Ltd. Send an email to the company thanking them for the offer.
6
I ) ANSWER ANY THREE OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:-
a) What does rusell say in the essay “how to avoid foolish opinions”?
b) Write noun forms for the following words by adding a suffix.
i)donate ii) manage iii) appear iv) true v) loyal
c) Write one word substitutes for the following.
i) one who walks in sleep
ii) one who hates the institution of marriage
iii) one who knows everything.
iv) a lover of mankind.
v) one who speaks many languages
d) Match the following into appropriate collocations.
A
B
i) Big
a) rain
ii) Heavy
b) the law
iii) Strong
c) money
iv) Break
d) desire
v) Make
e) failure
e) “Observation is better than assumption in some matters.” Explain.
II) ANSWER ANY THREE OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:-
a)What is the significance of the little lamp in "The Doll's House?"
b) How does P.B. Shelley describe the power of the west wind?
c) Why is florence nightingale called “the lady with the lamp?’
d) What are the techniques of skimming?
MODEL PAPER – 2
e) Discuss 'scanning' as the reading skill.
III) ANSWER ANY THREE OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:-
a)Discuss the theme of the story, " The Night Train at Deoli."
b) what happened when the train stopped at Deoli station?
c) how did upaguptha treat the suffering dancing girl?
d) Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
Conversion is an important part of our social life. It is indeed an activity that characterizes all mankind. Men and women everywhere spend a large part of their time in conversation. There are however, occasions when what you say is important. The conversation then rises above the meaningless chit-chat that people always indulge in, and ceases to be a mere social formula. It is on such occasions that people find an interesting person or a tedious bore.
i) Mention the essential component of our social life.
ii) What is the relationship between conversation and the mankind?
iii) When does a conversation cease to be a mere social formula?
iv) Who is considered a tedious bore?
v) Give the meaning of 'cease.'
e) MAKE NOTES ON THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE :-
progress is being made in industrialised countries, where studies now report that girls are catching up with, and even passing, boys in terms of performance in maths and sciences. Following the trend, law schools and medical schools in Canada report that about half of their entrants are now women. Culture is often used as an excuse for perpetuating both systematic inequality and blatant human rights abuse. Culture can be a strong force to socialize girls into passively accepting their lot in life being 'good wives' to men who are abusive in the name of a belief system that demands female compliance.
IV) ANSWER ANY THREE OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:-
a) Discuss the central idea of the poem "The coromandel fishers."
b) what do you think is the wealth of the fishermen?
c) A friend in need is a friend in deed. Expand the idea.
d) You are the secretary of the sports club of your college. The Olympics Gold Medalist Neeraj Chopra has accepted your invitation to visit your college.
Write a notice informing the students of other colleges of this event.
e) Prepare 'Agenda' for the college Annual Day function.
V) ANSWER ANY THREE OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:-
a) Attempt a character sketch of the astrologer.
b) Prepare a CV for the post of Accountant in a reputed form.
c) Write a letter to your sister congratulating her on her success in NEET.
d) What are the differences between a CV and a Resume.
e) Write an email to the principal of your college seeking permission to participate in an International Seminar in which your paper is selected for presentation
UNIT-I
CHAPTER - 1
HOW TO AVOID FOOLISH OPINIONS
ABOUT AUTHOR: -
Bertrand author William Russell was a British polymath (A person with wide knowledge or learning). He was born on 18 th may 1872 and he passed away on 2 nd February 1970 in England. He was worked with field of philosophy, mathematics, logic and morality etc.,
He was the author of more than 60 books and over 2000 articles, his works can be found in anthologies and collection.
BEST BOOKS: -
- The principles of mathematics
- Knowledge and wisdom
- A free man's worship and other essays
- On denoting
- Mind..... etc.,
In 1950, Bertrand Russell was awarded the noble prize in literature for his humanitarian ideals and freedom of thoughts
The present essay "How to avoid foolish opinions "is extracted from the basic writing of Bertrand Russell.
ABOUT THE ESSAY: -
The present essay "how to avoid foolish opinions" is extracted from the book the basic writings of Bertrand Russell. In this essay he offers some advises which help us stay away from obvious errors and dealing simple personal and social affairs lives.
The essay is based on five important points related to thinking process and their solutions.
He asks people to
- Make observation
- Reassess if you get angry with others opinion
- Seek different opinions
- Imagine an argument with a person having a different bias
- Beware of opinions that flatter yourself esteem.
IF THE MATTER CAN BE SETTLED BY OBSERVATION MAKE OBSERVATION YOURSELF: -
Aristotle thought that women have fewer teeth(less) than man. He should have asked misses Aristotle to keep her mouth open and counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew.
I believe myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet.
REASSES IF YOU GET ANGRY WITH OTHERS OPINION: -
If someone says that two and two is five or that Iceland in on the equator you feel pretty rather than anger.
The most savage contra verses are those about matters as to good which there is no evidence either ways that why persecution is not used in arithmetic. In arithmetic there are only facts but in some others there are opinions.
SEEK DIFFERENT OPINIONS: -
Meet people with whom you disagree
Road a newspaper belongs to opposite parties
When different opinions are expressed by different parties think over the possibilities rather than rejecting instantly.
IMAGINE AN ARGUMENT WITH A PERSON HAVING DIFFERENT BIAS:
-
Bertrand Russell refers, that one mahatma Gandhi himself was an opponent of railways steam boats and machines. Perhaps the greatest leader was influenced by the general conception avoiding western inventions.
BEWARE OF OPINIONS THAT FLATTERS YOURSELF ESTEEM: -
Bertrand Russell explains personal bias and conception truths how gender wise self-esteem causes that pure foolishness in understanding the other side of the coin men with self-esteem believe that most of the poets, scientists and other intellectual are men at the same time women with self-esteem believe that the most of criminals are men. It shows self-esteem is a matter of individual superiority.
By the listening some moral speeches from Swami Vivekananda, Mother Theresa, APJ Kalam etc.., if we can read some best books. We can develop moral values, humanity, helping nature, will power, discipline with these qualities we can avoid foolish opinions.
These are the points placed before us by Bertrand Russell which helps us not to have foolish opinions.
2. CONVERSION OF WORDS
CONVERSION OF WORDS:
The more number of words you know is the more vocabulary you have one of the Ways improving vocabulary is conversation of
Words.
Conversation of words means Changing a words from one grammatical form to another form.
Ex: -
Noun – verb
Noun –Adjective
Adjective- Adverb ............. etc.
NOUN TO VERB: -
Adding preposition to before particular noun will convert into verb.
Word conversation scan also bed one with The another grammatical practices named affixes.
Affixes are two types
1.Prefix
2.Suffix
PREFIX: -
Prefix is usually a syllable that is added before the root word (main word) prefix changes the Root words meaning.
Ex: -
| Management | Mis |
|---|---|
| Personal | Intra |
| Honest | dis |
| Division | sub |
| Natural | un |
SUFFIX: -
Suffix is usually a syllable that is added after The root word (main word) suffix changes the Root word meaning.
EX: -
| Hood | Child |
|---|---|
| Lu | Slow |
| Exam | Nation |
| Ness | Happy |
| Active | Talk |
PRACTICE: -
List any 5 words with following suffixes:
1. ous : gorgeous, fabulous, famous
2. eer : engineer, bear, deer, volunteer
3. ment : management, government, statement
4. l y: slowly, lovely, highly
5. ism : journalism, Rebalism , pawanism
6. ion: nation, ion, creation, action
7. able : disable, reliable, liable
8. er: manager, creater , incharger
9. cy: Fantacy, privacy, Fancy, mercy
1. Manage- management, manager
2. Free- freedom
3. Create-creation, create
4. Pollute- pollution, polluter
5. Maintain- maintainance , maintainor
3. COLLOCTIONS
COLLOCATIONS: -
Collocations are combination of two words generally that make compound words.
The structure of collocations is fixed in any particular language.
Collocations give originality in expressing ideas or defining things without apt collocations a language sounds absurd and nonsense.
There are several types of collocations made from combination of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.,
TYPES OF COLLOCATIONS: -
1. VERB + NOUN
2. ADJECTIVE + NOUN
Do business
Black board
Read book
Handsome boy
Start game
Beautiful girl
Stop nonsense
White milk
3.NOUN + NOUN: -
4. VERB+ PREPOSITION: -
Pen pencil
Filled with
Police station
Build up
Railway station
Move across
Rowdy baby
Made of
5. ADEVRB+ADJECTIVE: -
6. VERB + ADVERB: -
Deeply unhappy
Badly damaged
Fully aware
Fully recovered
Ridiculously long
Go slowly
MODEL PAPER: -
Match the following into appropriate collocations
A
B
i. Strong
a) privacy
ii. Happy
b) mistake
iii. Some
c) ending
iv. Works
d) coffee
v. Terrible
e) perfectly
A
B
i. Annual
a) forces
ii. Chair
b) turnover
iii. Middle
c) a meeting
iv. Close
d) a conclusion
v. Draw
e) figures
A
B
i. Launch
a) a deal
ii. Market
b) a product
iii. Sales
c) management
iv. Lay off
d) staff
v. Make
e) a profit
One-word substitutes
A single word that can replace a group of words without any change in meaning is called one-word substitutes. One word substitutes help make our communication brief and precise. The use of these helps avoid round about expressions and repetition. These are very useful in precise writing.
Example: -
Ram is a person who does not know how to read and write.
Ram is an illiterate
I like the scientific study of animal life.
I like zoology
Some words:
Atheist: A person who does not believe in the existence of god
Indelible: something which is impossible to forget or remove
Obliterate: To remove completely
Sanctuary: A place where birds or animals are sheltered and protected
Unanimous: agreed on or shared by everyone in a group
Here is a list of some such useful words
| Anarchist | One who is out to sovert a government |
|---|---|
| Convalescent | One who is recovering from illness |
| Omnipotent | One who is all powerful |
| Omnipresent | One who is present everywhere |
| Gullible | One who is easily divided |
| Infallible | One who does not make mistake |
Mercenary
One who can do anything for money
ENGLISH
| Polyglot | One who knows many languages |
|---|---|
| Epicure | One who is fond of sensuous pleasures |
| Egoist | One who thinks only of himself |
| Feminist | One who thinks only of welfare of women |
| Effeminate | One who is quite like a woman |
| Eccentric | One who has strange habits |
| Reticent | One who speaks less |
| Pedestrian | One who goes on foot |
| Fatalist | One who believes in fact |
| Democracy | A government by the people |
| Monarchy | A government by the king and queen |
| Bureaucracy | A government by the officials |
| Plutocracy | A government by the rich |
| Oligarchy | A government by the few |
| Aristocracy | A government by the nobles |
| Autocracy | A government by the one |
| Transparent | That through which light can pass |
| Opaque | That through which light cannot pass |
| Translucent | That through which light can partly pass |
| Ambiguous | A sentence which has more than one meaning |
| Orphanage | A place where orphans lives |
| Indescribable | That which cannot be described |
| Inimitable | That which cannot be imitated |
| Inevitable | That which cannot be avoided |
| Honorary | A position for which no salary is paid |
| Indefensible | That which cannot be defended |
| Polyandry | Practice of having several husbands |
| Polygamy | Practice of having several wives |
| Monogamy | Practice of having one wife or husband |
| Bigamy | Practice of having two wives or husbands |
|---|---|
| Improbable | That which is not likely to happen |
| Contemporaries | People living at the same time |
| Posthumous | A book , published after the death of its author |
| Anonymous | A book written by an unknown author |
| Autobiography | A life history written by oneself |
| Biography | A life history written by somebody else |
| Colleagues | People who work together |
| Glutton | One who eats too much |
| Insatiable | That which cannot be satisfied |
| Cynic | One who questions everything |
| Carnivorous | A flesh eating animal |
| Herbivorous | A grass eating animal |
| Immigrant | One who lives in a foreign country |
| Delegate | To transfer one’s authority to another |
| Legal | That which is lawful |
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Mexico City's Rain-Harvesting Program Could Change How Cities Manage Water
ALAN GRABINKSY AUGUST 16, 2019
W hen Maria Isabel Contreras and her husband moved to Mexico City's Iztapalapa district, 30 years ago, water was not an issue. But as the district urbanized, the taps began to dry up. Today, the nine-person household — four adults and five children — receives three hours of continuous supply of murky, brown water each day, before the water runs out.
This translates into a daily struggle for the Contreras household, and she is quick to enumerate all the tactics used to get by. "We inserted water savers in all the toilets," she said, "and use the bathtub as an extra storage container." The family also collects extra water from showers by placing buckets next to their feet, and they reuse water from the laundry machine to clean the floors.
The Contreras are not alone; millions of people in Mexico City lack access to running water. According to UN-backed research, Mexico City — along with Cairo, Bangalore, Cape Town, and seven other megalopolises — will run out of water by 2030. Those who suffer from water shortages today pay for private water companies to fill up their tanks — a service that Contreras can't afford.
The irony is, water in the city abounds. Set on a mile-and-a-half-high basin and surrounded by mountains, the city — which used to be integrated with a system of lakes and rivers — receives more yearly rainfall than London. But, due to urbanization policies implemented since the Spanish conquest https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/mexico-citys-rain-harvesting-program-could-change-how-cities-manage-water
and strengthened by the city's mid-twentieth century growth, the resource has been squandered and mismanaged, profoundly affecting the ecosystem and the survival of its millions of inhabitants.
Today, most of the city's water is collected from underground wells or pumped from hundreds of miles away through inefficient and costly infrastructure. As for rainwater, it mixes mostly with air and ground pollutants and ends up in the sewer.
Earlier this year, Contreras found out about a government program to install rainwater-collecting systems in the houses of Iztapalapa and Xochimilco, another poor district with chronic water problems. The new mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist, promised to install 100,000 of these rainwater harvesting systems in the rooftops of Iztapalapa by the end of her six-year-tenure.
During the kick-off event in Iztapalapa — where her party has had strong support during the last elections — Sheinbaum said that the city is investing twice as much as previous governments in solving the water problem, which also means looking for leaks in the system and finding more water sources. The rainwater project is a 200 million-pesos ($10 million) program, a small part of the city's overall budget, but according to Sheinbaum, a more efficient way of dealing with part of the problem: "We want to solve our debt to Iztapalapa, the lack of water to the area." she said.
To install the harvesting systems Sheinbaum is partnering with Isla Urbana, an NGO that has been installing these systems since 2009. If they are successful, over half a million people could survive for up to seven months without accessing the urban water grid. "It could set up a new precedence in urban governance," Enrique Lomnitz, one of Isla Urbana's founders, says, "with whole areas of a city no longer depending on the government for daily access to the resource."
The rain-harvesting idea was conceived together with Renata Fermont as part of Lomnitz's graduation project at the Rhode Island School of Design. Fermont and Lomnitz conducted interviews and research on the needs of low-income communities in Mexico City´s periphery, which led to the insight of a fundamentally flawed paradigm of water management in the valley.
"We realized that the current model was drawing out two or three times more water than what it was putting in," he says, "and that changing this outdated model through infrastructure investment was a costly endeavor — so we turned our eyes on granularity." What this means is implementing cheap (around $700) systems in each house without having to drill underground to change the old and inefficient infrastructure.
The first system was set up using spare parts, in the house of a woman named Clara Gaitan. According to Lomnitz, after installing the rainwater harvester Gaitan — who already had a 30,000-liter water tank in the cellar (a common feature of houses in Mexico City) — managed to live without having to use the water grid for seven months.
In order to gain a better sense of the needs, Lomnitz moved from his house to a house in the periphery where he lived for four years. Those first systems served as a proof of concept, and, as more people got involved, they started drawing attention. In 2011, the Mexico City district of Tlalpán, then under Sheinbaum's command, took notice and asked Isla Urbana to install 500 systems. This was the first time Isla Urbana had to deal with bigger logistics and learned to install and train the families receiving the system on a massive scale.
Today the patented system is highly adaptable to the conditions of each house. The most basic packages use special drains to collect water from the roof and run it through a patented filter called https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/mexico-citys-rain-harvesting-program-could-change-how-cities-manage-water
Tlaloque 200, which retains most of the solids, and through a leaf-filter. More sophisticated versions include a carbon filter, which reduces the bad taste, and a water purifier.
Although the final output in most cases (a costly purifying filter is not installed in many of the systems) is not potable water, it is water that can be used for cleaning the house, laundry, flushing toilets and showering. Since its founding, Isla Urbana has been able to provide over 50,000 people with clean water (in some cases, year-round).
One Wednesday morning I went to visit the installation of the filters in Iztapalapa. Javier Hernandez — who, together with his brothers Gabino and Alejandro, has worked for Isla Urbana since 2011 — drove me around. Hernandez, who is now head of installations in Iztapalapa (his brother is head in Xochimilco) has overseen the installation of 11,000 systems. In the current initiative, he leads 15 brigades and installed 36 systems a day; since April, the Hernandez brothers have installed 3,500 systems.
Hernandez drove me to a house that had a system installed a couple of weeks ago. "We have just received the first rain, and the container was overflowing," Eugenio Reyes Lopez, who lives with nine family members, told me.
Reyes, unlike Contreras, has had almost no running water throughout his thirty years of life in Iztapalapa. He receives water on Thursdays and Fridays, if at all. He has a big container in the basement of his house where he collects all the water that he can to last for the week. "It is yellow and rusty," he told me, "from the shitty water that comes out."
As we toured their house Reyes pointed to a series of barrels stacked outside, also used as storage for water. He lifted one lid to reveal a greenish substance: "This is the water that comes out of the system," he told me. Then he revealed another barrel containing clear water "This one," he said, smiling, "is the one that came from above."
At Maria Contrera's house, one brigade was busy installing a new system. Ismael Garcia, her husband, was walking back and forth, talking excitedly with the installation crew. "This is fabulous, its excellent," he told me."The streets turn to rivers when it rains here, imagine how many liters of rainwater are going down the drain, and now, into our house!"
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Alan Grabinksy is a journalist and consultant based in Mexico City covering globalization, media and urban issues.
TAGS: WATER,MEXICO CITY
Cooperative Works to Save the Only Black-Owned Bookstore in Kentucky
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/mexico-citys-rain-harvesting-program-could-change-how-cities-manage-water
EMILY NONKO AUGUST 15, 2019
T his week an eleventh-hour fundraising effort saved the only black-owned bookstore in Kentucky. It's one of many efforts by Lexington community members to maintain the Wild Fig bookstore as a community hub over its eight-year history.
The Wild Fig's history dates to 2011, when artist Ronald Davis and author Crystal Wilkinson opened it as the first, and only, black-owned bookstore in the state. Citing financial difficulties, the couple closed shop in 2015. Later that year, they seized an opportunity to reopen Wild Fig in a smaller location on the north side of the city. After three years in business, they announced they'd once again need to close the doors to the public.
The announcement set off alarm bells for Lexington community organizer April Taylor, as Wild Fig had become an important hub. "There aren't necessarily a lot of safe spaces around town to have conversations about racial and economic inequality," Taylor says.
Davis and Wilkinson put the business up for sale, and in less than 30 days, Taylor helped spearhead a community fundraising campaign raising $25,000 to buy it. The community not only saved the business but kickstarted its transition into a worker cooperative. Taylor is now one of seven co-owners of the Wild Fig.
Since reopening as a cooperative last year, the struggle to keep the doors open has not subsided. This month, Wild Fig launched a series of events to increase traffic and generate enough profit to make it https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/mexico-citys-rain-harvesting-program-could-change-how-cities-manage-water
through the summer. In a down-to-the-wire fundraising effort launched this week, the bookstore raised just enough money to pay its August rent.
"The way the Fig came into community possession is really unprecedented — in some ways it's the cart before the horse," explains Taylor. "Most communities organize for months or years before they come into possession into a business, but for us it was a space we saw as safe and sacred and wanted to hold onto, and within 30 days we had possession of a business."
"This is new for all of us," Taylor says, "But there's a legacy of black bookstores we want to honor and carry on."
Black-owned bookstores have made something of a comeback in recent years: the number of businesses peaked in 1999 with 324 but fell to a low of 54 in 2014, according to the African American Literature Book Club. By the end of 2018, there were 110 black-owned bookstores.
But the history of black-owned bookstores — which often double as organizing and community hubs — includes threats to their existence. At the height of the Black Panther Movement, for example, "radical" black bookstores were targeted by the FBI.
Cooperatives, too, have played an important role in African American history. Jim Embry, a supporter of Wild Fig and director of the Sustainable Communities Network, traces his own family history to farming worker collectives that emerged after the Civil War. In the 1970s, he joined with others to found the Good Foods Co-op in Lexington.
"The idea of the co-op is to create a community without great extremes of inequity," he says. "At the Fig, there's a larger perspective that yes, we are a bookstore, but we are also a community gathering place where ideas are discussed and acted upon."
Still, it's been a difficult transition to full-fledged cooperative while maintaining operation of an independent bookstore and cafe. The seven co-owners of Wild Fig bought into the business monetarily or with 300 hours of sweat equity. Taylor says the goal is to bring in more co-owners, but it's a challenge in a city without resources to support cooperative business development.
In addition, the Wild Fig is located in the North Limestone area of Lexington, which is gentrifying. The landlords of the building, according to Taylor, have contributed to redevelopment and rising prices of the area. Recently the Wild Fig proposed an affordable rent agreement, asking the landlords accept 30 percent of its gross sales, and asked for community support.
The Wild Fig has also fundraised, held events including drum circles and drag queen story times, and is selling inventory online. But if the landlord does not accept the affordable rent agreement, the business will explore opportunities to relocate to a more affordable space.
A new location could mean an expansion of the cooperative model. The Fig plans to submit a business plan to a local affiliate of the Working World, an organization that builds cooperative businesses in low-income communities. The goal is to qualify for a minimal-risk capital loan to purchase its own building. If the Wild Fig bought a historic home on the north side of the city — an area historically home to people of color — co-owners would convert the upstairs into a housing cooperative and the basement into a cooperative co-work space, according to Taylor.
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/mexico-citys-rain-harvesting-program-could-change-how-cities-manage-water
She is ultimately hopeful: over the bookstore's eight-year history, Lexington residents have consistently pulled together to save it. As for the bookstore's current challenge transitioning to a cooperative, Taylor is already considering how this work can inspire a larger collective of cooperatives across the south. The Wild Fig partnered with Tennessee-based Highlander Center to explore opportunities for co-op incubation.
"One of the cool things about us being trailblazers," Taylor says, "is we get to leave a legacy that will hopefully make it easier for those who come behind us."
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Emily Nonko is a Brooklyn, New York-based reporter who writes about real estate, architecture, urbanism and design. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Curbed and other publications.
FOLLOW EMILY EMAIL EMILY ✉
TAGS: LEXINGTON
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Safe Routes to School LYNDALE COMMUNITY SCHOOL
Encouraging walking and biking to school
Safe Routes to School: Healthy Kids Focused Students
About the evaluation of Safe Routes
Across the nation, communities are employing strategies to increase physical activity to improve kids' fitness and reduce the obesity epidemic. One such effort is Safe Routes to School, which encourages more children to bike or walk to school. According to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Transportation, 42 percent of school-age children walked or biked to school in 1969 while only 16 percent of children walked or biked to school in 2001.
Locally, Minneapolis Public Schools has implemented Safe Routes programming in 10 schools with a grant from the Minneapolis Department of Health and Family Support through the Statewide Health Improvement Program (SHIP). The goals of Safe Routes programming within the school district are to: 1) encourage healthy living and combat childhood obesity, 2) increase knowledge of pedestrian and bicycle safety, 3) strengthen neighborhoods and communities, and 4) support "green" environmental efforts.
Safe Routes programming aligns with the school district's Wellness Policy to build an environment that supports and develops healthy learners by promoting healthy eating and physical activity. Safe Routes also complements the district's Changing School Options plan, which allows more students to attend schools closer to home and saves on transportation costs.
Wilder Research was contracted to evaluate Safe Routes programming. In the first year of the evaluation, Wilder Research assessed the progress of Safe Routes at three Minneapolis schools: Lyndale Community School, Nellie Stone Johnson Community School, and Seward Montessori School.
As part of the evaluation of Lyndale's Safe Routes programming, Wilder Research conducted key informant interviews and a parent focus group. Interviews were conducted with three individuals, including parent and school staff members involved in the Safe Routes programming. Interviews focused on the collaborative process of implementing Safe Routes, engagement strategies, challenges to increasing walking and biking to school, and the overall impact of Safe Routes programming at Lyndale. A total of 11 parents participated in the focus group and were asked about their experiences with walking and biking to school, perceptions of benefits and barriers to walking and biking, and awareness of current neighborhood and school efforts to make walking and biking to school easier. Three parents also participated in a family interview with their children to tell their stories of walking and biking to school. Additional information about Lyndale's Safe Routes programming was gathered from school district-level Safe Routes staff.
Safe Routes at Lyndale Community School: A collaborative effort
Lyndale Community School is a PreK-5 public school in south Minneapolis with an enrollment of about 390 students in the 2009-2010 school year.
Collaborative efforts among parents, school staff, and district level Safe Routes staff make Safe Routes programming possible. Safe Routes at Lyndale began in the 2009-10 school year. A few key parents, who walked with their children to school every day, initiated Safe Routes and have taken leadership of the programming. To carry out their ideas for Safe Routes, parents and school staff worked with district-level Safe Routes staff to learn more about implementing Safe Routes. District-level Safe Routes staff connected parents and school staff to an opportunity for a $1,000 mini-grant from the National Center for Safe Routes to School. Parent Scott Borden volunteered to prepare and submit the mini-grant. Of about 250 grant applications, Lyndale was 1 of 25 schools nationwide to receive the mini-grant.
The mini-grant helped parents and school staff plan and coordinate Safe Routes programming. Grant funds were used to buy safety equipment for adult volunteer walkers and incentives to encourage student participation. Since its kick off on Earth Day 2010, Lyndale has hosted a "Walk to School" day twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a "Walk and Bike Safety Day," in which students received lessons about walking and biking safety during their physical education class.
Grant funding also helped Lyndale establish four organized and parent-led "Walking School Buses," where parents walk with their children on mapped routes and pick up other student walkers at designated stops along the way to school. Parent Scott Borden mapped out the four routes and did a practice run of each route to ensure that they were safe and that there was enough time for each designated stop. He called every family within Lyndale's walk zone to personally tell them about the Walking School Buses and invite them to participate. School staff helped distribute participation sign-up forms and maps of the Walking School Bus routes.
Lyndale has received support from the Lyndale Neighborhood Association as well. The neighborhood group helped promote a safe neighborhood for walkers and bikers by advocating for lower speed limits around the school and helping to find resources to support Safe Routes programming.
Accomplishments
Safe Routes at Lyndale has had many accomplishments in its first year of programming.
Student and parent participation
The involvement of students and parents play an important role in making Safe Routes successful. Parent and caregiver volunteers, who walk with their children and other children, help make the Walking School Buses feasible and safe. They also encourage and motivate each other and other families to walk to school.
At the Earth Day kick off event for Safe Routes, Lyndale exceeded its goal of getting at least 50 students to walk to school. On that morning, 65 students walked to school and many signed up to be part of the Walking School Buses. Interest and participation in the Walking School Buses continues to grow. At a community building event at Lyndale
Safe Routes—Connecting parents, teachers, and students
Holly's daughter, Sarah, attends Lyndale Community School, just two blocks from their home. Sarah walks with her mom to school every day. She likes to walk to school because she gets to meet new people and talk to her friends. She thinks walking with her mom is fun. They enjoy doing activities together, like going to the park or making snowmen in the winter. Holly also finds benefits in their morning walk. She said, ―Walking to school with my daughter has given me a touch point with her teachers. I have other kids at home, so I don't have the time to spend in the classroom. It has been a really nice way to connect.‖ Holly mentioned that Sarah's friends do not always walk with them, and then they do other activities. She said, ―Sometimes, we stop at the park on the way home and observe nature.‖ Holly enjoys the time she gets to spend with her daughter on the walks, and believes the rewards far outweigh the time commitment.
(Names have been changed to protect privacy.)
during the last week of school, Safe Routes was promoted and yielded much success in getting new students and families to sign up next year.
Parent and school staff involved in Safe Routes are proud of how programming has motivated students to walk. A staff member has observed that more students were walking to school from outside the half mile walk zone of Lyndale. The staff member said, "Having kids out of the walk zone that want to walk is a big deal! It's fun for them!"
Local and national recognition of Safe Routes
Lyndale's Safe Routes programming has also received positive local and national recognition. The Earth Day kick off event was publicized in local newspapers and a nightly news show. City Council Member Elizabeth Glidden and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak have walked with students on some occasions and have been great supporters of Safe Routes. Additionally, the National Center for Safe Routes to School featured Scott Borden's work with implementing Safe Routes in a recent webinar about making the most of its mini-grants. The National Center for Safe Routes to School will also feature Lyndale's Safe Routes programming in their national marketing campaign called, "Every Step Counts."
Challenges
While Lyndale has experienced some challenges in encouraging walking and biking to school, there is progress in overcoming these challenges as excitement and recognition of Safe Routes grows.
Communication and engagement
Parent and school staff involved in Safe Routes felt it was difficult to engage families to walk to school. Engaging Spanish-speaking and Somali families has been particularly challenging due to language and cultural barriers. However, bilingual school staff have been very helpful in getting information out to non-English speaking families through translating materials and calling parents to promote the Walking School Buses. Furthermore, some parents are reaching out to other parents to promote walking to school and engage leadership. For example, parent and school staff members involved in Safe Routes noted that Somali parents have helped engage Somali students and families to walk to school. Overall, parents and school staff feel increasing communication about Safe Routes and building relationships will help encourage more participation and leadership.
Safety concerns
School staff and parents acknowledged traffic, crime, and weather safety concerns as challenges to walking and biking to school. Parent focus group participants reported concerns about busy intersections, the overall flow of traffic during morning rush hour, stranger danger, and the winter cold and snow. Most parents were uncomfortable allowing their children to walk to school alone, especially young children. They were concerned about their
The "Walking School Bus"—a safe way to make walking fun
Alice's grandchildren enjoy walking to school with the Walking School Bus. Waiting for the Walking School Bus is an exciting time for her grandchildren. She believes it is a safety net for her grandchildren—in addition to making walking fun! She said, ―Tuesdays and Thursdays are big days for us. We get ready, have snacks, and wait for the Walking School Bus to come. My grandchildren get exercise and walking really rejuvenates them. It also invigorates me as a grandmother.‖
Albert, Alice's grandson, walks to school every day with his three siblings and friends. He thinks walking is good for his health and the environment. He likes talking with his friends on the way to school and playing kickball when he gets to school early. He says, ―My friends are in (the Walking School Bus) so I wanted to be in it too! I can walk and talk with my friends at the same time!‖
(Names have been changed to protect privacy.)
The benefits of walking: exercise, family time, and learning to be responsible
Mohammed said, ―It's more convenient for my children to walk to school – it seems like a waste to drive when it takes just as much time to walk.‖ He likes walking with his son, Abdi, because it helps both of them get exercise. Abdi understands the health benefits of walking, he said, ―Walking makes children more fit, healthier, and happier.‖
In addition to getting exercise, walking gives Mohammed and Abdi quality time to talk to each other and socialize with other families. Abdi said, ―I'm excited when I can look forward to walking to school with my friends and family.‖ Abdi is motivated to walk to school when he sees other kids walking as well.
Mohammed feels walking to school helps children to be responsible and understand safety rules for crossing streets. He said, ―It is a lesson worth learning for children to be responsible.‖ He also feels it is important for parents to be well-informed of safety rules so they can teach their children to cross busy streets safely as well.
(Names have been changed to protect privacy.)
children not paying attention to traffic and encountering strangers. Some parents felt their children were not old enough or responsible enough to walk and bike to school because they lacked knowledge about safety, such as understanding street signs and knowing how to bike safely on streets or sidewalks. A couple of parents also noted a lack of bike safety equipment, such as helmets and knee pads. The winter weather was a concern because some parents felt it was difficult for their children to walk in the cold and unshoveled sidewalks. When sidewalks were not kept clear, children walked in the streets.
Generally, parents felt more comfortable with their children walking to school if their children were older, and if there were other students and adults walking to school as well. Many parents reported walking with their children to school, while other parents allowed their children to walk to school with neighbors or they drove their children to school. While a few parents were concerned about who would be responsible if something were to happen to a child on the Walking School Bus, most felt an adult presence or supervision was key to ensuring that children got to school safely. A parent acknowledged that the role of adult walkers is very important and helped those parents who were unable to walk to school with their children.
In acknowledgement of parents' safety concerns, Lyndale hosted a listening session in May 2010 to hear about parents' concerns and ideas regarding walking to school. Another listening session is scheduled for next year. Parent and school staff members felt communication and parent leadership were key in promoting the safety of students who walk and bike to school. Safe Routes to School staff report they continue to work with law enforcement, public works, and other agencies to address family safety concerns.
Impact of Safe Routes
Safe Routes has positively impacted students, the school, and the community. School staff and parents felt students were very excited about walking to school. They felt walking to school helped give students opportunities to exercise and learn healthy habits. In addition, they felt walking helped students be alert, energetic, happy, and active, which is beneficial for preparing students to do well in school. A parent said, "Walking helps get them awake and charged for the day."
Walking has also helped students and parents build relationships with other families and make connections with the school and neighborhood. Parents felt walking was a chance to spend quality time with their children, in addition to being an opportunity for them to socialize and meet new people. Many parents said socializing with friends on the way to school was the highlight of walking for their children. Parents who walked with their children were also meeting and building relationships with other parents. Parents felt building relationships helped to create a sense of
community. A parent said, "Walking can be a real benefit because it is a sign of a vibrant and safe neighborhood. Walking together makes a good school. It is a way for us all to bridge cultures." School staff also enjoyed seeing families make connections with each other and walk together. A school staff member said, "We had many parents that were opposed to walking to school, but are now walking with their children. We see them laughing and having a good time. They are really connecting with other parents within the school. It is a great experience for everyone."
A couple of parents and a school staff member also felt encouraging students to walk to school was a way to help the school district save on transportation costs, which means more resources can be invested in student learning and education. They also felt Safe Routes supported the school district's efforts to move towards community schools.
Ideas for expanding Safe Routes to School at Lyndale Community School
School staff and parents had a variety of ideas for expanding and sustaining Safe Routes at Lyndale. Parent and school staff members involved in Safe Routes look forward to increasing student and parent participation, expanding the Walking School Buses, recruiting parent walkers to take leadership of the routes, and engaging the school neighborhood and community. With more parents and partners involved, everyone can work together to keeping students safe.
Parent focus-group participants also had some suggestions for expanding Safe Routes, such as working with the city and school district to put up more safety signs and keep streets clear in the winter; increasing the number of school safety patrols; providing safety training for students and parents in school; providing students with more incentives for walking; providing student and adult walkers with matching Lyndale t-shirts so they would be easily recognized within the neighborhood; and possibly doing a project called, "Paint the Pavement," in which artwork is painted on the streets and sidewalks as a strategy to slow down traffic.
Want to implement Safe Routes to School at your school?
Here's some advice from staff leading Safe Routes to School within Minneapolis Public Schools:
Start with a small group of interested individuals to learn about Safe Routes and identify programming strategies of interest.
Build partnerships with the city, school district, parents, students, and the community to work together in implementing and promoting Safe Routes.
Encourage participation and leadership from students, parents, and the community.
Identify and assess common walking and biking routes, and promote designated safe routes to students, parents, and the community.
What's next for Minneapolis Public Schools?
In the 2010-11 school year, Minneapolis Public Schools will continue Safe Routes programming by:
[x] Expanding Safe Routes programming to at least 10 additional schools.
[x] Expanding the role of school safety patrols and piloting adult crossing guards.
[x] Expanding ―Transportation Safety Week‖ to include lessons on walking and biking.
[x] Working with schools to develop maps that identify primary walking and biking routes for students and families.
[x] Publishing a toolkit on how to implement Safe Routes programming.
[x] Translating Safe Routes information into Spanish, Hmong, and Somali.
[x] Continuing to provide technical assistance to schools.
[x] Strengthening the network of resources and integrating Safe Routes into the school district and community.
The Safe Routes Workgroup
The Safe Routes Workgroup is an interagency group consisting of city and school district partners. Partners collaboratively coordinate Safe Routes to School efforts within Minneapolis Public Schools by addressing obstacles to walking and biking to school and leveraging resources to support programming.
The City of Minneapolis partners
The Department of Health and Family Support. Provides funding for Safe Routes to School within Minneapolis Public Schools, and has worked on strategic planning for Safe Routes within the school district.
The Department of Public Works. Works with schools to improve infrastructure to ensure a safe environment for walking and biking.
The Bike Walk Ambassador Program within the Department of Public Works. Provides students and school staff with education and safety training on walking and biking. Bike Walk ambassadors, including youth ambassadors, have also helped schools to implement and promote Safe Routes programming.
The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). Patrols school neighborhoods during arrival and dismissal times, and provides schools with crime data to identify safe routes. The MPD also coordinates the School Resource Officer program, where every school has an assigned police officer to assist with crime-related issues.
Minneapolis Public Schools district partners
The Department of Student Support Services. Has district-level Safe Routes staff, who provides technical assistance to schools with Safe Routes programming, and convenes the Safe Routes Workgroup.
The Department of Transportation. Provides schools with information on where students live, establishes walk zone boundaries, and helps identify safe routes.
The Department of Emergency Management, Safety and Security. Coordinates the school safety patrol program and collaborates with the American Auto Association (AAA) to provide school safety patrols with safety training.
For more resources and technical assistance about Safe Routes to School within Minneapolis Public Schools, call the main phone number (612-668-0000) or visit the Healthy Kids Focused Students website (http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/HKFS.html).
Wilder Research
Information. Insight. Impact
451 Lexington Parkway North Saint Paul, Minnesota 55104 651-280-2700; FAX 651-280-3700
For more information
This summary presents highlights from the evaluation of Lyndale's Safe Routes programming. For more information, contact Melanie Ferris at Wilder Research, firstname.lastname@example.org or 651-2802660.
Author: Mao Thao and Nam Nguyen DECEMBER 2010
LYNDALE COMMUNITY SCHOOL
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Integrated Therapy Service
THERAPY GUIDANCE SHEET
Food Chaining
A way to expand the diet of your child
Food Chaining is a way of taking a food which is liked and accepted by your child and slowly adding subtle variations to this food to allow your child to make the bridge to new foods. The idea behind food chaining is that you start with a food your child already likes and accepts and look for links between this food and the new food you are going to offer.
These steps need to be small and the pace of the food chain needs to be dictated by the child. There is no hiding of food, switching packets or force feeding your child, all food chains happen with your child's knowledge and consent. For example, if McDonald's French fries are accepted and nothing else a food chain might look a little like this:
- McDonald's French fries
- French fries from other fast food restaurants (Burger King, KFC)
- French Fries cooked at home from a packet (McCain's, Supermarket own brand, etc)
- Homemade French fries
- Different shaped French fries ( potato smiles, alphabet shapes, potato waffles)
- Fried slices of potato
- Roast potato
- Mashed potato
A food chain is not a linear thing. At any point you can branch off and start a new chain toward a new food. Different shaped French fries might lead on to potato skins and from here the addition of different toppings – maybe even a meat or vegetable. Another example would be to go from French fries to sweet potato fries and then on to sweet potato. In time this process has some serious potential to increase the number of foods your child will eat!
TGS 001
Food chaining is not force feeding. The child leads, the team guides. If a child makes a bold leap from homemade fries to broccoli, our role is to encourage, support and get busy working on a whole new chain. If he doesn't want to move past French fries, we focus on another chain, maybe the one that starts with another preferred food such as pancakes or apple. There is never to be any pressure to eat anything and preferred foods should always be offered alongside new foods which are being tried.
If your child is really struggling to make the transition from one food to another look at the size of the step you are asking them to make. If it is too big see if you can make some smaller links. You may be able to start with changing the way you present the child's preferred food as a way of getting them used to small changes. For example you could:
Cut their sandwiches into different shapes- squares, soldiers, triangles, cookie cutters.
Present their food on a different plate, sit them at a different place at the table, encourage them to pour their packet of crisps into a bowl or eat their yoghurt tube with a spoon.
Put a sticker on their favourite cup they use to drink from
Change the temperature of the food- can you eat the yoghurt tube as an ice lolly or heat up the milk on their breakfast cereal?
Points to remember when food chaining
Keep the steps small and try and link the new food to the existing accepted food as much as possible.
Offer the new food alongside the existing food. Your child may start by having one McDonald's chip followed by one 'new' chip and then go back to McDonalds chips for the rest of the meal. Gradually increase the amount of the new food the child is offered and is eating.
Once the child is regularly eating a reasonable amount of this new food, it must become a regular part of their diet alongside the other foods. Continue to offer the old foods and the new foods regularly to ensure they remain in your child's diet.
Use visual supports to show your child all the foods they like and have tried. If you can, included pictures of your child eating and enjoying the foods. This can be useful for the days when your child refuses a preferred food.
If your child refuses a food, try not to comment and make a fuss. Simply offer the food again another day and keep offering other preferred foods on rotation as well.
It may take children 10-20 exposures of a new food to accept it into their diet. Keep going and try and keep mealtimes relaxed and stress free. Your job as a parent is to offer foods (both accepted foods and new foods) and it is your child's job to decide what they eat and how much.
Food chaining is a way of rapidly increasing the number of foods your child eats but it does take time and patience. If you are worried that your child is losing weight, refusing more foods or becoming more distressed at mealtimes please contact your child's therapist.
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Evidence Brief: Impact of food skills programs on fruit and vegetable consumption among children and youth
Key messages
- Food skills programs can lead to significant increases in fruit and vegetable consumption in children and youth aged 4 to 18 years
- Parental involvement is important to sustain healthy eating behaviours at home
- Current food skills initiatives in the province can be evaluated when more Ontario-specific data is available
September 2016
Issue and Research Question
Nutrition has long been identified as a component of good health and well-being. Nutrition is a major modifiable risk factor of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and some types of cancer. 1,2 Fruit and vegetable (FV) intake can help to prevent or lower their risk of these diseases. 2 The protective factor of FV has been observed in Canadian children and adolescents (2 to 17 years), with those consuming FV five or more times daily experiencing lower rates of overweight and obesity. 3
Fruit and vegetables are an important source of vitamins and minerals, and dietary fibre, 4 each of which are essential in supporting healthy growth and development, 5 in addition to contributing to reduced chronic disease risk. 6 There is growing concern that Canadian children and youth are at risk for nutritionrelated conditions such as diabetes and obesity. The prevalence of diabetes for those aged 15 to 19 is 0.5%, and the prevalence of overweight or obesity is 29.4% for youth aged 12 to 19 years. 7 These rates are problematic as childhood behaviours such as high consumption of fast food and sugar-sweetened beverages and sedentary lifestyles can have negative impacts later on in adulthood. 8-10 There is evidence to
show that Canadian children may be engaging in unhealthy food practices. 11 For example, data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS, Cycle 2.2) suggest that large proportions of Canadian adolescents aged 9 to 18 have inadequate intake of vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A and D, magnesium and calcium, 12 and that young children (4 to 8 years) have inadequate calcium intake. 13 Both children and adolescents have sodium intakes above the tolerable upper intake level. 12,13
Overall, fruit and vegetable intake is low among children and youth in Ontario. Average intakes are 4.43 servings a day, with 64% consuming less than 5 servings of FV daily. 14 While this data is from 2004, recent smaller studies suggest that low FV intake continues to be a problem among young children and youth. 15-17 Canada's Food Guide (CFG) recommends 5 to 6 servings per day for 4 to 13 year olds, and 7 to 8 servings for 14 to 18 year olds. 18
In an effort to promote healthy food choices and to educate children and youth about food and nutrition, food skills programming has been introduced in many communities. 19 Food skills encompass a set of skills related to food preparation, handling and food safety. This can refer to skills at both an individual or household level, and represents skills that individuals should be familiar with, understand and be able to apply in practice. 20,21 Food skills can be categorized into five major types: knowledge (e.g., nutrition, label reading, food safety), planning (e.g., meal organization, food prep, budgeting), conceptualizing food (e.g., adjusting recipes, creatively), mechanical techniques (e.g., chopping/mixing, cooking, following recipes) and food perception (e.g., using senses – texture, taste, when foods are cooked). 21,22 The Ontario Public Health Standards (OPHS) highlights food skills programming as a focus area for all public health units stating that "opportunities for skill development in the areas of food skills and healthy eating practices" should be available for priority populations. 23
Food skills interventions largely target the development of skills for the preparation and handling of nutritious foods, often focusing on FV. Given the importance of FV intake in growth, development, and chronic disease prevention, and that some children and youth do not meet CFG FV intake recommendations, it is important to investigate the impact of these programs on FV consumption in order to inform future OPHS programming.
Therefore, the goal of this Evidence Brief is to summarize the current literature examining the question: Do food skills programs increase consumption of fruits and vegetables among children and youth?
Methods
PHO Library Services conducted searches in electronic databases including Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and ERIC. Electronic databases were initially searched on May 28 and 29, 2015 for articles published from 2005 to 2015, limited to reviews, systematic reviews and metaanalyses and other synthesized literature. An updated search was conducted on March 28 and 29, 2016. Articles retrieved by the search strategy were assessed for eligibility using the following criteria: English language articles were eligible for inclusion if they were recent (2005 and later), targeted school-aged children and youth, focused on food skill interventions that took place in schools or in the community, and reported data on one or more outcomes focused on FV intake. Articles were excluded if the population targeted adults only, if the paper did not report fruit or vegetable consumption, or targeted specific diseases (for example allergies, asthma, cancer). Food skills activities that were part of a multi-component intervention but which were not the sole focus and could not be separated for independent analysis were also excluded. One reviewer screened titles and abstracts with a 20% sample screened by a second reviewer to assess overall agreement between reviewers. Consensus was reached on all disagreements via discussion. The quality of articles was assessed using the Health Evidence Quality Assessment Tool for review articles. Articles rated weak (a score of 4 or less) were excluded. All articles meeting the inclusion
2
criteria were retrieved for full text review and information was extracted from each article using a standardized data extraction form. The full search strategy is available upon request from PHO.
Main Findings
The search identified 1306 articles, from which seven systematic reviews are included in this Evidence Brief. Reviews focused on primary and secondary school students. Three reviews included children ranging in age from 4 to 12 years old, 24-26 and four included children and youth ranging 5 to 18 years old. 27-30 Multiple study designs (e.g., RCTs, non-randomized control trials, cluster-randomized control trials, quasi-experimental, etc.) and measurement tools (e.g., food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), 24-hr dietary recalls and food diaries, surveys, direct observation, and interviews) were used across interventions.
The majority of reviews focused on interventions that took place in the United States (US), 24-30 followed by the United Kingdom (UK), 26,28,30 Ireland, 26,28 Norway, 29,30 Finland, 30 the Netherlands, 30 Spain, 30 and Australia. 30 The types of food skills interventions and initiatives were relatively similar across countries. These interventions ranged in duration with the shortest occurring one hour per week (full length of initiative not stated), 24 and the longest running for three years. 24,27,30
All reviews included multi-component interventions consisting of nutrition education and hands-on activities that took place in the classroom or school environment, at-home or in the community. Interventions that took place in classrooms included: nutrition education, food preparation lessons, skill building activities, workshops, watching videos, cooking lessons, taste testing, and gardening. 24-30 School-level interventions consisted of: media campaigns (e.g., posters, announcements, contests), assemblies, taste testing, increased FV exposure and variety in lunchrooms, healthier options for school tuck or snack shops, workshops for teachers, and training for food service staff on purchasing, promoting and preparing FV for consumption. 27,28,30 The purpose of some activities was not explicitly stated, such as the nature of assemblies and taste testing.
At-home and community-focused components included parental involvement (e.g., parent education workshops and meetings, newsletters, brochures, healthy eating magazines and food calendars, homework activities and home packages, school cookbooks, and family/parent nights) and interactions with community organizations and community gardens. 25-30 In addition, there were two reviews that had a strong focus on gardenbased interventions, 24,29 one that focused on cooking programs, 25 and one review that specifically targeted the Food Dudes programme (based in the UK). 26
Overall, a low-to-moderate increase in FV consumption was observed among children and youth following food skills interventions. 24-30 Five reviews reported quantifiable increases in FV consumption in either gram amounts or 'servings' of FV: three reported an increase ranging from 0.30 to 3.40 servings of FV per day, 27-29 one reported an increase of 30 grams per day, 30 and another reported an increase of 0.01 to 0.71 portions (0.8 g to 56.8 g). 26 The remaining two reviews provided only qualitative descriptions, but suggested overall increases in intake of FV as a result of food skills programs/activities. 24,25 This finding of increased FV consumption in the systematic reviews is consistent with a meta-analysis that reported a statistically significant increase in FV intake among children and youth aged 6 to 15 years old (Standardized Mean Difference [SMD] 0.15 [0.02 to 0.29]). 30 Post-intervention followup data was only assessed by authors of three reviews, 26,28,30 and ranged from three months 26,28 to more than two years-post intervention; 28 in each case, increased FV intake was maintained at follow-up.
Discussion and Conclusions
Interventions targeted skills that mainly fell into four of the five major food skills categories:
3
knowledge, planning, mechanical techniques, and food perception. 21,22 No interventions aimed to directly target food conceptualization skills, such as creative use of leftover meals or food recipe modification. 21,22 All interventions were multi-component and each included some form of experiential learning. Most programs engaged parents, through simple communication materials (e.g., newsletters) or direct participation in workshops and homework activities.
Results from the reviews suggest that interventions that combine traditional nutrition education with hands-on practical experience can positively influence mediators for fruit and vegetable consumption. Health behaviours that improved following food skills interventions included: willingness to taste or try FV, 24,29 increased preferences for FV, 24,25,29 and increased general nutrition and dietary knowledge. 24 These improvements often coincided with increased FV intake.
The evidence did not draw conclusions of one type of dietary measurement tool being more effective than other types. One review identified that the limited number of studies included in the review made it difficult to comment on differences related to assessment tools. 28 Similarly, the effectiveness of some interventions over others was not discussed. Given the diverse range of interventions included, this may suggest that a specific approach is less imperative than increased engagement and involvement of children and youth in programs and initiatives.
Evidence from this Evidence Brief suggests that food skills programming and initiatives increase fruit and vegetable consumption among children and youth.
Implications for Practice
The literature shows that food skills programs had a significant impact on improving fruit and vegetable consumption among children and youth aged 4 to 18 years old. While most programs took place in the school environment, parents were also actively involved at home. Parental involvement is important given that parents who engage in healthy behaviours are more likely to increase the availability of fruits and vegetables in the home. 31 In Canada, more than 50% of households with children report involvement of children participating in grocery shopping and assisting with cooking and meal preparation. 32
Although a low-to-moderate increase in FV intake was observed, most studies in the included reviews had no follow-up post intervention or had only short-term follow-up. As a result, the effectiveness of interventions may be underestimated as effects may build over time; or the effectiveness may be overestimated if children and youth revert back to baseline following the completion of the intervention. Future studies should include interventions that are at minimum 12 months in duration, as this has been identified as a key component for intervention success, 28 and a follow-up period that ideally takes place several months or years after an intervention. In doing so, the impact of food skills interventions on dietary modification and long-term maintenance of behavioural change can be better understood. Last, additional studies are needed to gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of the growing and diverse food skills interventions being implemented in Ontario, and Canada.
Limitations
The limitations of primary studies were similar across all reviews. These included issues with methodological quality, short intervention durations, and lack of follow-up to assess longterm impact on FV consumption. Fruit and vegetable intake data was self-reported, which might have led to over-estimation of intake. Reviews also reported outcomes differently, with some reporting fruits and vegetables in terms of servings, and others reporting portions and/or grams. This made it challenging to compare results across reviews. No studies specific to Ontario or Canada were included in the reviews, which made it difficult to speak to local application of food skills interventions.
References
1. Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases. Diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases: report of a joint WHO/FAO expert consultation, Geneva, 28 January -- 1 February 2002. WHO Technical Report Series 916 [Internet]. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2003 [cited 2016 May 26]. Available from:
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/4266
5/1/WHO_TRS_916.pdf?ua=1
2. World Health Organization. Fruit and vegetable promotion initiative: a meeting report [Internet]. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2003. Available from:
http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/public ations/f&v_promotion_initiative_report.pdf?ua
=1
3. Shields M. Overweight and obesity among children and youth. Health Rep. 2006;17(3):2742.
4. Slavin JL, Lloyd B. Health benefits of fruits and vegetables. Adv Nutr. 2012;3(4):506-16.
5. Sizer F, Whitney E, Piche L. Nutrition: concepts and controversies. 2 nd Canadian ed. Toronto, ON: Nelson Education; 2012.
6. Institute of Medicine. Otten JJ, Hellwig JP, and Meyers LD, editors. Dietary reference intakes: the essential guide to nutrient requirements. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press; 2006.
7. Public Health Agency of Canada. The chief public health officer's report on the state of public health in Canada, 2011: youth and young adults – life in transition. Ottawa: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada; 2011 [cited 2016 Jun 7]. Available from: http://www.phacaspc.gc.ca/cphorsphc-respcacsp/2011/indexeng.php#toc
8. Singh AS, Mulder C, Twisk JWR, Van Mechelen W, Chinapaw MJM. Tracking of childhood overweight into adulthood: a systematic review of the literature. Obes Rev. 2008;9(5):474-88.
9. Gurnani M, Birken C, Hamilton J. Childhood obesity: causes, consequences, and management. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2015;62(4):821-40.
10. Bagchi D, editor. Global perspectives on childhood obesity: current status, consequences, and prevention. San Diego, CA: Academic Press; 2011.
11. Taylor JP, Evers S, McKenna M. Determinants of healthy eating in children and youth. Can J Public Health. 2005;96(Suppl 3):S20-6.
12. Health Canada. Do Canadian adolescents intake alone? Ottawa: Her Majesty the Queen
meet their nutrient requirements through food in Right of Canada; 2012. Available from: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fnan/alt_formats/pdf/surveill/nutrition/commun/ art-nutr-adol-eng.pdf
13. Health Canada. Do Canadian children meet their nutrient requirements through food intake alone? Ottawa: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada; 2012. Available from:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn- an/alt_formats/pdf/surveill/nutrition/commun/
art-nutr-child-enf-eng.pdf
14. Garriguet D. Nutrition: findings from the Canadian community health survey – overview of Canadians' eating habits. Ottawa:
Government of Canada; 2006 [cited 2016 Jun
6]. Available from:
http://www.publications.gc.ca/Collection/Statc an/82-620-M/82-620-MIE2006002.pdf
15. Glen KE, Thomas HM, Loebach JE, Gilliland JA, Gobert CP. Fruit and vegetable consumption among children in a socioeconomically
5
disadvantaged neighbourhood. Can J Diet Pract Res. 2013;74(3):114-8.
16. Jones AC, Hammond D, Reid JL, Leatherdale ST. Where should we eat? Lunch source and dietary measures among youth during the school week. Can J Diet Pract Res. 2015;76(4):157-65.
17. Moffat T, Galloway T. Food consumption patterns in elementary school children. Can J Diet Pract Res. 2008;69(3):152-4.
18. Health Canada. Eating well with Canada's food guide. Ottawa: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada; 2011 [cited 2016 Jun 7]. Available from: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fnan/alt_formats/hpfb-dgpsa/pdf/food-guidealiment/view_eatwell_vue_bienmang-eng.pdf
19. Nutrition Resource Centre. Food skills programming environmental scan [Internet]. Toronto, ON: Ontario Public Health Association; 2013 [cited 2016 May 26]. Available from: http://opha.on.ca/getmedia/56548d88-dc444387-a957-fcbb363e2808/Food-SkillsProgramming-Environmental-Scan.pdf.aspx
20. Garcia J, Beyers J, Uetrecht C, Kennedy E, Mangles J, Rodrigues L, et al. Healthy eating, physical activity, and healthy weights guideline for public health in Ontario. Program in evidence-based care report no.:23-1. Education and information 2015 ed. [Internet]. Toronto, ON: Cancer Care Ontario; 2010 [cited 2016 May 26]. Available from:
https://www.cancercare.on.ca/common/pages/
UserFile.aspx?fileId=64413
21. Vanderkooy P. Food skills of Waterloo region adults. [Webinar]. Ottawa, ON: CHNETWorks!; 2010 Jan 20.
22. Vanderkooy P. Food skills of Waterloo region adults. Waterloo, ON: Region of Waterloo Public Health; 2010.
23. Ontario. Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Ontario public health standards, 2008.
Revised May 1, 2014 [Internet]. Toronto, ON: Queen's Printer for Ontario; 2014 [cited 2016 May 26]. Available from:
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/pro/programs /publichealth/oph_standards/docs/ophs_2008.
pdf
24. Berezowitz CK, Bontrager Yoder AB, Schoeller DA. School gardens enhance academic performance and dietary outcomes in children. J Sch Health. 2015;85(8):508-18.
25. Hersch D, Perdue L, Ambroz T, Boucher JL. The impact of cooking classes on food-related preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of schoolaged children: a systematic review of the evidence, 2003-2014. Prev Chronic Dis. 2014;11:E193.
26. Taylor C, Upton P, Upton D. Increasing primary school children's fruit and vegetable consumption: a review of the food dudes programme. Health Educ. 2015;115(2):178-96.
27. Howerton MW, Bell BS, Dodd KW, Berrigan D, Stolzenberg-Solomon R, Nebeling L. Schoolbased nutrition programs produced a moderate increase in fruit and vegetable consumption: meta and pooling analyses from 7 studies. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2007;39(4):186-96.
28. Knai C, Pomerleau J, Lock K, McKee M. Getting children to eat more fruit and vegetables: a systematic review. Prev Med. 2006;42(2):85-95.
29. Robinson-O'Brien R, Story M, Heim S. Impact of garden-based youth nutrition intervention programs: a review. J Am Diet Assoc. 2009;109(2):273-80.
30. Langford R, Bonell CP, Jones HE, Pouliou T, Murphy SM, Waters E, et al. The WHO health promoting school framework for improving the health and well-being of students and their academic achievement. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014;4:CD008958.
31. Reynolds KD, Franklin FA, Binkley D, Raczynski JM, Harrington KF, Kirk KA, et al. Increasing the fruit and vegetable consumption of fourth-graders: results from the high 5 project. Prev Med. 2000;30(4):309-19.
32. Health Canada. A look at food skills in Canada. Ottawa: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada; 2015. Available from: http://www.dietitians.ca/Downloads/Public/Fo odSkills_FactSheet_ENG-FINAL.aspx
Specifications and Limitations of Evidence Brief
The purpose of this Evidence Brief is to investigate a research question in a timely manner to help inform decision making. The Evidence Brief presents key findings, based on a systematic search of the best available evidence near the time of publication, as well as systematic screening and extraction of the data from that evidence. It does not report the same level of detail as a full systematic review. Every attempt has been made to incorporate the highest level of evidence on the topic. There may be relevant individual studies that are not included; however, it is important to consider at the time of use of this brief whether individual studies would alter the conclusions drawn from the document.
Authors
Gloria Mensah, Product Development Advisor, HPCDIP
Reviewers
Kara DeCorby, Senior Product Development Advisor, HPCDIP Jocelyn Sacco, Research Coordinator, HPCDIP Lynn Roblin, Registered Dietitian, Policy Consultant, Nutrition Resource Centre Donna Smith, Registered Dietitian, Policy and Program Coordinator, Nutrition Resource Centre
Special thanks
Tiffany Oei, Research Assistant, HPCDIP Erin Berenbaum, Research Coordinator, HPCDIP Naomi Pullen, Research Assistant, HPDCIP Brandon Cheung, Research Assistant, HPCDIP
Citation
Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion (Public Health Ontario), Mensah G. Evidence Brief: Impact of food skills programs on fruit and vegetable consumption among children and youth. Toronto, ON: Queen's Printer for Ontario; 2016.
ISBN: 978-1-4606-8571-6
©Queen's Printer for Ontario, 2016
Disclaimer
This document was developed by Public Health Ontario (PHO). PHO provides scientific and technical advice to Ontario's government, public health organizations and health care providers. PHO's work is guided by the current best available evidence.
PHO assumes no responsibility for the results of the use of this document by anyone.
This document may be reproduced without permission for non-commercial purposes only and provided that appropriate credit is given to Public Health Ontario. No changes and/or modifications may be made to this document without explicit written permission from Public Health Ontario.
For further information
Knowledge Synthesis and Evaluation Services, Health Promotion, Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Public Health Ontario
Public Health Ontario is a Crown corporation dedicated to protecting and promoting the health of all Ontarians and reducing inequities in health. Public Health Ontario links public health practitioners, frontline health workers and researchers to the best scientific intelligence and knowledge from around the world.
For more information about PHO, visit www.publichealthontario.ca.
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Mission Statement
Strategic Priorities
1. Improve student achievement in science through the implementation of new science curriculum and materials and extended time on task during the school day.
2. Improve student achievement in the reading exceeds category through targeted professional development, increasing rigor using Socratic Seminars and the Common Core.
3. Increase the use of differentiated instruction using Achieve 3000 and RTI best practices in the benchmark and SPED classrooms.
4. Increase student achievement in Math thorugh the implementation of expanded Mathematics materials and extended time on task during the school day.
School Performance Goals
Literacy Performance Goals
Math Performance Goals
Henry H Nash Elementary School
610092
24641
School ID:
150162990252368
Oracle ID:
Austin-North Lawndale Elementary Network 4837 W Erie St Chicago, IL 60644
ISBE ID:
Continuous Improvement Work Plan
2012 - 2014
Overview
The Continuous Improvement Work Plan (CIWP) is a stream-lined, strategic planning process for schools that also meets the state and federal requirements of a school improvement plan. The CIWP uses previous goal and priority setting completed by the schools from the Scorecard metrics, School Effectiveness Framework and Theory of Action. Please see the CIWP Planning Guide at www.cps.edu/CIWP for detailed instructions on completing the tool.
School Name
To get started, please select your school's name from the drop down list:
Henry H Nash Elementary School
Developing a CIWP Team
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Elementary Goal Setting
Instructions: Your school's data is organized by Scorecard categories. Using your current performance data and your SY2012 goals, determine the SY2013 & SY2014 performance goals for each metric. Note: ISAT scores include all students in the aggregates, including English Language Learners.
Academic Achievement
Early Literacy
IDEL
benchmark
SY2014
Elementary Goal Setting
Instructions: Your school's data is organized by Scorecard categories. Using your current performance data and your SY2012 goals, determine the SY2013 & SY2014 performance goals for each metric. Note: ISAT scores include all students in the aggregates, including English Language Learners.
Climate & Culture
SY2014
Goal
10.0
State Assessment
| 58.8 | 68.9 | 78.9 | 88.9 | ISAT - Reading % of students exceeding state standards | 6.0 | 16.7 | 25.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 72.4 | 82.4 | 92.4 | 95 | ISAT - Mathematics % of students exceeding state standards | 7.1 | 19.4 | 27.4 |
| 36.3 | 50 | 60 | 70 | ISAT - Science % of students exceeding state standards | 0 | 10 | 15 |
SY2014
32.5
34.7
20.0
School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
Typical School
Effective School
Evidence
Evaluation
Goals and theory of action
* The school has established goals for student achievement that are aimed at making incremental growth and narrowing of achievement gaps.
* The school has a plan but may have too many competing priorities.
Principal Leadership
* Professional learning is organized through whole staff development but it is not tightly linked to what happens in teacher team meetings or 1:1 coaching cycles.
* Principal monitors instructional practice for teacher evaluations.
* School-wide or class specific vision is not consistently focused on college and career readiness..
* Principal provides basic information for families on school events and responds to requests for information. Families and community are engaged through occasional school-wide events such as open houses or curriculum nights.
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* The school has established clear, measurable goals for student achievement aimed at aggressively narrowing the achievement gap and ensuring college and career readiness of all students-- at the school, grade, and classroom levels.
*Full school day plan address the school goals.
* The school has established a clear theory of action or strategic plan that outlines the school's priorities (derived from analysis of data) and key levers along with the anticipated impact when implemented with fidelity.
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* Principal creates a professional learning system that evaluates teacher need and interest and builds opportunities for growth in content knowledge and leadership
* Principal clarifies a vision for instructional best practice, works with each staff member to determine goals and benchmarks, monitors quality and drives continuous improvement.
* Principal establishes and nurtures a culture of college and career readiness through clarity of vision, internal and external communications and establishment of systems to support students in understanding and reaching these goals.
* Principal creates a system for empowered families and communities through accurate information on school performance, clarity on student learning goals, and opportunities for involvement.
*The principal meets weekly with all grade level teachers and resource staff members and is actively involved with researchedbased strategies to monitor effectively implement differentiated instruction.
*The principal established a Full School Day team to include teaching staff, non-teaching staff, parents and LSC members.
* The principal assists school leadership teams to build teacher capacity.
*The principal develops professional development focused on instructional strategies to increase student achievement and academic rigor.
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School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
| Typical School | Effective School | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Teacher Leadership ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
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School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
| Typical School | Effective School | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • The ILT represents some or most grade levels or departments, but may not include critical areas of expertise, like special education, bilingual education or counseling. • The ILT splits time and focus between improving teaching and learning and solving day-to-day operational concerns. • The ILT organizes some whole staff professional development activities. Development at the teacher team or teacher level is not coordinated by the ILT. ILT decision-making is carried out in isolation, or without a clear process for staff-wide engagement. • ILT engages in changes to practice in response to voiced concerns. • ILT analyzes student test data if new data is available. | • The school’s ILT is assembled based on the combination of knowledge and expertise needed to make decisions for all students and staff. • The ILT leads the work of improving teaching and learning school-wide • The ILT leads the school’s approach to professional development – whole staff PD, teacher teams, and coaching. • The ILT facilitates two-way communication and engages all staff in participating in decision-making that advances the school’s strategic focus. • The ILT engages in regular reflection upon its own team processes and effectiveness and takes actions to improve its functioning and progress towards school-wide goals. • The ILT regularly analyzes qualitative and quantitative data to monitor the implementation of school’s plan and make adjustments accordingly | |
| Monitoring and adjusting ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Data for district assessments is occasionally analyzed at the school level, typically when new reports are made available. Analysis may lead to instructional practice. | • The school has a systematic approach to analyzing data relative to the school’s theory of action on an ongoing basis—at the school level, department/grade level, and classroom level—in order to make adjustments to their focus and to target support for particular teachers and students. | |
Version 03/12
SEF Page 7 of 27
School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
| Typical School | Effective School | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Curriculum ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Curricular pacing/scope and sequence is most often determined by the pacing set forth in instructional materials or by an individual teacher. • Each teacher develops his/her own units of instruction or follows what is suggested by the pacing provided in instructional materials. • Text used for instruction exposes some students to grade-appropriate complexity and is heavily focused on fiction. • Short- and long-term plans do not consistently differentiate by learner need. | • Each grade level or course team has a year-long scope and sequence that maps out what Common Core or other state standards teachers should teach and in what order in core subject areas. • Each grade level or course team develops/uses common units of instruction aligned to the standards. • Text used for instruction exposes all students to a grade- appropriate level of complexity and informational texts to at least the CCSS-recommended levels by grade band. • Short and long term plans include the supports necessary to ensure that students with disabilities and ELLs are able to gain core content knowledge and skills. | |
Instructional materials
2
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* Core instructional materials vary between teachers of the same grade/course or are focused mainly on a single textbook with little exposure to standardsaligned supplemental materials.
* Instructional materials support a general curriculum with little differentiation for student learning need.
* Each grade level or course team has a set of instructional materials that are aligned with standards.
* Instructional materials are supportive of students with disabilities as well as varying language proficiency levels of ELLs (including native language and bilingual supports).
*Headstart teachers will be trained to use the literacy-based program, BluePrint.
*The BluePrint program will be used to enhance Headstart students' reading readiness skills.
*The Headstart program will also incorporate the Land of the Letter People and Virtual Pre-K activities that assist in the transition of school-to-home.
*Grades 3 - 8, including grades with Students with Disabilities (SWD), will be identified to receive additional support with science, phonics
Reading Materials Survey: In addition to evaluating your school in this area, we encourage schools to begin inventorying grade level literacy materials by completing the survey at www.surveymonkey.com/s/materialsurvey. While this is not a comprehensive inventory of your school's instructional materials, this will help you identify the additional literacy materials needed to help implement the Common Core State Standards in the upcoming school year.
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SEF Page 8 of 27
School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
| Typical School | Effective School | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • School wide data is available to the ILT. Teacher team or classroom data is not always available when teachers need it—or teachers inconsistently bring it to teacher team meetings. • Each grade level or course team administers the required district assessments but there may be gaps in the kind of assessment tools available to them. • Assessments are focused on a particular form of assessment and may not adequately provide a complete picture of student learning. • Most assessments are designed to be identical for all students, without accommodation for learner need. | • School-wide, teacher team and classroom data is organized and available to all who need it immediately after each assessment. • Each grade level or course team uses a comprehensive set of assessments – screening, diagnostic, benchmark, formative, and summative – to monitor student learning on a frequent basis. • Assessment methods (e.g., student work, selected response, constructed response, performance task) are aligned with the standard(s) being assessed (e.g., knowledge mastery, reasoning proficiency, performance skills, ability to create products). • Assessment accommodations and modifications are in place to ensure that students with disabilities and ELLs are able to appropriately demonstrate their knowledge and skills. | |
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SEF Page 9 of 27
School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
| Typical School | Effective School | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Instruction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
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School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
Typical School
Effective School
Evidence
Evaluation
Intervention
* Decision-making about how to determine which students are in need of intervention, what interventions they receive and how to determine the success of interventions is not regularly monitored. The intervention options are limited (sometimes onesize-fits-all), making it difficult to find a targeted solution to address a particular student's needs. Intervention monitoring and adjustments are left to teacher discretion without school-wide systems.
Whole staff professional development
* Whole staff professional development occurs regularly but is not tightly aligned to the school's priorities.
* Quality, effectiveness or relevance of professional development is not monitored.
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1
* The school has a systematic approach to administering screening assessments to identify students in need of academic intervention.
* The school has a systematic approach to administering diagnostic assessments to identify particular skills gaps.
* Interventions at the elementary level include in-class, small group instruction, push-in support provided by specialists, one on one support and additional supports outside of the classroom.
* Interventions at the secondary school level include small group instruction, double blocks in literacy and mathematics, push-in support provided by specialists, one on one support and additional supports outside of the classroom
*An educational consultant is utilized with identified seventh and eighth grade students, classified as mid-upper range / bubble level.
*A retired teacher is utilized with identified second and third grade students, classified as mid-upper range / bubble level.
*The RTI process is fully implemented school-wide.
*Supplemental Educational Services program provided to help students to enhance their math skills.
*Consistent and uniform use of data binders to document interventions for each student.
*Properly implement goal setting, progress monitoring, conferencing and mini-lessons for interventions.
* Interventions are closely monitored at the ILT, teacher team and individual teacher level so that adjustments can be made at least every 6 weeks.
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2
* The school has a year-long, focused plan for whole staff professional development aligned to school-wide priorities and growth goals.
* The school has a method for continually monitoring the effectiveness of all professional development (including coaching and teacher collaboration).
* School-wide structures ensure that professional development is ongoing, job-embedded and relevant to teachers.
*Professional development days are used to train teachers and administrators for analyzing data.
*Professional development days will be provided for teachers and administrators to log in to CIM, Scantron and Achieve3000 to access student data for instructional strategies.
*Professional development days are used to train teachers and administrators for developing and implementing school-wide student policies for the foundation of student behavior.
*Professional development is geared towards modeling the best practice of team teaching for both special education teachers and general education teachers.
School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
Typical School
Effective School
Evidence
Evaluation
Grade-level and/or course teams
* Teachers meet regularly but it is focused on a mix of activities—planning, professional development, and data analysis—that may change from week to week.
* Teachers do not have a regular opportunity to discuss progress monitoring data to track effectiveness of student intervention.
* Ownership for student learning results lies primarily with individual teachers.
* Planning typically takes place with general education teachers only. Special education, bilingual or other specialists typically plan and meet separately or only join the group occasionally.
* There are meeting agendas, but no clear protocols or norms for discussion.
Instructional coaching
* Coaching typically takes place through informal associations or is only focused on a smaller group of teachers.
* Formal support for new teachers comes from district-sponsored induction.
* Professional development decisions are not systematized and left to teacher initiative/discretion.
* Teachers occasionally receive quality feedback to support individual growth.
* Peer observation and cross-classroom visitation happens occasionally, but not as an integral part of the school's plan for professional learning.
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2
* Teachers collaborate in regular cycles: quarterly for longterm unit planning, weekly to analyze formative assessment data and plan weekly instruction.
* Teachers and specialists meet approximately every six weeks to discuss progress-monitoring data for students receiving intervention.
* Teacher teams share ownership for results in student learning.
* Teams are inclusive of general education, special education, bilingual teachers and other specialists.
* Teams are supported by an ILT member, team leader, or "expert", as appropriate.
* Teachers have protocols or processes in place for team collaboration.
*Teacher instructional practices are monitored closely and professional development is expected for all teachers in all core subject areas.
*Weekly grade level meetings are held as well as vertical planning. *Special education teachers are paired in grade level meeting with regular/general education teachers.
*Special education and general education teachers are geared to attend more structured workshops/conferences with outside resources presenting on differentiated instructional practices.
*General and special education teachers are active committee members for school-wide discipline, curriculum planning, literacy, attendance, data, social, mathematics / science / technology, and parent involvement committees.
*Common planning time will be provided for grade levels to align mathematics and science curriculum as well as all core subject areas.
*Re-Compose the committee of teachers and administrators to help
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1
* Every school has a coaching plan that identifies teacher needs, who provides the coaching, and how frequently.
* New teachers are provided with effective induction support.
* Teachers have individual professional development plans tailored to their needs.
* Teachers consistently receive quality feedback that supports their individual growth.
* Peer coaching and cross classroom visitation is also used as a form of coaching.
*Provided opportunity for teachers to visits peer classrooms. *NMSA, IRA and ASCD attendees to conduct coaching sessions with peers.
School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
| Typical School | Effective School | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| High expectations & College-going culture ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Some staff members reinforce expectations for all students to aspire to college and career ready standards, or expectations are only reinforced for some students. | • Every staff member reinforces school expectations for all students to aspire to college and career-ready standards. • The school has developed and is executing an intentional plan to build and maintain a college-going culture. • Every student has opportunities for authentic leadership and student voice | |
| Relationships ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Some students form bonds with adult advocates. • Patterns of interaction between adults and students and among students are inconsistent.. • Students with disabilities are typically confined to a special education classroom with few opportunities to interact with peers. • Student home language and culture is often overlooked. | • All students have an adult advocate who cares about them deeply and supports them in achieving their goals • Patterns of interactions, both between adults and students and among students, are respectful, with appropriate, fair responses to disrespectful behavior • Students with disabilities are engaged in the school community, including both physical and social integration. • Students’ classroom experiences demonstrate value of home language and culture. | |
| Behavior& Safety ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Discipline violations and positive behavior supports are handled differently between teachers without school wide norms. • School environment occasionally leads to situations un-conducive to learning. | • The school has a common, consistent school-wide approach to student discipline and tiered approach to behavioral intervention that recognizes and builds on positive behavior. • Staff establishes and maintains a safe, welcoming school environment. | |
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School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
Typical School
Effective School
Evidence
Evaluation
Expectations
* Principal provides information to families on school performance in response to parent requests.
* Teachers provide information to families on their grading system, but families may be unclear on what successfully meeting the standard would look like.
* Families can learn about the transition process if they reach out to the school for information.
Ongoing communication
* Communication to families is typically conducted only during report card pick-up and in cases of behavior/academic concerns.
Bonding
* The school has a business-like atmosphere.
* School staff provides occasional opportunities for families and community members to participate in authentic and engaging activities in the school community-- like student performances, exhibitions, literacy or math events, etc.
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* Principal provides clear information for families on school performance and accurately explains this information so that families understand its relevance to their children as well as the plan for improvement.
* Teachers provide clear information for families on what students are expected to achieve in a given grade level or course and examples of what meeting the standards looks like.
3
*Parents volunteer in the classrooms regularly.
*Nash School has high expectations for every member of the learning community as evident by the increase of 2% of parents reporting satisfaction with the school.
*Family Math and Literacy Nights provide an opportunity to inspire a love of mathematics and literacy as well as share classroom instruction that can be supported at home.
*Continue to advocate more parental involvement and volunteering.
* Schools proactively provide information regarding school choices to families looking to relocate or to students in transition grades.
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3
* Teachers and other school staff engage in ongoing, twoway communication with families so that they know how their child is doing relative to grade-level expectations and how the families can support their child's learning at home, but also so that school staff can learn from the families about their child's strengths and needs.
*Nash School parents and community have an opportunity to visit Nash School to meet staff and learn about our vision and mission for students and parents and to be informed on all policies.
*Eighty percent of our parents/guardians have received information about the enrollment process, medical compliance, the uniform discipline code and school events.
*Communication is provided between school and CPS by enabling
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3
* The school establishes and non-threatening, welcoming environment.
* The principal leads the work to empower and motivate families and community to become engaged.
* School staff provides frequent opportunities for families and community members to participate in authentic and engaging activities in the school community-- like student performances, exhibitions, literacy or math events, etc.
*Nash School, in partnership with the community, has a shared vision that guides the decisions, which are made together.
*Student performance has increased in conjunction with the schoolinitiated family and community partnerships.
*Parental involvement increased with PTA and related activities.
*Parental involvement in Family literacy and math / science / technology night.
*Increased in parent involvement during after-school basketball games.
*This data supports the belief that Nash School is an inviting, supportive and safe environment.
Date Stamp November 22, 2012
School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
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School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
| Typical School | Effective School | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| College & Career Assessments ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Students do not participate in college and career ready assessments | • The school promotes preparation, participation, and performance in college and career assessments. | |
| College & Career Admissions and Affordability ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Students in 11th and 12th grade are provided information on college options , costs and financial aid. | • The school provides students and families with comprehensive information about college options and costs (HS only) The school ensures that students and families have an early and ongoing understanding of the college and career application and admission processes, including information on financial aid and scholarship eligibility. | |
| Transitions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Transitions between key grades provide families with the required minimum paperwork/information. | • The school works to ensure effective transitions—into Kindergarten, at each “benchmark” grade, and from 8th to 9th. • (HS only) The school connects students to school and community resources to help them overcome barriers and ensure the successful transition from high school to college. | |
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School Effectiveness Framework
Instructions: Evaluate your school from 1-4 on each of the Effective Practices of the School Effectiveness Framework in the drop down box under "Evaluation". Cite evidence from observations, any available data, surveys, etc. NOTE: 2= Typical School and 4 = Effective School TIP: When entering text, press Alt + Enter to start a new paragraph.
| Typical School | Effective School | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Use of Discretionary Resources ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • School discretionary funding is inconsistently aligned to identified needs and priorities. • Outside funding or community partnerships are primarily limited to opportunities that present themselves to the school. • Funding of non-priority initiatives is common throughout the year. | • School allocates discretionary spending to align with identified needs and strategic priorities. • School actively identifies and pursues opportunities to for outside funding or community partnerships to help meet student and staff needs. • School maintains focus on use of resources for the student achievement growth necessary for every student to graduate college and career ready. | |
| Building a Team ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • Hiring is conducted after a vacancy or expected vacancy is identified. • All or nearly all applicants have little to no prior connection to the school. • Interviews typically consist of an interview with the principal or a team from the school, but there are no opportunities to demonstrate knowledge or skill in the classroom. • Grade/course teams are not intentionally designed. | • Hiring is conducted after an assessment of student need, staff capacity and scheduling priorities. • School actively works to build a pool of potential staff members through internships and part-time work. • A multistep interview process includes a protocol for questioning and classroom lesson demonstrations to assess candidate expertise, philosophy and commitment. • Grade/course teams are assembled to include the needed combination of knowledge and expertise. | |
| Use of Time ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> | | |
| • School schedule is designed based on number of minutes per subject or course. • Teacher collaboration time is limited or occurs only before/after school. • Intervention for struggling students happens at the discretion/initiative of individual teachers, during core courses. | • School designs a “right fit” schedule based on student needs and school-wide growth goals. • The school schedule allows for regular, meaningful collaboration in teacher teams. • Struggling students receive structured intervention in dedicated blocks. Date Stamp November 22, 2012 | |
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Mission & Strategic Priorities
Instructions: Write in your Mission Statement. Using your key levers from the Theory of Action, develop 3 - 5 strategic priorities you will focus on over the next two years. Provide a Rationale using these guiding questions: What data (student achievement, school effectiveness framework, etc.) did you use to determine the priority? How does this priority impact instruction? How does this priority help you to achieve your goals? Tip: When entering text, press Alt+Enter to start a new paragraph.
Mission Statement
| Strategic Priorities | |
|---|---|
| # | Priority Description: Write in the description of your priority. |
| 1 | Improve student achievement in science through the implementation of new science curriculum and materials and extended time on task during the school day. |
| 2 | Improve student achievement in the reading exceeds category through targeted professional development, increasing rigor using Socratic Seminars and the Common Core. |
| 3 | Increase the use of differentiated instruction using Achieve 3000 and RTI best practices in the benchmark and SPED classrooms. |
| 4 | Increase student achievement in Math thorugh the implementation of expanded Mathematics materials and extended time on task during the school day. |
| 5 | Optional |
Strategic Priority 1
Instructions: Develop milestones for each strategic priority that you will implement. Milestones are significant steps that a school must accomplish in the implementation of the strategic priority. Milestones are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Indicate the category and group of students to which the milestone applies, the responsible party and the timeline. You will update the status and next steps throughout the year as part of your continuous improvement cycle.
Strategic Priority Description
Rationale
Improve student achievement in science through the implementation of new science curriculum and materials and extended time on task during the school day.
Science scores fall below the district and network average. With specific focus to increase the amount of targeted time spent on Science in all grades through daily intervention blocks. New consumables, materials and science equipment will also be purchased.
Action Plan
Monitoring
hardware.
instruction.
| Category | Target Group | Responsible Party | Start | Completed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instruction | All | Teachers/ Principal/ Ilt | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| Equipment/ Technology | All | Principal/AP/Tchr | Summer 2012 | Quarter 3 | |
| After School/ Extended Day | All | Principal/AP/Tchr | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| After School/ Extended Day | All | Principal/AP/Tchr | Quarter 1 | Quarter 3 | |
| Instruction | All | Principal | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| Instructional Materials | All | Principal/Science Teacher/AP | Summer 2012 | Quarter 2 | |
| Instruction | All | Science Teacher/ILT Team | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
Strategic Priority 1
area.
| Instruction | All | ILT/Data Team /Principal | Quarter 1 | On-going |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instruction | All | Principal/Data Team/Teachers | Summer 2012 | On-going |
Strategic Priority 2
Instructions: Develop milestones for each strategic priority that you will implement. Milestones are significant steps that a school must accomplish in the implementation of the strategic priority. Milestones are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Indicate the category and group of students to which the milestone applies, the responsible party and the timeline. You will update the status and next steps throughout the year as part of your continuous improvement cycle.
Strategic Priority Description
Rationale
Improve student achievement in the reading exceeds category through targeted professional development, increasing rigor using Socratic Seminars and the Common Core.
Action Plan
students in "exceeds" category.
Students are not keeping pace with district averages in reading. Students are "meeting" at a faster rate however, "exceeds" students are less than 5% schoolwide.
Monitoring
| Category | Target Group | Responsible Party | Start | Completed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instructional Materials | All | Principal | Summer 2012 | Quarter 1 | |
| Instruction | All | Principal/Teachers | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| Instruction | All | ILT Team/Principal Teachers | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| Instruction | All | Teachers/ILT /Principal | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| After School/ Extended Day | All | Teachers/ILT /Principal | Quarter 1 | Quarter 3 | |
| Instructional Materials | All | Principal | Summer 2012 | Quarter 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instructional Materials | All | Principal/ILT Team AP | Quarter 1 | Quarter 2 |
| Instruction | All | Principal/AP | Quarter 1 | On-going |
| Instruction | All | Principal/AP/ILT | Quarter 1 | On-going |
Strategic Priority 3
Instructions: Develop milestones for each strategic priority that you will implement. Milestones are significant steps that a school must accomplish in the implementation of the strategic priority. Milestones are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Indicate the category and group of students to which the milestone applies, the responsible party and the timeline. You will update the status and next steps throughout the year as part of your continuous improvement cycle.
Strategic Priority Description
Rationale
Increase the use of differentiated instruction using Achieve 3000 and RTI best practices in the benchmark and SPED classrooms.
Action Plan
Schoolwide use of guided reading and centers (primary) which reinforce specific skills related to growth are key to increasing student achievement. The use of targeted programs and proven best practices will help all students to meet goals using these methods.
Monitoring
| Category | Target Group | Responsible Party | Start | Completed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instruction | All | Principal/ILT | Summer 2012 | On-going | |
| Instruction | All | ILT/Principal | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| Instruction | All | ILT/Principal | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| Instruction | All | Principal | Summer 2012 | Quarter 1 | |
| Instruction | All | Principal /ILT Team/ teachers | Quarter 1 | Quarter 1 | |
| Instruction | All | Principal/ILT DATA team | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
Strategic Priority 3
| Instruction | All | Principal/Teachers | Quarter 1 | On-going |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Strategic Priority 4
Instructions: Develop milestones for each strategic priority that you will implement. Milestones are significant steps that a school must accomplish in the implementation of the strategic priority. Milestones are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Indicate the category and group of students to which the milestone applies, the responsible party and the timeline. You will update the status and next steps throughout the year as part of your continuous improvement cycle.
Strategic Priority Description
Rationale
Increase student achievement in Math thorugh the implementation of expanded Mathematics materials and extended time on task during the school day.
Although Math Scores have consistently increased over the last 5 years. Students are not making gains at the expected levels. Need to also increase by 15% the number of students performing at the "exceeds" level
Action Plan
Monitoring
area.
| Category | Target Group | Responsible Party | Start | Completed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instruction | | Principal/ILT team | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| Instruction | All | Teachers | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| Instruction | All | Principal/ILT team | Quarter 1 | Quarter 4 | |
| Instruction | All | Principal/AP | Quarter 1 | On-going | |
| ILT/ Teacher Teams | All | ILT Team/Principal | Quarter 1 | Quarter 4 | |
| Instruction | All | ILT Team/Principal | Quarter 1 | Quarter 4 | |
| Instruction | All | ILT Team/Principal | Quarter 1 | Quarter 4 | |
| After School/ Extended Day | All | Principal/AP | On-going | Quarter 3 | |
Strategic Priority 5
Instructions: Develop milestones for each strategic priority that you will implement. Milestones are significant steps that a school must accomplish in the implementation of the strategic priority. Milestones are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Indicate the category and group of students to which the milestone applies, the responsible party and the timeline. You will update the status and next steps throughout the year as part of your continuous improvement cycle.
Strategic Priority Description
Rationale
Action Plan
Monitoring
| Category | Target Group | Responsible Party | Start | Completed | Status |
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A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE ENGLISH READING TEXT'S AUTHENTICITY IN STUDENT'S BOOK OF ACTION PACK ELEVEN IN JORDAN
Abeer Al-Ghazo
Oqlah M.Smadi
Assisstant prof. of TEFL Ministry of Education Ajloun, Jordan
Prof of Applied linguistics, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan
Abstract
Based on the specific reading outcomes under the Reading Section in the General Guidelines and General and Specific Outcomes for English Language in Jordan of 2006, the present paper aims at analyzing the reading texts of the student's book in Action Pack Eleven to determine to what extent the reading texts are authentic. Frequencies and Percentages are used to present the results of the question of the study. The findings of the analysis revealed that the reading texts of the student's book in Action Pack 11 have a high degree of authenticity. There is a strong match between reading specific outcomes and the reading text's authenticity in Action Pack Eleven. Such focus on authentic reading texts highlights the significance of the reading skill in building the communicative competence of the Jordanian students at the secondary stage.
Keywords: Content analysis, Authenticity, Action Pack 11
Introduction
These guidelines include precise and detailed descriptions of the knowledge and skills students are expected to acquire at each grade. The
The English language curriculum in Jordan is one of the basic and compulsory school subjects. Action Pack is a real outcome of the recommendations that resulted from the conferences of Education development. It was introduced to Jordanian schools to be taught from grade one until twelfth grade. The Jordanian Ministry of Education (2006) put down a list of guidelines that stress the integral role of foreign language education in developing the Jordanian students in four skills and other domains such as psychomotor, social, cognitive and cultural
curriculum is to be used with General Framework: Curriculum and Assessment, which describes the features of the new ERFKE curricula. These guidelines (2006) focus on the following:
- integration of information and communications technologies: ensuring students use technological devises and processes to broaden and deepen their learning.
- an emphasis on knowledge economy competencies: educating students to be innovative thinkers who can analyze, and communicate information and work with one another to create a prosperous knowledge Economy for all.
- new role for students: giving students opportunities to define their own ways of reaching outcomes.
- variety of instructional strategies: selecting appropriate instructional strategies to ensure that all students achieve learning goals.
- new role of teachers: emphasizing that the new role of teacher is to help students to learn and communicate effectively by giving greater consideration to the individual learning needs.
- new way of assessment strategies and tools. (Ministry of Education, 2006)
In this respect, the Jordanian Ministry of Education (2006:53) stated that "students should read to understand and respond to written English in a variety of simple authentic informational and literary context". Another point is worth mentioning here is that the reading texts within the textbook should
The English language outcomes are organized into four organizers, which correspond to the four skills of language use. These four main organizers are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Foreign language teaching has changed from concentrating on the language components; grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation to a focus on the communicative proficiency and the integration of four skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The focus of "language testing moved away from discrete-point tests toward measures of actual performance,"(Bachman, 2001). Like any skill, reading is one of the crucial skills in TEFL and to master it, students need to show mastery over the other skills of language (i.e. listening, speaking and writing) in addition to appreciation of literature. Al Regeb (2009) and Al Khawaldeh (2011) affirmed that reading increases readers' knowledge (general and specific), it increases and builds vocabulary that helps readers to communicate with others, and it improves other language skills. Al khrisheh (2008) emphasized that reading is always considered a crucial skill for EFL students because it offers an open window to further knowledge, learning and development. He also added that through reading, learners can travel to for – off lands and find out what is happening in our world by reading electronic journals and websites.
provide and deal with subjects that are relevant to the students' daily life and real context, i.e., authentic materials. Furthermore, the reading texts presented in textbooks should be useful for the students in a way that help them cope with the need of the knowledge explosion and age of communication.
Analyzing curricula in general and text books in particular plays an important role in EFL teaching and learning process .It helps supervisors textbooks' authors and researchers to find the points of strength and weakness in the textbook and to what extent it is suitable for both students and teachers. Cunningsworth (1995) explained that knowing strengths and weaknesses in textbooks, optimum use can be made of strong points, and weaker points can be adapted or substituted from other books.
Nunan (1991) stated that authentic texts should be introduced into the learning situation. Omaggio (2001) asserted that "Opportunities must be provided for students to practice using language in a range of contexts likely to be encountered in the target culture. She also stated that authentic language should be used in instruction wherever and whenever possible"(p.90)
Educators who are concerned with English language teaching in Jordan have a general cautious feeling towards the necessary need of inclusion reading texts that relate to the students environment and their life. Omaggio (2001) stated that cultural understanding must be promoted in various ways so that students are prepared to live more harmoniously in the target-language community. Thus, the researcher intends to investigate the required authentic foreign language texts and materials that should be involved in the content of action pack for eleventh grade.
Accordingly, a content analysis of English textbooks in this regard becomes a necessity especially when authenticity is concerned. The researchers selected the action Pack for the eleventh grade as a sample of the English textbooks used in Jordanian public school.
Purpose and Question of the Study
This will be illustrated by answering the following question:
Based on the specific reading outcomes under the Reading Section in the General Guidelines and General and Specific Outcomes for English Language in Jordan of 2006, the present paper aims at analyzing the reading texts of the student's book in Action Pack Eleven to determine to what extent the reading texts are authentic.
1- To what extent are the reading texts in Action Pack Eleven authentic?
Background of the study A-English Language Curricula in Jordan
Action Pack series is a twelve-level course for Jordanian students, leading them from the basic to the secondary stage. It is claimed that it is based on the most modern methods of teaching language, combining topic based approach with functional language practice, careful attention to grammar and vocabulary and a comprehensive skill syllabus. It is also claimed that it offers learners a clear and systematic approach to grammar with thorough practice, integrated skills work with a particular focus on reading and writing and the development of critical thinking skills.
Action Pack is an English course for basic and secondary level students in Jordan includes materials that are based on the General Guidelines and General and Specific Outcomes claims that "English language teaching should be interactively attempted and evaluated in light of the basic principles of communicative language teaching." (Ministry of Education 2006, p.9). In accordance with the English Curricula Outcomes of the Jordanian Ministry of Education, Action Pack materials have approached these skills in an integrated way in terms of the tasks and activities for both learners and teachers. Therefore, the outcomes appearing at the beginning of each module harmonize with and are relevant to the integrity of these skills and interactivity between learners and teachers.
Action Pack provides many international topic- based contents which are designed to appeal to the educational needs and interests of students in Jordan.
There are also three units in each module, followed by one review unit. Each main unit begins with a Unit summary which appears in a pink panel that shows tasks and activities under six heading. These six heading are grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading, writing and speaking. There are many exercises at each one of the six heading. Each unit includes also either one or two 'Useful language' boxes. These are designed to help students to prepare for a speaking or writing task. 'Useful language' boxes give examples of vocabulary and grammatical structures that are suitable for the purpose of
The student's book is divided into four modules. Each focuses on a particular theme which develops it in different ways. Each module begins with a two –page 'opener'. This gives the students the opportunity to guess and predict the module will be about. The opener includes a set of eight pictures taken from inside the module. The Opener also gives the titles of the three unites that make up the module, as well as some questions to think about and discuss. In this corner, the important lists of Outcomes are founded to show what the students are able to do by the end of the module. Knowing what to expect to learn, as students, is an important way of preparing to study the module in detail.
the task. A purple 'Task' box appears above the writing exercises to ask students about what they are going to do. It also gives the students opportunities to practice what they have learned by working on a project.
Most units include a green 'Quote' box. This gives a short quotation, either from famous writer, or from an expert on a particular subject. The quotation contains an interesting idea that is expressed in only a few words. It stands as a kind of comment on the topic. At the end of each module there is a project. The projects give students chances to practice English in a less formal context and encourage cooperation and interaction between students. It may need some research and other preparation which can be done as homework. 'Now go to ' or what is called literature spot that support Cultural side which builds students' knowledge of national and international culture.
Some units contain a 'Factfile' which gives additional informational about a particular topic. The students can use this information to support a listening task or a writing task, or to contribute to a group discussion. In this corner, teachers have a major role in guiding and helping their teachers about how to make best use of the factfile.
Therefore a textbook is an important part of the curriculum, because it is widely used in the schools. Teachers and students use textbooks as resources that provide the main source of information, guidance and structure because they provide communicative activities, vocabulary, reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension, and cultural gambits.
1. "A language course should be published in the form of series. This form keeps the cost per unit down for the students and progressing from one unit to another gives them a sense of achievement.
Allwright (1990) views textbooks as resource books for ideas and activities rather than instructional materials. O'Neill (1990) believes that course books may meet students' needs although they were not specifically designed for any particular group of students and therefore benefit both the instructor and the learners. Romero (1975) mentioned the following qualities that good English textbooks should include:
2. The textbook should be attractive. The type should be small and there should not be too much text on a page.
4. The material should be interesting for students who are going to use it.
3. The lessons should be short and well organized.
5. Exercises should be short.
7. The textbook should have achievable aims"(p.63).
6. The textbook should include short dialogues.
B-Content analysis
Berelson (1952) pointed out that content analysis is a systematic, replicable technique for compressing many words of text into fewer content categories based on explicit rules of coding).It allows inferences to be made which can then be corroborated using other methods of data collection.
Content analysis is a methodology in the social sciences for studying the Content of communication. Content analysis is considered a scholarly methodology in the humanities by which texts are studied as to authorship, authenticity, or meaning. Lasswell(cited in Krippendorff ,1980) formulated the major questions of content analysis: "Who says what, to whom, why, to what extent and with what effect?".
Palmquist (1990) asserted that content analysis is a research tool focused on the actual content and internal features of media. It is used to determine the presence of certain words, concepts, themes, phrases, characters, or sentences within texts or sets of texts and to quantify this presence in an objective manner. Texts can be defined broadly as books, book chapters, essays, discussions, newspaper headlines and articles, historical documents, speeches, conversations, advertising, theater, informal conversation, or really any occurrence of communicative language. To conduct a content analysis on a text, the text is broken down, into manageable categories on a variety of levels word, word sense, phrase, sentence, or theme and then examined using one of content analysis' basic methods: conceptual analysis or relational analysis. The results are then used to make inferences about the messages within the text(s), the writer(s), the audience, and even the culture and time of which these are a part. Palmquist (1990) stated that Content analysis offers several advantages to researchers who consider using it. In particular, content analysis:
* can allow for both quantitative and qualitative operations
* looks directly at communication via texts or transcripts, and hence gets at the central aspect of social interaction
* can provides valuable historical/cultural insights over time through analysis of texts
* can be used to interpret texts for purposes such as the development of expert systems (since knowledge and rules can both be coded in terms of explicit statements about the relationships among concepts)
* allows a closeness to text which can alternate between specific categories and relationships and also statistically analyzes the coded form of the text
* is an unobtrusive means of analyzing interactions
* provides insight into complex models of human thought and language use
* When done well, is considered as a relatively "exact" research method (based on hard facts, as opposed to Discourse Analysis( p:3).
Krippendorff (1980,p.51) noted that "much content analysis research is motivated by the search for techniques to infer from symbolic data what would be either too costly, no longer possible, or too obtrusive by the use of other techniques". Further, it is a useful technique for allowing us to discover and describe the focus of individual, group, institutional, or social attention (Weber, 1990). While technically content analysis is not restricted to the domain of text, in order to allow for replication, the technique can only be applied to data that are durable in nature.
Hostli (1969) showed the uses and purposes of content analysis as follows: First, making inferences about the antecedents of communications by asking who? and why? Second, describing and making inferences about the characteristics of communications by asking how?, what? and to whom? Third, Making inferences about the consequences of communications by answering the question with what effect?
He stated that six questions must be addressed in every content analysis:
2) How are they defined?
1) Which data are analyzed?
3) What is the population from which they are drawn?
5) What are the boundaries of the analysis?
4) What is the context relative to which the data are analyzed?
6) What is the target of the inferences
Literature review
Said ( 1985) analyzed New Living English for Jordan depending on learners' needs, frequency, learnability, availability, coverage and range. He found that the elementary course books cover a small proportion of familiar topic areas in which students are expected to use English and they were biased towards structure at the expense of vocabulary.
In this literature review, the researchers present few examples of studies in content analysis has been used as a research tool.
Grauerholz and Pescosolido (1989) selected 2216 children's books from the children's catalog which contained an extensive list of titles and is used in assisting librarians in purchasing books for their library collections. The researchers studied if males and, or females were present in the title, the gender and type of central character (e.g., adult, child, animal), and the gender of the author. After that, they established ratios (males to females) using the number of books mentioning males and females and their character role such as the central or secondary character. The results of the study showed that there were unequal representations between males and females.
There was a more egalitarian representation in the titles and central roles between males and females and the males became more prevalent over time when stories focused only on adults or animals.
Majdzadeh (2000) analyzed two Iranian English textbooks used for the eighth and ninth grade in the public and private school of Iran. Majdzadeh analyzed 21 lessons from the 8 th and 9 th grade public school textbooks and 24 lessons from the same level textbooks in a private school to find out to the extent to which the disconnection between the English language and the culture of that language in Iranian English textbooks .the results showed that the English textbooks used in Iran are well organized for learning the structure of the English language without providing enough conversational activities.
Ljung (1989) analyzed the English vocabulary of English textbooks used in Swedish upper secondary schools to find out the differences between the vocabulary of the textbooks and modern and every day English . Ljung analyzed fifty six books paying attention to the distribution of vocabulary in the textbooks to determine the level of difficulty in vocabulary between grades. Texts were selected from two GYM corpus and compared to the COBUILD corpus which offers the largest computerized English text. The result showed a different vocabulary profile in GYM texts from that found in normal English prose-as provided by COBUILD texts.
Magableh (2000) evaluated the functional English language of first commercial secondary class. The findings revealed lack of colures, grammar, role-play, punctuation, spelling, and phonetic transcription of the vocabulary, tests, visual aids and dialogues. The findings also showed that the materials were interesting and logically sequenced. The exercises suited the students' level and their interest.
Shatnawi (2005) conducted a study to investigate the role of culture in foreign language textbooks through content analysis and the extent to which culture is represented in "cutting edge" series. The researcher analyzed the content of Cutting Edge series to find out the cultural aspects in these textbooks. The analysis revealed that the textbooks include the cultural aspects: historical, economical, geographical, literary, political, religious, social, man-woman relationship, habits, customs and tradition.
Gooden and Gooden (2001) analyzed 83 notable children's books obtained from the American Library Association to investigate gender representations in titles, central characters, and illustrations between 1995 through 1999. The results revealed the following: first, an increase in females who were the central characters over this period. Second, gender stereotypes decreased slightly and stereotypical images were prevalent in the illustrations. Fourth, males were often depicted alone within illustrations compared to females.
Ababneh (2007) conducted a study by analyzing the content of Jordan Opportunities of tenth grade students and investigated the teachers' and supervisors' perspectives concerning that content. The findings of his study showed that the outcomes and vocabulary were not fairly distributed in modules. Grammar and reading tasks had the highest frequency and percentage. The teacher`s book was of great help to teachers. The respondents agreed on the suitability of Jordan Opportunities and suggested deleting some grammar exercises, providing a word list with phonetic transcription and fair distribution of modules of Jordan Opportunities. In general, there was an agreement on the suitability of modules of Jordan Opportunities. for the tenth grade Jordanian students.
Lee and Collins(2008) analyzed whether recent improvements in the status of women in Hong Kong were reflected in patterns of gender representation in Hong Kong secondary English textbooks. They compared ten recently published books that are currently in use with ten published in the late 1980 that are no longer in use. The findings revealed that women appeared more frequently in the recent textbooks. It was confirmed that ratio of female to male characters were higher in recent textbooks, greater use was made of gender- inclusive pronouns and the neutral address title Ms. Nevertheless, it was found that some writers continued to
Perez-Liantada(2009) analyzed a corpus-based approach to teaching and learning spoken English for Academic Purposes used in an upper – intermediate academic spoken English course for third year Electronic Engineering students at the University of Zaragoza ,Spain. His study was made with reference to Bhatia's (2002) multi-perspective model for discourse analysis: a textual perspective, a genre perspective and a social perspective. Data resulting from the assessment process and student production suggest that corpus in formed instruction grounded in Bhatia's multi-perspective model can constitute a pedagogical approach in order to i) obtain positive student responses from input and authentic samples of grammar use, ii) help students identify and understand the textual, genre and social aspects of grammar in real contexts of use, and therefore help develop students' ability to use grammar accurately and appropriately.
Lee (2009) analyzed 11 high- school EFL conversation textbooks used in Korea to find out how the textbooks teach culture. Conversation materials are chosen because socio-cultural values and norms are best acquired during the process of interaction. The findings revealed that all of the textbooks neglect both the teaching of the culture- general aspect of culture learning and the small "c" target- culture learning. Remarkably scant use of authentic materials along with interactive technologies like the Internet for teaching culture was used.
Fitzpatrick and McPherson (2010) analyzed coloring books as cultural object in children's books. They found that male characters were more prevalent in coloring books than female characters. In addition, they found that 44% of male and 58% of female characters displayed stereotypical gendered behavior. Finally, they found that 53% of male characters engaged in gender-neutral behaviors compared to 36% of female characters.
Zawahreh (2012) analyzed the vocabulary items in the six modules of the students' book of Action Pack Seven used as a textbook for teaching English as a foreign Language in Jordan to find out to what extent these vocabulary items meet the criteria proposed by it compared to those criterion proposed by Al-Momani (1998) which is a ten item scale. The findings of the study revealed that: First, most of the new vocabulary items obtained in the six modules of Action pack seven met the criteria of the analysis with a percentage ranged between 100% and 82%.Second, there is no balance in : (a) distribution of the new vocabulary items between the six modules.(b) distribution of the parts of speech within the module.
Zawahreh (2012) analyzed the grammar activities in the six modules of the students' book of Action Pack Seven used as a textbook for teaching English as a foreign Language in Jordan to find out to what extent to which these activities meet the criterion proposed by it compared to those criterion proposed by Celce-Murcia (1991). The results of the study showed the following: First, the number of the grammar activities is appropriate and distributed in a good balanced way between the six modules of the textbook. Second, all of the grammar activities meet the second criteria because all of the linguistic data are accurate and correct in details. Third, fifty five out of the sixty grammar activities meet the criteria "clarity and completeness". Fourth, fifty out of sixty grammar activities are presented in meaningful context which meet the fourth criteria "meaningful context.
Methodology
The criterion of the study is the existence of the authenticity in the reading texts of Action Pack Eleven.
Criterion of the Study
Unit of Analysis
The unit of analysis is the reading text in the Student's Book of Action Pack Eleven.
Categories of analysis:
The categories of analysis are the articles, the letters, the leaflets and the (short) stories in the textbook under study.
Limitations of the study
The generalization of the findings of the study is limited to the student's book of Action Pack Eleven 2012-2013.
Reliability and Validity of the Instrument :
So, the generalizability of one's conclusions is very dependent on how one determines content categories, as well as on how reliable those categories are. One can defines categories that accurately measure the idea and/or items one is seeking to measure. Developing rules that allow one to categorize and code the same data in the same way over a period of time, referred to as stability, is essential to the success of a content analysis.
The reliability of a content analysis study refers to its stability, or the tendency for coders to consistently re-code the same data in the same way over a period of time; reproducibility, or the tendency for a group of coders to classify categories membership in the same way; and accuracy, or the extent to which the classification of a text corresponds to a standard or norm statistically. But the most important problem of content analysis research is the challengeable nature of conclusions reached by its procedures. The question lies in what level of implication is allowable. in other words ,do the conclusions follow from the data or are they explainable due to some other phenomenon?
Therefore, the researchers analyzed the reading texts in the students book "Action Pack" for the eleventh grade and spot all the texts that characterized with authenticity and utility. the analysis was repeated after seven days to find that there is a consistency of (0.98) between the two analyses. This indicates the high reliability of the analysis.
Findings and their Discussion:
Table1 Frequencies and Percentages of the Reading Texts in the Student's Book of Action Pack Eleven
Table 1 presents the frequencies and percentages of the reading texts in the Student's Book of Action Pack Eleven and their authenticity .
Type of Frequen Percenta Authen Non Percentage Percentages
Table1 shows that 25 texts out of 30 in the Pupil's Book represent authentic reading texts with a percentage of 79.9. Such focus on authentic reading texts highlights the significance of the reading skill in building the communicative competence of the students at the secondary stage. Having a detailed look into the table, we can notice that in the first category, the articles, there are 12 articles out of 30 reading texts in Action Pack Eleven. The authentic articles are 10, while there are two articles which lack authenticity. According to General Guidelines for English Language (2006), it is expected that the students will read and understand authentic written English texts on topics of specific or general interest. One of the main reasons for using authentic materials in the classroom is once outside the "safe", controlled language learning environment, the learner will not encounter the artificial language of the classroom but the real world language and how it is really used. The role of the teacher is not to delude the language learners but to prepare them and to teach them the necessary skills so as to understand how the language is actually used.
Though the General Guidelines tend to focus on the Islamic and Arabic culture, there seems to be a balance among the distribution of some cultural issues like festivals. For example, there are two articles on page 15, the first one is about Eid Al-Adha in Jordan. The main function of this article is to read about real festivals, reading for gist and for details. Students are pushed to read about real festivals in real life .Teachers ask their students to look at the title of the article and guess what they will be reading about, ask the class to look at the photograph and lead the discussion about things done in Eid Al-Adha in Jordan, write on the board relevant vocabulary suggested by the students (e.g. sacrifice, traditions, values, lamb, sympathy, forgiveness…). Then divide the students into small groups to discuss the questions. Go round and listen – offer some ideas of their own if they wish.
Omaggio (2001, p. 90-91) in her fifth hypothesis stated that "Cultural understanding must be promoted in various ways so that students are prepared to live more harmoniously in the target-language community. This is one of the main calls by the communicative approach and the ACTFL guidelines (1980s),and the Standards for Foreign Language Learning (1990s). They believe that languages cannot be taught in isolation of their culture. But, the question to be tackled is: which culture should we teach in the foreign language? Is it the target culture? i.e. the culture of the foreign language being learnt? Or the learner's own culture? For Jordanian students," the EFL curriculum should help the learners to internalize the Islamic and Arabic culture which should be used as a spring board to understand, appreciate and interact with people of different countries as well as Jordanian identity" (General Guidelines and General and Specific Outcomes for the English Language Curriculum, 2006 P.9).
When they are ready, invite students from each group to share their ideas with the class, and encourage comments and further discussion. This article is related to the students' life and their environment, every student knows Eid Al-Adhah, how Muslims celebrate it and what they do during this Eid. Such texts motivate the students to practice the language and to communicate with their teacher and\or with their classmates.
There is also an article on page 88; its title is "Inventions that keep us secure". The students are familiar with vaccination and its importance in their life, so this article is an authentic one and is related directly to the student's life . It encourages them to discuss, interact and practice the language in a proper way using their personal information about vaccination and how it protects them from diseases. The article on page 108 is about the Dead Sea. This article is also an authentic one; the students have information about the Dead Sea from many resources such as the other subjects at school (Geography, General Science) or by media(television, newspapers, and magazines). Besides, many students visit the Dead Sea with their parents or with their classmates. This reading text is a good example of authenticity. According to the percentages of the authentic articles, it is clear that most of the articles in Action Pack 11 relate to the students' environment, and to their real world. These kinds of articles encourage students to communicate in English language not only inside the classroom, but also outside the environment.
The second article is called "The Dragon Boat Festival". This article is considered as an alien and an artificial one; it includes information about a festival which takes place in China. The people and the place are both far away from the students' environment which may affect the students' participation in a negative way. The students do not have enough information about the festival so as to discuss or to interact effectively in the classroom. But this kind of article has cultural orientation that enables students to gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures.
As for the short stories, it is also given a considerable space in the textbook. As seen in Table1, there are 10 stories out of 30 reading texts. The authentic stories are 10 with a percentage of 26.6, while the non authentic stories are two with a percentage of 6.7. Such focus on authentic stories highlights the significance of the authentic contexts in communication. The Standards for Foreign Language Learning describe the "what" (content) of world languages learning and form the core of standards-based instruction in the world languages classroom. One of the major goals is that" Communication stresses the use of language for communication in real life situations"( Ommagio,2001). These standards illustrate how the teaching of culture can be achieved while students engage in communicative tasks.
It is normal to have some fictional stories if there is a need for them. The story on page110 is not authentic at all. It talks about a colony of Martians who wanted to move to Earth, and how they tried to destroy Earth and eat all the people. Despite the fact that this science fiction story is alien to the student's real life, it improves their critical thinking and their creativity. The fictional stories are not fully represented in this book, because the majority is for authentic ones. There is another story on page 41 which is considered authentic. It talks about televisions in the past; how people gathered together at someone's house to watch some programs. The idea of being together to watch television programs relates to the student's daily life, and it is an interesting topic for a lot of students to be discussed in the classroom. They can write also about different issues that reflect their social life such as family, friends, invention, and narration of events. The students may discuss their favorite programs, their habits while watching television, why they like action movies or horror ones, and so on . This will create an authentic environment that encourages students to practice the language effectively. We should keep in mind that students usually are attracted more to subjects that are interesting to them and not strange to their cultural background. Tomlinson (1998,p.8)says that " most learners are more at ease with text and illustrations that they can relate to their own culture than they are with those which are culturally exotic".
The third category, the Letters or the emails, is also presented well in the textbook. As seen in Table 1, there are six letters and emails which mean that 20% of the reading texts are letters or emails. The authentic ones are 4 with a percentage of 13.3 which seems reasonable. Miller ( 2003) states that there are many sources for authentic materials, such as newspapers and magazines, radio, television/ video and internet. So the use of mass media is very important ,because our students need to acquire a sufficient knowledge of English that will enable them to utilize the ordinary and the electronic libraries when doing their projects reports ,research paper, etc… .
Another example is on page 89, there are three short stories that are authentic. For example, the second story is about a car accident which happened as a result of speed. This issue is very important in the students' life because there are a lot of car accidents in Jordan. Besides, there is a kind of awareness that takes place everywhere in Jordan concerning this issue. In general, there is a good degree of authenticity regarding this category. Bryan (2005) asserts that providing students with activities from their real life situations is part of culture which is also part of communication. And the more one is exposed to the culture, the easier it is to learn the English language. He also stresses that a textbook should provide and deal with subjects that are relevant to the students' daily life and real context. Being presented richly, this category is characterized with utility and authenticity.
For instance, there is an informal invitation in a form of an email on page 24; it is about inviting others to a family celebration. The celebration is for Jameel's return from France as he has finished his courses there. It is common in Jordan to celebrate graduation, so this reading text is considered authentic . Actually, the Jordanian families have strong relationship with their relatives and their friends so they like to share each others' celebrations. Another example is on page 66, where there is a formal letter from Faisal to Mr. and Mrs. Harper; the sender of the letter wants to thank that family for inviting him to stay with them in London next month. Actually, the students are not familiar with the idea of leaving home to stay with other families. This kind of text or activity encourages the students to learn how to write formal letters and send them by emails. This kind of topic is very useful for students due to the fact that they familiarize them with different modes and style of writing, i.e., descriptions and instructions. Richard (2005)asserts that one of the perspectives when planning materials is the genre or text-based view of written language in which texts such as news reports or formal letters are seen to reflect their use in particular context.
The second leaflet on page 34 is about Dhana Reserve, the students have a lot of information about this reserve; what the reserve means and why it is founded. Besides, many students go with their classmates to visit such places as a scientific trip. It is clear that these two reading texts relate to the students' environment and their life. Some psychologists, like Jan Jack Rosow, conducted their scientific researches which aimed at allowing students to experience their real environment. The exposure to the students' real environment will also broaden students' knowledge (Kilickaya ,2004).
The last category, The Leaflets, is not given much space in the textbook. Table 1 shows that there are only two reading leaflets out of 30 reading texts in Action Pack 11 with a percentage of 6.7. Both of these reading texts are authentic. The first one is on page 48, it presents the television programs in different channels. The students are familiar with the television programs and they like to talk about what they watched . Moreover, the students find this text interesting and provide them with a good chance to talk about their favorite programs. This kind of reading text requires both reading and speaking skill. The teacher asks his students to read carefully the text then he will ask every student to talk about what they like to watch or what they dislike ; they talk about their favorite programs. Moreover, This kind of activity encourages pupils to talk about what they can do ,and develop their ability in expressing themselves . It also promotes a friendly classroom atmosphere which encourages students , especially shy ones to communicate using the English language since they are talking to a friend or a classmate so embarrassment is reduced and students become highly motivated to talk and listen using English(Ommagio,2001).
Inferences
The findings of the analysis revealed that the reading texts of the student's book in Action Pack 11 have a high degree of authenticity. There is a strong match between the reading specific outcomes and the reading text's authenticity in the textbook . Students will not learn effectively without relating them to their real environment. They are attracted more to subjects that are interesting to them and not strange to their cultural background. It is efficient and valuable to use authentic materials as Bryan (2005.p17)put it concisely "Real-world use is the eventual goal of any language program and authentic texts offer the first baby steps for the students along this journey.
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Kilickaya. F. (2004). Authentic materials and cultural content in EFL classrooms. The Internet TESL Journal, 10 (7). Retrieved on June 10, 2013. Available at http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Kilickaya-AutenticMaterial.html
Krippendorf, K. (1980). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
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Ministry of Education. (2006). General Guidelines and General and Specific Outcomes for English Language. Amman. Jordan.
Magableh, Wafa.(2000). An evaluation of the functional English language textbook for the commercial first secondary class in Jordan. Unpublished Master Thesis. Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan.
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Tomlinson, Brian. (1998). Materials development in language teaching. Retrieved on June 10, 2013 from www.pdfebook4u.com/material-developme Weber, Robert Philip. (1990). Basic content analysis, 2d ed. Newbury Park. Retrieved on June 10, 2013 from www. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Content_analysis.
Zawahreh, F.(2012). A content Analysis of the vocabulary items in students' books of Action Pack Seven as a textbook for teaching English as a foreign language in Jordan. Continental J. of Education Research . 5 (1): 34 – 45.
Zawahreh, F.(2012). A content analysis of grammar activities in student's book of Action Pack Seven as a textbook for teaching English as a foreign language in Jordan. Language in India 12:160-178
A content analysis of the english reading text'S authenticity in student’s book of action pack eleven in jordan. Abeer Al-Ghazo, Oqlah Smadi. 2013. The development of the writing skill in Action Pack textbooks (1-6) in Jordan: An analytical study (Unpublished master thesis). N. Al-Azza. University of Jordan. Amman, Jordan. 2006. View 6 excerpts. Highly influential. Action Pack 10 Tenth Grade: Activity book. E. Johnson. London: York Press. Graded reading. Read stories and articles for your level of English. Elementary. Intermediate. Upper intermediate. 175. A walk in the forest â€" level 1. On her usual walk in the forest, Grace meets an unusual boy. 20. Amazing adventurers â€" level 1. Wonder is a book about an ordinary boy called Auggie who looks very different from most boys his age. 26. A walk in the forest â€" level 3. Walking her dog in the forest, Grace has a chance encounter that will present her with a dilemma. 9. Amazing adventurers â€" level 3. From ordinary student to YouTube star. How did Charlie McDonnell do it? 10. students' book of Action Pack Seven used as a textbook for teaching English as a. foreign Language in Jordan to find out to what extent to which these activities meet. the criterion proposed by it compared to those criterion proposed by Celce-Murcia. Firas Ali Sulieman Zawahreh, Ph.D. A Content Analysis of Grammar Activities in Student’s Book of Action Pack Seven as a Textbook for Teaching English as a. Foreign Language in Jordan 160. five out of the sixty grammar activities meet the criteria "clarity and completeness". Fourth, fifty out of sixty grammar activities are presented in meaningful context which meet the fourth criteria "meaningful context". Key terms: Content Analysis, Action Pack seven, Grammar, Grammar Activities and Clarity. Introduction. | <urn:uuid:74555347-6e49-458f-9ce1-300dd64f09a3> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://anovom.com/15-46-40.pdf | 2021-03-04T07:21:32+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178368608.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20210304051942-20210304081942-00508.warc.gz | 206,542,162 | 9,850 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.965115 | eng_Latn | 0.998569 | [
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Teaching Can Be Like This
1
Teaching is one of the most challenging, yet potentially rewarding of all professions. With the implementation of the Common Core State Standards the very system of education has an exciting opportunity to be free of cum bersome practices, such as "teaching to the test." Teachers are challenged to think differently about learners and to design classrooms that honor the art of teaching and the science of learning. Every teacher and every student is worthy of a school system that is designed to care for and support deep learning and honor the needs of students, while they experience the expan sive development of the human brain.
T here are exciting things happening in education around the world right now. Education is and always has been something that every one values and wants for themselves and their children. And almost everyone has an opinion of how the education system can best serve the people. At this particular time new terminology and new visions are emerging as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) continues to make its debut. Once again there is a stir of excitement and some trepi dation. To squelch all the jitters about this current thrust, it is time to look at some of the really great things that are happening in schools. Once the pieces of good classroom practice fall into place the common core fits right into how school works best.
2 • Build the Brain the Common Core Way
Different Expectations
This is day three of a new study unit. Henry rushes down the corridor, hoping that none of the students have entered the classroom before him. He wants to be there before class begins to review his plan while the students are still mingling or playing outside. It is important that all the materials are laid out and accessible. He hastily reviews the questions he will ask. He analyzes how much time will be needed and if the plan for this lesson will fit into the time allowed. There are just a few precious minutes before the bell rings and everyone will pile into the classroom. This young teacher reflects about the content that was presented during the last class period. He decides how the new information will be provided and plans for a teacher-prepared talk that can be accessed by all the learning teams at 10:15.
As young and inexperienced as he is, he is aware that group interac tion is critical as well as there must be time to practice. He is responsible along with the others that everyone in the group understands all content well enough to give it to another classmate in his or her own words. He reviews the plan one last time. When everyone in the group is ready, Henry, as the group leader for this week, knows to ask their teacher to come and review their work. He knows the final activity is for the group to report back to the whole class. Reporting back is scheduled to happen 20 minutes before the class period ends. His group has a mere five min utes to summarize how they worked together and what they learned. He sighs and breaks into a smile as the bell sounds and the doors to the classroom burst open.
This classroom scenario brings anticipation and excitement in a sys tematic, planned way.
* What is different in the way learning is structured in this classroom?
* What is expected of the students in this classroom?
* What grade level could be assigned for this scenario?
* What level of mastery on a scale of 1 (some) to 5 (quite a bit) could be expected from this kind of student responsibility? How did you deter mine this score?
Classrooms like this one are replicated when students are given the responsibility to own their own learning without minimizing the very important role of teachers. The professionals are all over this type of learning, but they do not occupy center stage.
REAL SCHOOL EXAMPLES
A perception change is needed as professionals in the field of education place their focus on real learning, deep and extensive learning. This change can happen when the emphasis for schools is changed from what the teacher needs to do to present a lesson to what students are doing to develop deep understanding. A new breed of schools is featured at the popular Edutopia website (edutopia.org). One such example is Mount Desert Elementary School in Northeast Harbor, Maine. This school has consistently outperformed other schools in the state. The school leaders attribute their success to a focus on Social Emotional Learning (SEL). Students' motivation comes from responsive classroom techniques, such as morning meetings, rules and expectations set by the students, focused positive talk, community-based activities, and various classroom choices for students.
At this school learning has been tailored to the needs of every stu dent. This sustainable practice of focusing on social emotional needs has been in place for over 6 years. It is more than just a good idea; it is a way of doing school. A change has been instituted from focusing on how teachers teach to what students do to learn, and it is key to the success of this program.
Why Social Emotional Learning?
A bit of brain knowledge helps respond to this question. Children's, and adults' brains as well, have an emotional area that is primary to how they feel and react in any situation. Unless this area, the amygdala, is neutralized, it can override other parts of the brain, even the frontal areas where executive thinking and ultimately deep learning occurs. When a child feels safe, somewhat in control of the environment, and feels valued, then the primary needs of the social brain are satisfied. Reaching this plateau allows children to be open to the activities in the classroom. Learning has a robust potential to occur (see Chapter 9, Social Emotional Learning). When children are given the opportunity to contribute to essential activities in the classroom, such as setting the rules and expectations, being asked to define different ways of moving around the elementary classroom, selecting a learning activity for the unit of study in middle school, for example, they feel important and valued. When someone greets them with a sincere concern for their well-being, they are more likely to relax and be open to learning. Customizing the school day to allow students to pursue their own inter ests is a common strategy in districts that have received award grants
4 • Build the Brain the Common Core Way
from the federal government in the Race to the Top project. Learn more about activities that result from this government project in Chapter 3.
Now teachers have an opportunity to break from rigid lists and step-by-step teaching to experience how they can be true facilitators of deep student learning. The common core advances education to bring out the innovative, creative teaching side of the profession and to apply it to what students need for deep understanding and learning. The educa tional experience is extended by encouraging inner connectivity among school subjects.
School Organization and Student Learning
Most children are eager to come to school as kindergartners. They want to know about the things they can play with and what they will learn that older friends and siblings already know. Although school cur riculum and requirements align with the developmental social and learn ing aspects of the human brain, new thinking and higher expectations for rigorous learning have crept into even the early grades. The early school years, too, are being challenged with more comprehensive work. While there were naysayers about an increasingly serious academic curriculum for five- and six-year-olds, children have surprised parents and teachers with their resolve for learning. It turns out the abilities of the young, developing human brain have been underestimated. As the curriculum continues to be more demanding, the children filtering through the school system show capacity to master stronger learning skills and form deeper understanding. This wave of students will defy each ensuing grade-level teacher to provide more challenging learning activities. Learners with higher levels of competence moving through the education system can have exhilarating outcomes.
Another Strong Example
Nothing breeds success like being successful. Sammamish High School (SHS), in Belleview, Washington, lets website viewers know of their success at the first look. SHS among "America's Most Challenging High Schools" greets the reader. Another accolade is that this high school was among Newsweek's list of America's best-100 high schools. On the same first look, those seeking information have quick facts of enrollment, assessment information, attendance area, budget, and even when the campus was renovated, which was in 2004. Fine, but what makes this school stand out from others?
Initially it is learned they have linked with the George Lucas Educational Foundation and the powerful direction identified by STEM (science, tech nology, engineering, and mathematics). STEM's direction integrates the sciences, all these sciences, into a core focus, giving just as much attention to technology and engineering as formerly was allowed for math and sci ence. It is the brain child from industry with lofty goals for American students by 2020.
Touting a mantra of our school, our community, our future, Sammamish High School lives out its vision by partnering also with Washington STEM and the University of Washington Institute of Science and Math Education. Teachers embrace problem-based learning (PBL). An extension of this thinking is extended into a summer program where students work with engineers and other professionals to look at global and local problems. And, yes, there is more support as the Gates Foundation and Valve Software collaborate with this program. While this combination of exter nal financial and resource support is extraordinary and difficult to repli cate, others can still seek the root of their success. The key to real learning is what is happening between teachers and students.
Teachers at Sammamish are characterized by their tenacity and connectedness among their colleagues and with both the local and global community. They willingly partner not only with others in the community, but also with their students. It is tricky business to maintain control of the curriculum, be ultimately responsible for student learn ing, and yet willingly let go of some of the classroom management issues, which incidentally plague classrooms everywhere. At this school, the classroom can be anywhere. For example, several groups from their advanced placement human geography class did research and proposed solutions to agricultural problems in Saharan Africa and South Asia through technology at their school site. Their solutions include new technology, an awareness campaign, and new government policy. Another course, in biology/chemistry, aligned with a research team from the University of Washington to work on a potential cancer drug delivery system. Students work alongside their teachers and STEM pro fessionals in other intensive programs; each one is accomplished in a 7-day institute.
It is a bit overwhelming to think of the way classes are run and the connections that must be in place for a high school that is this dynamic and associates so effectively in the community and in the world. Remember, however, that Sammamish is only 1 of 100 that received recognition by a national magazine, Newsweek, in 2013. Other high schools are doing innovative programs that are equally unique and different.
6 • Build the Brain the Common Core Way
A Brilliant Time to Be in Education
It is amazing to see engineering and technology take their place in the curriculum spotlight. Now students can experience a full range of experi ences from the real world and be better prepared for the world they find after graduation. Teachers, through technology, have an endless supply of support and solid lessons for every content area that are based on what has already been successfully done in classrooms worldwide through websites, blogs, and tweets. One such website, http://www.yourchildlearns.com/ alpsci.htm, provides active science learning lesson plans and activities for elementary age students. An example, this time for high school, is Share My Lesson by teachers for teachers. This site features all areas of the high school curriculum and is available at http://www.sharemylesson.com/ high-school-teaching-resources/. Almost 170,000 different lessons are available and rated.
While these are two examples teachers know they can use Google to look up almost any learning-related request and get real answers instantly from real colleagues. And there is good reason to pull no stops to pursue a new deeper form of learning for students. The Common Core State Standards are roaring into schools with new expectations and an improved outlook for student accomplishments during their school years. | <urn:uuid:d0996a81-7e66-46e5-82cd-952f3834a916> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://us.corwin.com/sites/default/files/upm-assets/62089_book_item_62089.pdf | 2021-03-04T06:06:36+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178368608.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20210304051942-20210304081942-00503.warc.gz | 594,229,149 | 2,487 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998875 | eng_Latn | 0.999066 | [
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A Curriculum Guide to
Moon Base Alpha Series: Space Case and Spaced Out
By Stuart Gibbs
About Space Case
Like his fellow lunarnauts—otherwise known as Moonies—living on Moon Base Alpha, twelveyear-old Dashiell Gibson is famous the world over for being one of the first humans to live on the moon.
And he's bored out of his mind. Kids aren't allowed on the lunar surface, meaning they're trapped inside the tiny moon base with next to nothing to occupy their time—and the only other kid Dash's age spends all his time hooked into virtual reality games.
Then Moon Base Alpha's top scientist turns up dead. Dash senses there's foul play afoot, but no one believes him. Everyone agrees Dr. Holtz went onto the lunar surface without his helmet properly affixed, simple as that. But Dr. Holtz was on the verge of an important new discovery, Dash finds out, and it's a secret that could change everything for the Moonies—a secret someone just might kill to keep . . ..
About Spaced Out
There's nowhere to hide on the world's first moon base. After all, it's only the size of a soccer field. So when Nina Stack, the commander of Moon Base Alpha, mysteriously vanishes, the Moonies are at a total loss.
Though he may be just twelve years old, Dashiell Gibson is the best detective they've got. But this confusing mystery pushes him to his limits. Especially since he has his own huge secret to protect. With the fate of the entire human race hanging in the balance, will Dash be able to solve the mystery of the missing Moonie?
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS: READING, WRITING, AND RESEARCHING
Prereading Activity
The following questions contained in this section particularly address the Common Core State Standards: (RL.4.2) (RL.6.2) (SL.4–6.1, 2, 3)
As a prereading activity for each book, have students complete an anticipation guide structured in the following manner:
| Before Reading | After Reading |
|---|---|
Instruct students to complete the guide by placing a "+" sign in the box next to the statements for which they agree, and a "0" next to those for which they disagree. They must commit to agreement or disagreement—there are no conditional responses. Students should be assured that there are no correct or incorrect positions.
Space Case and Spaced Out through Writing and Research
The following questions may be utilized throughout the study of Space Case and/or Spaced Out as reflective writing prompts or alternatively, they can be used as targeted questions for class discussion and reflection. The questions contained in this section particularly address the Common Core State Standards: (RL.4.1, 2, 3, 7, 9) (RL.5.1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9) (RL.6.1, 2, 3) (SL.6.1, 2, 3) (W.4–6.4)
1. In Space Case, the novel opens with Dashiell stating, "Let's get something straight, right off the bat: Everything the movies have ever taught you about space travel is garbage." From this first introduction of Dash, what can readers infer about him? Did you find those inferences about him to be accurate as you get to know him better throughout the course of Space Case?
2. In Space Case, Dash realizes that Dr. Holtz's death was calculated and no accident, and that his killer is one of the residents on Moon Base Alpha. Why is Dash's insight so important? For what reason do most of the adults at the base want to dismiss him? What are the ramifications of there being a murderer on the Moon?
3. What was your earliest impression of Nina? What did you think of her refusing to take Dash seriously? Given her job at Moon Base Alpha, do you think she is within her right to attempt to silence him? Why or why not? How does what you learn about her in Spaced Out reshape what you think you know about her personality?
4. Consider the novels' titles: In what ways do they capture the themes of the book?
5. Describe Dash. What makes him a dynamic character? Is he the type of person you would want to befriend? Why or why not?
6. After Chang criticizes Lars Sjoberg about his disrespect toward the late Dr. Holtz, Lars tells him, "I'll do whatever I want." How does this declaration capture the overall attitude of the Sjobergs?
7. Because of his parents' work at Moon Base Alpha, Dash gets to reside on the moon. Imagine what it would be like living there. What would be the greatest benefits to such an experience? What would be the biggest challenges? Do you feel that Dash takes advantage of this unusual situation?
8. How does learning that Daphne is a corporate spy for a tourism company who hopes to open a hotel on the moon affect her relationship with the other residents? Though she confesses that she doesn't like her job, she tells Dash and Kira she's agreed to the job because she gets "to go to the moon! To make history!" Do you think she's justified in doing what she does?
9. In Space Case and Spaced Out, Dash's nemeses are the Sjoberg siblings. What is it about this family that makes them so particularly difficult? In your opinion, why do they act the way they do?
10. After she lands on Moon Base Alpha, Zan Perfonic tells Dash, "I just arrived on the rocket— and I think you're right about Dr. Holtz. He was murdered . . . but I need your help to prove it." Why do you think Zan chooses to enlist Dash to assist her in investigating Holtz's death? Do you think it's appropriate for her to do so? Why or why not?
11. In what ways does Kira's arrival on the Moon change things for Dash? In your opinion, does she have the potential to be a good friend to him? In what ways does her relationship with her father provide her with the ability to help Dash?
12. In Spaced Out, Dash states, "Every single aspect of my life was strange and unusual to Zan Perfonic. She wanted to know the reasons for everything I did." Why does this alien seem so intrigued by human choices and behaviors? Why does Zan insist that Dash keep her existence a secret? Do you think she's right to ask Dash to do so?
13. Why does Zan find the movie Star Wars so entertaining? Do you think she's right to be so critical?
14. In your opinion, what is the appropriate way to deal with a bully like Patton? In what ways does Dash get the better of him? Do you think Dash is right to retaliate the way he does?
15. Evaluate how the adults in Spaced Out deal with the disappearance of Nina. In what ways are their reactions different from those of the kids who live on Moon Base Alpha?
16. Dash tells Zan, "When you first approached me about being your human contact, you said it was extremely important." Predict why Zan finds their relationship so critical.
17. In Space Case and Spaced Out, what are the most impressive obstacles Dash overcomes? Which of these hurdles amazed you the most?
18. In your opinion, why do Zan and Dash always talk about the Earth and humanity? Should their interest be a clue that bigger issues may be at play?
19. Though Dash is often reprimanded for being a troublemaker, with the help of Kira, he is also the person who helps solve the murder of Dr. Holtz and the mystery of Nina's disappearance. What can readers infer about his motivations? Do you see his relationship with Kira facilitating this?
20. After debating the idea of searching Nina's room, Kira tells Dash, "Everyone has personal stuff. Nina just kept hers secret." Is Kira's assessment accurate? Why or why not? What is it about Nina that makes Dash feel like that wouldn't be the case? What additional understanding of Kira can readers glean from her insistence in examining Nina's stuff regardless of how they have to go about accessing it?
21. In what ways does space junk cause serious concern for the Moon Base Alpha residents? In what ways is this junk indicative of a larger problem with space trash?
22. How does the virtual gaming world allow Roddy to be someone different from whom he is in real life? What are the benefits of this? Do you think there are some disadvantages, too?
23. Consider the unusual cast of secondary characters: Who did you like the most? The least? For what reason? Of all of the characters, who did you feel was most similar to you due to his/her personality or experiences?
24. What's the significance of the "Charlie" text Nina receives? In what ways are the space rocks important? What does this weakness on the part of Nina indicate about her character? What else can readers learn from her actions and ultimate reactions about her choices?
25. Space Case and Spaced Out are told in first person. How would the story be different if another character (besides Dash) were telling it? Do you think changing the point of view would make the story better or worse?
26. Space Case and Spaced Out are sprinkled with excerpts from the faux book, The Official Residents' Guide to Moon Base Alpha. What did you think of this guide book? Did you find the information highlighted to be particularly useful to the residents on MBA?
27. Supply five words to describe Space Case and Spaced Out using the phrase, "These stories are about . . . " Explain your choices.
28. Through the course of both Moon Base Alpha books, readers get more insight about the Sjoberg family. What makes them such despicable characters? At the end of Spaced Out, Nina tells them, "NASA has already released details of the crimes you have committed to the press." Why is it important that the Sjobergs' true character be revealed to the people of Earth?
29. As in Space Case, when Spaced Out closes, Dash has solved an important mystery. Predict how he will have to come to the aid of the residents of Moon Base Alpha in the next installment/adventure of Dash Gibson.
Extended Writing and Research Prompts
The following activities contained in this section particularly address the Common Core State Standards: (RL.4.1, 2, 3, 7, 9) (RL.5.1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9) (RL.6.1, 2, 7, 9) (W.4–6.4)
1. Throughout the Moon Base Alpha series, readers learn that there are constant and significant challenges to living on the moon. From space junk to moon toilets, the day-to-day living can be challenging and sometimes even dangerous. Have students research how personal hygiene and interests are compromised when living in space. They then should create a presentation that shares their research findings.
2. Though Moon Base Alpha has its fair share of mishaps, it has also been able to recruit scientists, like Dash's parents, from around the world to work for this groundbreaking project. Using library resources and the Internet, have students research plans for residences in space. Be sure to learn the following:
* Who will be considered for the mission?
* What is the mission's plan?
* How is it supported and by whom?
* What planets are being targeted for residence?
* What are the biggest challenges of this endeavor?
After gathering this information, have them create a visual presentation that illustrates their findings.
3. Using the novels as inspiration, place students in pairs and have them role-play as news reporters interviewing one of the residents of Moon Base Alpha. The students should discuss their life living in space, and how it has changed since moving there. To enrich the activity, record the "report" and allow students to use props and costumes when they are filming.
4. Over the past fifty years, space exploration has been a national priority, but due to other needs, funding for the program has waned and some people believe it's no longer a necessary or justifiable expense. Have students research how the space program is funded and its current goals and objectives. After examining their collected data, have students determine if they support the program and have them write a persuasive paper, explaining their position. Alternatively, students can prepare a speech designed to convince others of their view and present it to their classmates.
5. Throughout the course of the novels, readers are offered great insight about Dash's point of view on the events that occur. Students should assume the role of one of the secondary characters from either Moon Base Alpha book and draft a diary entry detailing what they've experienced and witnessed. To prepare, they should create an outline using the five Ws (who, what, when, where, and why). Students should write in first person and give special attention to sensory imagery (what you saw, smelled, heard, etc.)
6. Many of the characters in Space Case and Spaced Out are not as they appear. Consider the importance of appearances and the need for disguising one's self—what might be a rationale to do so? What are the ramifications and consequences of such a choice? Select one character from the novel and write a short analysis of his/her choice to use a disguise.
7. In small groups, have students select a favorite from one of the Moon Base Alpha books and create either a digitally or manually illustrated graphic novel for that scene. Using a digital comic strip creator (such as http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/), have students use the strips to create storyboards for their scene. They can select original art, images, or graphics. As part of the evaluation component, consider panel size and number of panels, transitions and layouts, artwork, writing, and lettering.
8. Consider the setting for this series: Why is the Moon as a location so important? Using the descriptions provided in each of the books, illustrate the four places within Moon Base Alpha you believe to be most important to the story. In addition to the illustrations, include a short explanation of the significance of each, and why you believe it is important.
9. Advice Column: Ask students to describe one of the problems faced by a character in Space Case and Spaced Out and write advice to him/her. Students may choose to be serious or humorous. Use the letter format common to newspaper advice columns, where the person with the problem writes for advice and the advisor writes back. Often the person seeking advice "disguises" his or her name with a descriptive name associated with the problem.
10. Fortune Cookies: Have students imagine they are dining with three characters from the series. Have them create fortune cookie statements for each character, making sure they tell you which character received the fortune and why it is fitting.
11. If These Walls Could Talk: Ask students to create a conversation between one of the characters in the series with some intangible thing (justice, love, goodness, greed, etc.) or his/her conscience. Have them script the conversation for dialogue, making sure they use appropriate punctuation.
12. Character Report Card: Ask students to examine the ethical nature of a character's actions and choices in Space Case and Spaced Out. Have them set up a "report card" using a chart and include the following four categories: respect, responsibility, cooperation, caring, integrity, selfcontrol, honesty, and effort. In addition, include a teacher's comments section. In each category, give the character a letter grade that you believe he/she deserves based on actions and choices made in the book. In the comments section, use two specific pieces of evidence from the novel to explain/support the grade.
13. Character Analysis T-shirt: Select a favorite character from the series and create a character analysis T-shirt. Identify the literary elements used by the author to describe the character, and then create a visual representation of the character traits. The front of the shirt must include the book title and author's name, as well as the character's name, picture, and description. The right sleeve must list the character's strength, and the left sleeve should list the character's weaknesses. List internal and external conflicts, figurative language, and the story's climax on the back of the T-shirt.
14. Gift Giving: Have students select five or more gifts that would be perfect to give to one of the characters in Space Case and Spaced Out; while these gifts can be tangible or intangible, they should be things that he/she would really want or need. Students should write an explanation, detailing how they chose each gift for the appropriate character.
15. Character "To Do" List: Students should create a "to do" list for one of the characters in Space Case or Spaced Out, with an explanation as to why those tasks are so necessary for that particular character.
This guide was created by Dr. Rose Brock, an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University. Dr. Brock holds a Ph.D. in Library Science, specializing in children's and young adult literature.
This guide, written to align with the Common Core State Standards (www.corestandards.org) has been provided by Simon & Schuster for classroom, library, and reading group use. It may be reproduced in its entirety or excerpted for these purposes. | <urn:uuid:53909f05-13d1-434e-bc07-4b8a7cc53cf7> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://media.btsb.com/TitleLessonPlans/2602.pdf | 2021-03-04T07:20:33+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178368608.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20210304051942-20210304081942-00510.warc.gz | 433,082,933 | 3,628 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998451 | eng_Latn | 0.99916 | [
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UAE to explore Mars' atmosphere with probe named 'Hope' (Update)
May 6 2015, byAdam Schreck
Sarah Amiri, Deputy Project Manager of a planned United Arab Emirates Mars mission talks about the project named "Hope"—or "al-Amal" in Arabic—which is scheduled be launched in 2020, during a ceremony in Dubai, UAE, Wednesday, May 6, 2015. It would be the Arab world's first space probe to Mars and will take seven to nine months to reach the red planet, arriving in 2021. Emirati scientists hope the unmanned probe will provide a deeper understanding of the Martian atmosphere, and expect it to remain in orbit until at least 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
The United Arab Emirates' planned 2020 mission to Mars will study the planet's atmosphere and be appropriately named "Hope," members of the project team revealed Wednesday.
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced initial plans for the unmanned probe last year. It is the first Mars mission attempted anywhere in the Arab world.
An invitation-only event Wednesday in Dubai was a chance for officials to unveil many of the finer details. And they did it with a good dose of Gulf flair—soaring music and computer animations projected onto a movie screen in a chandelier-filled beachside palace. One of the world's largest yachts, Dubai, was berthed outside.
"This mission to Mars is really for the hope of the Arab world and will send them a message to say you can be better, you can improve your country," Sheikh Mohammed, who is also the Emirates' vice president and prime minister, told reporters after the event.
Emirati scientists said they hope the probe, which will not land on the surface of the red planet, will provide a deeper understanding of the Martian atmosphere. That includes charting changes that happen over time and gathering data on how features such as volcanoes, deserts and canyons affect it.
The plan is to launch the probe in the summer of 2020—the year Dubai hosts the World Expo—on a journey of seven to nine months. Engineers expect it to remain in orbit until at least 2023.
Some 75 engineers are working on the project, a number that is expected to double by 2020. The project is fully staffed by Emiratis—a rarity in a country where guest workers and other foreigners outnumber locals more than four to one.
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum talks to journalists after announcing a UAE Mars mission named "Hope"—or "al-Amal" in Arabic—which is scheduled be launched in 2020, during a ceremony in Dubai, Wednesday, May 6, 2015. It would be the Arab world's first space probe to Mars and will take seven to nine months to reach the red planet, arriving in 2021. Emirati scientists hope the unmanned probe will provide a deeper understanding of the Martian atmosphere, and expect it to remain in orbit until at least 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
"This is an important project because of the legacy that this project leaves ... to develop the science and technology sector," deputy project manager Sarah Amiri said.
Officials haven't said how much it will cost.
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, center, talks to Emirati officials after announcing a UAE Mars mission named "Hope"—or "al-Amal" in Arabic—which is scheduled be launched in 2020, during a ceremony in Dubai, Wednesday, May 6, 2015. It would be the Arab world's first space probe to Mars and will take seven to nine months to reach the red planet, arriving in 2021. Emirati scientists hope the unmanned probe will provide a deeper understanding of the Martian atmosphere, and expect it to remain in orbit until at least 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
Sarah Amiri, Deputy Project Manager of a planned United Arab Emirates Mars mission talks about the project named "Hope"—or "al-Amal" in Arabic—which is scheduled be launched in 2020, during a ceremony in Dubai, UAE, Wednesday, May 6, 2015. It would be the Arab world's first space probe to Mars and will take seven to nine months to reach the red planet, arriving in 2021. Emirati scientists hope the unmanned probe will provide a deeper understanding of the Martian atmosphere, and expect it to remain in orbit until at least 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
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Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, center, announces a United Arab Emirates' Mars mission named "Hope"—or "al-Amal" in Arabic—which is scheduled be launched in 2020, during a ceremony in Dubai, UAE, Wednesday, May 6, 2015. It would be the Arab world's first space probe to Mars and will take seven to nine months to reach the red planet, arriving in 2021. Emirati scientists hope the unmanned probe will provide a deeper understanding of the Martian atmosphere, and expect it to remain in orbit until at least 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
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Citation: UAE to explore Mars' atmosphere with probe named 'Hope' (Update) (2015, May 6) retrieved 31 January 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2015-05-uae-explore-mars-atmosphereprobe.html
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Japanese Animal Cafes and the Iyashi Boom
Amanda Robinson
Though the very first cat cafés were Taiwanese, when Japanese entrepreneurs brought the idea of a café where visitors could relax with a drink and a cat nearby to Japan in the mid-2000s, the idea caught on quickly. The popularity of this new business model was tied to Japan's iyashi, healing, boom, in which Japanese people turned to commercial businesses to meet their need for emotional and psychological soothing to help them deal with stress. People in Japan found that a stop at a café at the end of the day and the chance to relax and pet a cat is a perfect balm for a busy worker and these businesses have today become a popular part of Japanese life. After the first cat café opened in Osaka, Japan in the fall of 2004, it was followed quickly by cafés in Tokyo and other major cities, causing what the Japanese mass media dubbed a "cat café boom" by 2008. During the cat café peak, there were dozens of cat cafés in Tokyo alone. While the numbers have decreased somewhat from 2009, there are still roughly forty established cat cafés in Tokyo today [Figure 1].
Cat cafés have become so popular in Japan that many new types of animal cafés have opened over the last decade, capitalizing on the interest in unusual opportunities for human-animal interaction. The first rabbit cafés began to appear at the end of the 2000s [Figure 2], and the first owl café opened in 2012 [Figure 3]. Today, there are scores of cat cafés open throughout Japan, though they are most densely clustered in major cities like Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. There are even reptile cafés or zoo cafés, which do not limit themselves to a single species. Both the popularity and public awareness of animal cafés has only increased in the last ten years, both inside and outside of Japan, as new cat cafés have begun to open across Europe and North America.
Animal café are spaces structured around the opportunity for intimacy with animals but in a public, communal setting. The experience is both relaxing and enlivening, as visitors get the opportunity to cozy up with exciting, new animals. About the size of a large studio apartment, painted in pastel colors, and filled with soft couches, most cafés are designed to look more like a comfortable home than a traditional café. Visitors pay for the time they are in the café, staying an average of one and a half hours, and they use that time to watch, play with, or even just relax while the animals that surround them [Figure 4]. There are bookshelves filled with books, magazines and manga (Japanese comic books) available for customers to entertain themselves with and most animal cafés also offer some food or drink [Figure 5]. However, visiting a café is about being with animals and other animal lovers, more than it is about having a good meal or enjoying other kinds of entertainment.
Most visitors come alone or with a single friend or significant other, and generally spend their time in quiet relaxation. Patrons chat occasionally with their companion or other people in the café, but primarily just enjoy the atmosphere. There are no prescribed rules for how visitors should behave in an animal café, and visitors are encouraged to relax in and enjoy the space however they wish to do so. For some visitors, that means interacting with as many animals as possible, petting them or taking pictures, and then sharing those pictures with a friend while they chat together over a cup of coffee. For others, that means stopping by after a hard day at work and curling up in a corner with a manga, and a cat sleeping nearby. Animal cafés are flexible spaces, where customers who want to be alone can focus on quiet and relaxation, and those who want to be social can socialize with the animals or with other patrons or employees.
In order to keep the café from feeling overcrowded and losing the sense of intimacy, cafés only allow a limited number of visitors in at any one time, usually no more than a dozen people. In a cat café, these visitors are surrounded by the cats that live there; there are on average about ten cats, of a variety of breeds (Maine Coons, Bengals, and Munchkins are very popular). The cats roam freely throughout the café, sometimes stopping to be pet by visitors, but often curling up on high shelves or in cat trees. Rabbit cafés follow a similar pattern, but rabbits are more quickly overtired and so rotate between resting in cages and hopping around the café space. In contrast, owl and bird cafés keep the animals in areas separate from the café section where customers can handle them for short periods under the supervision of café staff. The animals at the majority of Japanese cat cafés are raised from a young age in the café, live there full time, and are not adopted out. Regular visitors often develop close relationships with one particular animal, who they see as "their" animal, and who they come to spend time with when they visit.
These cafés are structured to allow visitors the opportunity to remove themselves from the tensions of their everyday lives and relax in a pleasantly social setting, enjoying the benefits of social contact with animals. In addition to the cozy decorations, there are also at least two or three café employees, who bring drinks, but also chat with the clientele, answer their questions about the animals, and facilitate the interactions between visitors and animals by showing them how the animal likes to be petted or which toy is their favorite. Employees are trained to be attentive to the moods and needs of customers and be as interactive as the customer wishes, offering them a companionable ear or complete privacy [Figure 6]. The café owners who created these cafés, the employees who make visitors comfortable, and the animals who allow themselves to be petted and play with the customers all work together to create a refuge for visitors who come to the animal cafés to escape the stresses of everyday life in twenty-first century Japan.
Changing Sociality in Post-Economic Bubble Japan
Animal cafés welcome visitors of all ages, from middle-schoolers to retirees, but they are most popular with young people, both men and women, in their 20s and 30s. This generation came of age following the end of the economic boom period, and life in post-recession Japan has had significant effects on them, social as well as economic. They face not only a challenging work environment, as there is decreasing access to stable, full-time employment, but also the loss social support networks, affected by the delay in marriage, decreasing birth rate, and the end of the "company-as-family" ideology. The young people who came of age in the 1990s and after, sometimes referred to as the "lost generation," are struggling to find new social support structures to replace the ones built around corporations and family, and new sources of stress reduction to help them face the challenges of life in contemporary Japan. Experiences that offer low-key sociality, combining community and relaxation, like time spent in an animal café, are increasingly popular among this generation of Japanese workers because they offer the positive feelings of intimacy that are hard for many Japanese to find elsewhere. The animal café offers a place that is away from the workplace, a major source of stress for younger precariously-employed workers, and home, which offers little comfort or social support to young Japanese who live alone. It is a place where visitors can relax and let go of their daily stress, while still comfortably being with other people.
During the economic boom period, which began after Japan's postwar recovery in the 1960s and 1970s and ended in 1990, there was a reliance on corporate loyalty and family care to compensate for a minimal welfare state (Borovoy 2012). The Japanese economy was built around the lifetime-employment system, in which male employees were hired when they graduated from college, and they would work for the same corporation for the duration of their careers. These salarymen were paid a sufficient wage to support a family, and their wives in turn maintained the household and helped their children develop the credentials that would allow them also to attain a corporate position. While this lifestyle was only ever attainable by a portion of Japanese workers, the ideology built around the idea that if one worked hard and did well in school, one would have a secure future was highly influential for young people born in the 1970s and 1980s. However, in an effort to respond to the economic crisis by increasing flexibility in the labor force, Japanese employers have increased the number of part-time, temporary or dispatched (haken) workers. While older workers, hired during the period of lifetime-guaranteed employment, still benefit from the corporate welfare system, younger workers do not have access to those protections and face significantly more economic instability that the older generation. According to the most recent
Japanese government White Paper on Labour Force from 2014, 36.7% of employees are non-regular staffs and employees, a more than 6% increase from ten years ago. Twenty percent of the young people working in sales and service work are in that type of job "involuntarily," because they could not find employment at a regular company. More and more employees are shifted into flexible employment, reducing these stable regular positions for all workers. Even those with full-time jobs face more stress in the workplace, as fewer options for workers means that there is more pressure on people to market themselves successfully and they must take on the responsibility to care for their social and emotional needs.
Young Japanese workers are thus faced with the challenges of financial insecurity, and a sense of disaffection as they have come to realize that their dream of a stable future as part of a corporation, something they would be able to earn as long as they studied and worked hard, is no longer possible for a large proportion of Japanese workers. Young Japanese people are searching for opportunities for positive social interaction to help them deal with these feelings of disconnection and loneliness. They are turning to the marketplace for it, willing to pay for the experiences that they do not get elsewhere. This leads them to turn to business like animal cafés, which offer them that positive experience.
Animal cafés' target clientele are men and women in their 20s and 30s who seek to reduce their feelings of anxiety through time spent in a companionable, relaxing space. They are often working in high-stress jobs and lack the time to socialize with friends after work. Additionally, animal cafés are clustered in cities like Tokyo which are heavily populated by people who moved to urban areas for work and left behind family and childhood friends, so are more likely to feel lonely or isolated.
Animal Cafés and the Iyashi Boom
The current success of the animal café is part of a larger explosion of interest in goods, businesses, and places that offer positive, healing experiences: known in Japan as the "iyashi" boom. All of the factors that make animal cafés so appealing to customers - the opportunity to interact with animals, a space within which customers can relax and chat with friends, the cozy feel - are involved in making an animal café a place to receive iyashi. Iyashi, the noun form of the verb iyasu, to cure, fix, soothe, is usually translated as "healing" but it carries the connotation of both physical and mental mending.
The term first came into common parlance during the "iyashi boom," which began in the mid-1990s. The timeline of the boom and interest in iyashi is correlated with Japan's "Lost Decade" (the period following the end of the bubble economy, 1990 to the early 2000s), and the rise of economic and social instability as Japanese society attempted to restructure in response to the crash and depression. The iyashi boom is generally seen by scholars to have been catalyzed by two major events in 1995: the Kobe Earthquake and the Tokyo sarin gas attacks. The Kobe Earthquake, a 6.9 tremor that hit the densely populated city of Kobe, led to more than 5000 deaths and caused an unprecedented level of destruction in Japan at that time. An earthquake of that magnitude damages people's sense of the stability in their lives, as even the ground beneath their feet was unstable. The second event, a series of terrorist attacks in which poisonous gas was released in the subways of Japan's capital, Tokyo, caused the kind of widespread fear that terrorism is designed to evince. This was exacerbated by the fact that many people, living busy, urban, isolated lives, had no place to turn to receive the emotional support that would ameliorate this sense of fear. The growing unease of economically unstable workers coincided with events that sharply undermined individuals' faith that everything would be okay.
The word iyashi was first coined by the Japanese anthropologist Noriyuki Ueda in his ethnography on a Sri Lankan village entitled "Suri Ranka no Akuma barai - ime-ji to iyashi no consumoroji- (Image, Healing and Cosmology in Sri Lanka)," published in 1990. The first major usage of the word in the media was by a newspaper editor referring to Ueda's work and his piece explored iyashi's dual meaning as both heart and body healing. The flexibility inherent in the loose definition of the word has meant that it is both difficult to classify as an idea and that it is easily applied to a variety of different situations, which has led to the idea being applied in many contexts in Japan. An iyashi experience is an experience that is a combination of excitement and relaxation. Japanese individuals seeking out iyashi are attempting to both disconnect from their daily stresses, and to connect to something outside themselves. This may mean being connected to more abstract feelings such as nature or salvation, or, for individuals feeling more directly isolated, it may be about connecting to other people or other creatures, like animals. Usage of the word iyashi surged in media discourse following the disasters of the mid-1990s, as the Japanese populace experienced a surge of interest in healing from the traumas of those events. The word went from 2 uses of the word in Japan's three major Japanese newspapers - the Mainichi Shinbun, the Yomiuri Shinbun and the Asahi Shinbun – in 1990, to dozens in 1995. By 1999, the word was named one of the top ten buzzwords of the year at the sixteenth Ryūkō go taishō (Buzzword awards) by the Jiyukokuminsha publishing house.
Today, iyashi is often used as something of a catch-phrase, a hip concept that will attract the eye of consumers. An ad campaign in 2015 designed to draw travelers to
Kamakura to see the hydrangeas blooming, a flower for which the area is known, showed a wave of multi-colored blooms and the slogan "Iyashi, in full bloom" (Iyashi, mankai), [Figure 8] using the idea of iyashi to market a day out. The currant usage of the term iyashi is used to evoke positive feelings and mark any experience as one that will make one feel good. The sense of feeling good is closely aligned with a sense of stress reduction and restoring mental balance, but it is flexible enough to be applied to spiritual or religious activities or to the experience of relaxing in an animal café. With this definition, one can see how a spiritual retreat, a visit to the gardens of Kamakura or a trip to a maid café can all be considered iyashi experiences.
The boom period was characterized largely by Japanese people seeking out iyashi, or experiences that would allow them to feel iyasarete iru (healed), through an embrace of alternative medicines or therapies, or "New New Religions (shinshiruhukyo 新新宗教)" such as Naikan. During this period, iyashi goods, like scented oils or home foot spas, and iyashi experiences, like aromatherapy, or power spot tours (also known as kijō, 気 場), which take visitors to powerful places to draw on the land's positive energy, focused on offering healing through soothing emotional stress.
Over the course of the last two decades the term has shifted away from spiritual security and wellbeing and towards psychological balance and health (Matsui 2009, Roquet 2009). Animal cafés are a type of this kind of iyashi business. Where earlier iyashi businesses focused on emotional anxiety and physical tension, animal cafés focus on problems caused by social disconnection. These businesses focus on offering healing through relaxation away from the social relations at work that can be a source of stress, and as a chance to combat the loneliness of returning to an empty home by spending time surrounded by others.
[1]U-Can Shingo Ryukogo Taisho. "16th Ryukogo Taisho (Buzzword Awards)". singo.jiyu.co.jp. http://singo.jiyu.co.jp/nendo/1999.html (retrieved Aug. 5 2016).
Commodifying Intimacy
While the iyashi boom has driven the success of animal cafés, their specific structure is primarily shaped by earlier business types that commodified intimacy in Japan during the 1980s and 1990s. Anthropologists have done significant research on a variety of these businesses and the way they encourage customers to purchase intimacy in a club or café setting, from hostess clubs in the 1980s to host clubs in the 1990s and maid cafés in the 2000s (Allison 1994; Galbraith 2013; Takeyama 2016). The business models in these spaces are based on traditional commodity exchange, as visitors are paying for the food and drink they consume, but the prices were obviously and heavily marked up. Visitors are willing to pay that cost because it gains them to attention and focus of the host, hostess, or maid.
In contrast, animal café visitors pay to enter the café, with the entrance cost frequently including a free drink or unlimited drinks at a modest fee, but do not have to pay in order to keep the attention of the animals. Once they have entered the space, they can lay claim to it, using it as if it were their home without having to continuing make new purchases to retain the attention of the workers, as you do in a host or hostess club. Animal cafés are not cheap to visit, averaging about $10 for an hour's stay, especially for young people without significant discretionary funds, but they are more inexpensive than other outings and activities (and much cheaper than a host or hostess club). In addition, the rate decreases the longer one stays, so the price can be very reasonable for a devoted visitor. This means that the visitors most in need of the positive feelings of relaxation and companionship provided by the animal café, who are also often the most financially unstable, are able to receive more from time in the space without additional cost.
Also, in contrast to other type of intimacy businesses, in an animal café the experience that attracts customers is built around interaction with animals, which creates an easy sense of familiarity and removes the sense of social anxiety that can come from interactions with people, who may be judgmental [Figure 7]. Free from prescribed behaviors, these are spaces for customers to be selfish, to focus on their own needs and interests, and to be free from the responsibility to be attentive to the needs of others. Customers pay to enter, socialize as little or as much as they wish, and leave, recuperated and more able to face the demands of the world outside the café walls.
Socializing with Animals
Animal café are, of course, also distinctive from other kinds of intimacy businesses because customers are coming not to spend time with service workers, but to be with animals. As mentioned, the most common café animals are ones like cats or rabbits that customers can pet or cuddle; visitors are not just interested in talking with their animal companion but in the positive affective feeling, what the Japanese refer to as iyashi, that comes from touch and connecting physically with another being. Visitors also talk about the sense that they communicate with the animals and can share their feelings with them; this communication may be nonverbal on the side of the animals, but it is valuable enough that they are happy to pay for the opportunity to experience it.
Research has shown that interactions with animals lead to demonstrable stress reduction, but the popularity of animal cafés in Japan is driven by a variety of factors beyond just the physical benefits that come from getting to touch an animal. A major element is the fact that interaction and communication with an animal can offer a sense of sociality without the anxiety that interaction with humans can carry, creating an encounter that offers connection without tension. Visitors can focus only on what they want out of the social encounter and do not have to think about the needs and concerns of the other, as they would another Japanese person [Figure 9]. Additionally, animal café customers largely were young children during Japan's pet boom, in the 1970s and 1980s, and so strongly associate animals like cats with their childhood homes and the pets they grew up with.
Different kinds of animal cafés, and the opportunity to interact with different species, each offer a particular type of experience. Cat cafés tend to focus more on quiet relaxation and comfort, with an emphasis on relaxing with domesticated animals. Many people living in Tokyo and other big cities live in very small studio apartments that do not allow pets, so spending time with a cat in a cat café gives them the opportunity to be with a pet they do not have space for at home and to connect nostalgically to the sense of social connection of their formative years. Customers activities in cat cafés, playing with cat toys, curling up next to the cats, or taking pictures of them dressed in funny hats, are close to how they might spend time with their own pet.
In contrast, other types of animal cafés create value by giving visitors the opportunity to see and touch "wild" animals who they would not otherwise encounter. Time spent in these businesses is more focused on appreciating the novel opportunity to gently touch or take pictures with a more unusual creature. Interacting with rabbits in a rabbit café gives customers the feeling that they are nurturing and caring for an animal they see as docile and innocent, along with the thrill of being with an animal they would not usually have the chance to touch. This is even more true for owl and other bird cafés, where customers can be close to non-domesticated species, and get a chance to feel like they are connecting to the "natural" world, a space that feels far away from their heavily urbanized daily life. By connecting with animals, customers can vicariously enjoy the freedom from societal constraints that non-humans represent.
The website of one Tokyo cat café refers to the cats as "staff," and while this is clearly meant as a joke, the animals in cafés do create value through their "labor" in the café. Animals are trained from birth for life in a café, learning to be non-aggressive, comfortable with many people and other animals, and patient with human attention. Life for a café animal can be stressful if there is too much stimulation, as animals may be woken, petted, picked up or otherwise interfered with throughout the day. Cafés accommodate the animals' needs by providing spaces to which an animal can retreat or be moved to for a rest when they are being over-socialized, and cats and rabbits will then return from their rests energized to play with visitors once again. Additionally, human employees are quick to head off any problems, such as mishandling of an animal by a guest or any issues between animals. The animals are well trained enough that there are rarely problems. Some cafés sell snacks for cats or rabbits to facilitate interaction between animals and humans, and the human employees act as a bridge between the two, demonstrating what one animal likes or another's favorite toy.
This does not mean that customers demand that café animals always be friendly and willing to play or be touch. In fact, customers appreciate the fact that animals will express their feelings (even dislike of a person) freely; this freedom to act on one's impulses is part of the attraction of animals to café customers. Many customers happily spent much of their time in a café "being with" the animal, taking pictures or relaxing near animals, without needing to touch an animal that does not enjoy it. This also means that when customers have become regular enough visitors that they are recognized and greeted by a café cat, they know they have truly earned the friendship of the animal. When a cat deigns to curl up next to a regular customer it has become familiar with, the honesty of that expression of affection is more meaningful.
Conclusion
Each individual animal café differs somewhat in atmosphere, what type of experience they are trying to provide and what type of customer they are trying to attract. Of course, cat cafés are going to attract people who care about cats while rabbit cafés appeal to rabbit lovers, but customers differ in whether or not they want to be soothed or energized, whether they want to be left by themselves or have opportunities to chat with other customers or employees; they differ in terms of what kind of iyashi experience they want to have. What each customer desires in terms of iyashi differs based on their particular stresses. However, what all animal cafés share is an intrinsic social component. This does not mean that all customers come to hang out and chat with friends or people they've just met, though many do, but that the experience of being in an animal café is about being around others. Those others may not be human, but they all offer a way for individuals to be connected to creatures, human and animal, outside of themselves, and to not feel as isolated as they might alone at home. The animal café serves a variety of functions, different for each customer who enters, but always about inhabiting a world with others but separate from the day-to-day social stresses of the outside world. These businesses have become popular in Japan because of the need for such a haven from everyday life, and their spreading popularity globally is an indication that those stresses are in no way limited to Japan.
The idea of cat cafés has caught the imagination of many people beyond Japan and cat cafés have now opened in dozens of countries globally, from China to Austria to the United States [Figure 10], but no one knows how long they will continue to be popular in Japan. However, while the cat café boom is over, there are still a significant number of cat, and other animal, cafés in Japan, with new businesses opening every year. Tokyo's first cat cafés, which opened more than a decade ago, have started to introduce new kittens to replace retiring cat workers, and these kittens represent café owners' belief that their businesses will be around for years to come.
Suggested Reading
Allison, Anne. Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Borovoy, Amy. "Japan as Mirror: Neoliberalism's Promise and Costs." In Ethnographies of Neoliberalism, edited by Carol J. Greenhouse, 60-74. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
Galbraith, Patrick. "Maid Cafés: The Affect of Fictional Characters in Akihabara, Japan." Asian Anthropology 12, no. 2 (2013): 104-25.
Matsui, Takeshi. "The Social Construction of Consumer Needs: A Case Analysis of the "Healing Boom" in Japan." NA - Advances in Consumer Research 36 (2009): 581-81.
Ozawa-de Silva, Chikako. "Healing and Spirituality: The New Face of Naikan." In Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan: The Japanese Introspection Practice of Naikan. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Plourde, Lorraine. "Cat Cafés, Affective Labor, and the Healing Boom in Japan." Japanese Studies (2014).
Roquet, Paul. "Ambient Literature and the Aethestics of Calm: Mood Regulation in Contemporary Japanese Fiction." The Journal of Japanese Studies 35, no. 1, Winter 2009 (2009): 87-111.
Takeyama, Akiko. Staged Seduction: Selling Dreams in a Tokyo Host Club. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. | <urn:uuid:ab5e5a8f-4783-4cfa-85b9-5e4ae253cc6d> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://www.japanpitt.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/japanese_animal_cafes_and_the_iyashi_boom.pdf | 2023-01-31T22:26:09+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499891.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20230131222253-20230201012253-00470.warc.gz | 867,232,374 | 5,931 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.981421 | eng_Latn | 0.999023 | [
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Geography – The National Requirements
The legal coverage requirements for Geography are as follows:
| | EYFS | | Key Stage 1 Programme of Study | | Key Stage 2 Programme of Study |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Children at the expected level of development will: MATHEMATICS 1. Understand position through words alone. For example, “The bag is under the table,” – with no pointing. 2. Describe a familiar route. 3. Discuss routes and locations, using words like ‘in front of’ and ‘behind’. UNDERSTANDING the WORLD (F1) 4. Use all their senses in hands-on exploration of natural materials 5. Begin to understand the need to respect and care for the natural environment and all living things. 6. Know that there are different countries in the work and talk about the differences they have experienced or seen in photos. UNDERSTANDING the WORLD (F2) 7. Draw information from a simple map. 8. Recognise some similarities and differences between life in this country and life in other countries. 9. Explore the natural world around them. 10. Recognise some environments that are different to the one in which they live. PEOPLE, CULTURE and COMMUNITIES 11. To talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members. 12. To know about similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities and traditions THE NATURAL WORLD 13. Know some similarities and differences between the natural world around them and contrasting environments, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class. 14. Understand some important processes and changes in the natural world around them, including the seasons | | LOCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 1. Name and locate the world’s seven continents and five oceans 2. name, locate and identify characteristics of the four countries and capital cities of the United Kingdom and its surrounding seas PLACE KNOWLEDGE 3. Understand geographical similarities and differences through studying the human and physical geography of a small area of the United Kingdom, and of a small area in a contrasting non-European country HUMAN and PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 4. Identify seasonal and daily weather patterns in the United Kingdom and the location of hot and cold areas of the world in relation to the Equator and the North and South Poles 5. Use basic geographical vocabulary to refer to: - key physical features, including: beach, cliff, coast, forest, hill, mountain, sea, ocean, river, soil, valley, vegetation, season and weather -key human features, including: city, town, village, factory, farm, house, office, port, harbour and shop GEOGRAPGHICAL SKILLS and FIELDWORK 6. Use world maps, atlases and globes to identify the United Kingdom and its countries, as well as the countries, continents and oceans studied at this key stage 7. Use simple compass directions (North, South, East and West) and locational and directional language [for example, near and far; left and right], to describe the location of features and routes on a map 8. Use aerial photographs and plan perspectives to recognise landmarks and basic human and physical features; devise a simple map; and use and construct basic symbols in a key 9. Use simple fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of their school and its grounds and the key human and physical features of its surrounding environment. | | LOCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 1. Locate the world’s countries, using maps to focus on Europe (including the location of Russia) and North and South America, concentrating on their environmental regions, key physical and human characteristics, countries, and major cities 2. name and locate counties and cities of the United Kingdom, geographical regions and their identifying human and physical characteristics, key topographical features (including hills, mountains, coasts and rivers), and land-use patterns; and understand how some of these aspects have changed over time 3. identify the position and significance of latitude, longitude, Equator, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, Arctic and Antarctic Circle, the Prime/Greenwich Meridian and time zones (including day and night) PLACE KNOWLEDGE 4. Understand geographical similarities and differences through the study of human and physical geography of a region of the United Kingdom, a region in a European country, and a region within North or South America HUMAN and PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY Describe and understand key aspects of: 5. Physical geography, including: climate zones, biomes and vegetation belts, rivers, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes, and the water cycle 6. human geography, including: types of settlement and land use, economic activity including trade links, and the distribution of natural resources including energy, food, minerals and water GEOGRAPHICAL SKILLS and FIELDWORK 7. Use maps, atlases, globes and digital/computer mapping to locate countries and describe features studied 8. Use the eight points of a compass, four and six-figure grid references, symbols and key (including the use of Ordnance Survey maps) to build their knowledge of the United Kingdom and the wider world 9. Use fieldwork to observe, measure, record and present the human and physical features in the local area using a range of methods, including sketch maps, plans and graphs, and digital technologies. | |
Teaching Units at Mayflower Primary School
| | Taught through PBL | | | Taught as a Discrete Unit | | | Assemblies and Curriculum Days | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Year | | Autumn Term | | | Spring Term | | Summer Term |
| | EYFS* | | | | | | | |
| Year 1 | Year 1 | | | | | | | How does where we live differ from other places? |
| | | | | | | | | Countries and cities of the UK, human and physical |
| | | | | | | | | features, contrasting localities, aerial maps |
| | | | European Day of Languages, all stories placed in a | | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, |
| | | | geographical context, map work, and revision of the UK | | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) |
| Year 2 | | | | | | Can Past Disasters bring Positive Change? | | |
| | | | | | | Compass directions (linked to the Computing | | Human and physical features (local walk), identify |
| | | | | | | Curriculum), using aerial photographs of London | | continents and oceans, use atlases to locate countries |
| | | | European Day of Languages, all stories placed in a | | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, |
| | | | geographical context, map work, and revision of the UK | | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) |
| Year 3 | | | How New was the Stone Age | | | How has Evington Changed since 1888? | | |
| | | Geography of the Stone Age, and associated map work | Geography of the Stone Age, and associated map work | | | Map work (UK) – regions, countries and cities | | |
| | | | | | | Compare a region in France, human geography, | | |
| | | | | | | settlements and land use, including fieldwork | | |
| | | | European Day of Languages, all stories placed in a | | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, |
| | | | geographical context, map work, and revision of the UK | | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) |
| Year 4 | | | | | What can we do to Save our Rainforests? | What can we do to Save our Rainforests? | | Where do our Favourite Foods and Products come |
| | | | | | | | | from? |
| | | | | | | Describe and understand key aspects of physical | | |
| | | | | | | geography including climate zones, biomes, and | | |
| | | | | | | vegetation belts | | |
| | | | European Day of Languages, all stories placed in a | | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, |
| | | | geographical context, map work, and revision of the UK | | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) |
| Year 5 | | How did Life Change for Children in WW2? | How did Life Change for Children in WW2? | | | | | How does Climate Change affect People and |
| | | | | | | | | Communities? |
| | | | OS maps to consolidate symbols and keys, comparing | | Position, latitude and longitude, Northern and Southern hemispheres, and how the seasons are affected | | | Weather and climate in the Northern and Southern |
| | | | maps of Leicester pre-war with present day, aerial | | | | | hemispheres, Google Earth, atlases to determine the 7 |
| | | | photographs to show impact of bombing | | | | | summits of Uttarakhand, human geography of Leicester |
| | | | European Day of Languages, all stories placed in a | | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, |
| | | | geographical context, map work, and revision of the UK | | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) |
| Year 6 | | | | | | Why do people settle in Leicester? | | Did Early Islamic Civilisation Invent it all? |
| | | | Using maps and atlases, locate countries and describe | | Looking at Human and Physical features of the local area | Looking at Human and Physical features of the local | | Where is Baghdad and how did it compare to Britain at |
| | | | key features, using the 8-points of the compass, 4- and | | | area | | the time? |
| | | | 6- figure grid references, symbols and keys | | | | | Economic activity including trade links. |
| | | | European Day of Languages, all stories placed in a | | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, | | All stories placed in a geographical context, map work, |
| | | | geographical context, map work, and revision of the UK | | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) | | locating countries around the world (see termly plan) |
Geography Curriculum – EYFS and Programmes of Study Coverage
This page provides a summary of how the EYFS and the National Curriculum Programmes of Study for Geography have been covered through the teaching units previously disclosed (see page 2). It can also serve as a useful planning aid, ensuring that staff can plan progressive learning experiences for our children, with due regard for their prior learning, which can also be accessed via the Digital Archive. From the planned units, it can be concluded that the curriculum has been covered in full, with a breadth of study in key Stage 2 that embraces all aspects of the Programmes of Study.
| | Year | | Autumn Term | | Spring Term |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | EYFS | | | | |
| Year 1 | Year 1 | | Assembly provision and EDOL will help to ensure | | Assembly provision and curriculum days will help |
| | | | that countries and seas around UK can be | | to ensure that countries and seas around UK can |
| | | | named, as well as key countries of the EU (1, 2 | | be named, as well as key countries of the EU (1, |
| | | | and 6) | | 2 and 6) |
| Year 2 | | | Assembly provision and EDOL will help to ensure | Using compass points to describe direction (7) and aerial photographs of London (8) | Using compass points to describe direction (7) |
| | | | that countries and seas around UK can be | | and aerial photographs of London (8) |
| | | | named, as well as key countries of the EU (1, 2 | | |
| | | | and 6) | | |
| Year 3 | | | Map-work associated with the Stone Age (2 and | | Focused map-work within the UK and France (2, |
| | | | 9) | | 4, 6, and 9) |
| | Year 4 | | Revision of UK and world geography (7) | | An expanded study of the rainforests (5) |
| Year 5 | Year 5 | 8-points of the compass and OS work, and comparative analyses (8) | 8-points of the compass and OS work, and | More detailed positional analysis based on prior learning (3) | More detailed positional analysis based on prior |
| | | | comparative analyses (8) | | learning (3) |
| Year 6 | | Revision of Year 5 work, including the use of 6- figure grid references (8) | | | Placing prior learning into context with focus on |
| | | | | | physical and human features locally with elements |
| | | | | | of fieldwork (5, 6, and 9) |
Geography Curriculum – Sequencing
| | Year | Autumn Term | Spring Term | Summer Term |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EYFS | EYFS | As children begin to settle into their respective bases, | As the seasons turn, noticing changes that spring brings | Noticing the changes that summer brings, deeper focus |
| | | practitioners will help them to be aware of the physical | from winter, new life, natural life, how the outdoor | on family and extended family, thinking about how the |
| | | organisation, including positional language, how we care | environment has changed, exploration of the area | children have changed since they were babies to where |
| | | for our outdoor spaces, what the environment has to | around the school including the local church post-box, | they are now, contrasting our school to others through |
| | | offer, and how autumn brings change to our school. | and other key features e.g. library etc. | our international links |
| Year 1 | | The European Day of Languages will provide a focal | Despite there being no specific teaching focus in class, | Now that the children have been exposed to maps, |
| | | point for our exploration of UK and world geography, as | the children will continue to gain exposure to maps | atlases, and other cultural considerations, they are now |
| | | well as some of the customs and practices that are | through weekly assemblies, resources that have been | ready for direct teaching in respect of countries of the |
| | | important in the countries we ‘visit.’ This will also be | made available in class, studying the local and national | United Kingdom, our cities, and physical features that |
| | | augmented by classroom and wider school display. | news, and other associated activities. | create both similarity and difference |
| Year 2 | | Revision units will continue through curriculum days, | Given their prior experiences, the children are now | The fieldwork component for the Key Stage 1 curriculum |
| | | assemblies, and other related activities, including the | ready for a technical study of how compass directions | will be covered during the summer term of Year 2, and |
| | | children awareness of the locality in which they live, as | can be used to describe direction, and how simple maps | will also help children to experience on a first-hand |
| | | well as some of the key features that can be found in | can be used to navigate from one area to another. This | basis, much of the teaching that has been offered in |
| | | Evington and beyond. | can also include maps of the school building. | Year 1 and Year 2. |
| Year 3 | | In common with much of the curriculum work | Building on knowledge that has been taught in Key | Although not a focus of the PBL, opportunities will be |
| | | undertaken at school, linking geography to the ongoing | Stage 1, the children are now ready to compare their | taken to look at the modern and historical geography of |
| | | PBL is now a realistic goal. The Stone Age will provide | local understanding with a contrasting locality to the | Egypt, the influence of the River Nile, change over time, |
| | | a context for this study, including the extent of spread, | United Kingdom. In time, this will also be extended to a | and key human and physical features. Many of our |
| | | and changes that have been experienced over time. | similar region in North or South America. Fieldwork will | children have direct experience of Egypt, which will |
| | | Local links can also be developed with fieldwork at | also be offered through links with the PBL, supported | serve to enrich studies, and enhance understanding of |
| | | Creswell Crags. | through English Heritage. | the influence of the Ancient Egyptians. |
| Year 4 | | Given the strong History focus at the end of Year 3, | The rainforest provides a very good basis for the | The PBL has a strong geographical focus because the |
| | | transition will be augmented by a similar study of the | teaching of the physical geography, including climate | children will be looking at the issues associated with |
| | | influence of the Romans, origin, the spread of empire, | zones, biomes and vegetation belts. Our study of the | world trade, and how this impacts on climate change. |
| | | key physical and human features, and legacy in 2022. | SDGs will further enrich this unit of work, empowering | The prior learning will empower the children to fully |
| | | Legacy will be an important component, given the focus | children to show a concern and care for the natural | engage with aspects of study, including our core focus |
| | | of the PBL. | resources available to us. | on the UN SDGs. |
| Year 5 | | Given the focus of the PBL, children will be able to use | A focused unit that sits outside of the progression of | Having revised this aspect of learning in Year 4 and the |
| | | first-hand sources of evidence to consider some of the | PBLs, but that will give the technical knowledge to be | spring term of Year 5, the children will be able to go |
| | | human features, with maps informing their | able to identify the 2 hemispheres. Given work that | much deeper in their learning, with a focused unit on |
| | | understanding of the impact over time. Symbols and | was undertaken in Year 4, the children will be able to | Uttarakhand. Again, climate will be a recurring theme, |
| | | keys will also be revised within this unit, building on prior | use and apply their understanding of climate change, | and some of the key physical features. Our CCGL |
| | | learning. | and common features. | cluster will enrich this unit of study (Nepal Cluster). |
| Year 6 | | On the basis of prior learning, the children will be able to | In this detailed unit, with clear links to the ongoing PBL, | Given the amount of learning that has already taken |
| | | deepen their understanding of maps, including 6-figure | the children will be able to use all of their prior learning | place since the beginning of Key Stage 2, this PBL will |
| | | grid references, and how features can be accurately | to enhance their understanding of the local community | give the children a good opportunity to use and apply |
| | | positioned via this system. Revising compass points will | in which they live. Although the primary emphasis will | what they know. The additional strand relates to |
| | | also help to ensure that elements of direction can also | be on the physical and human features, motivations will | economic activity, which is a core component within |
| | | be brought into consideration. Links with Literacy will | also be looked at, which will imbue a wider sense of | human geography. Given the character of the school, |
| | | also be established, given the book focus of Kensuke’s | pride and allegiance to the City in which they live. | there will be many opportunities to enrich this unit, and |
| | | Kingdom. Finally, symbols and keys will ne thoroughly | Elements of map-work will also be included, and given | this will help the children to conclude their studies of the |
| | | revised, and assessed against end of Key Stage | the children’s local knowledge, they will be able to | geography curriculum successfully, prior to their |
| | | expectations, which will augment transition to Key Stage | identify the key features, and more clearly understand | transition to Key Stage 3. Assessment opportunities will |
| | | 3 at the end of the year. | the abstraction represented by the map. | also be embedded. | | <urn:uuid:2b2ae46e-434d-474d-961e-1cc6679c0451> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://www.mayflower.leicester.sch.uk/uploads/1/3/7/6/137634188/curriculum_presentation_-_geography.pdf | 2023-01-31T22:35:44+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499891.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20230131222253-20230201012253-00469.warc.gz | 890,780,920 | 5,064 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.989881 | eng_Latn | 0.99561 | [
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Central Alberta Co-op Ltd.
Soil Health – The Framework
It is virtually impossible to pick up any agricultural publication and not find at least one article talking about soil health. But really what is soil health? One of the more recent definitions states; "Soil health is the capacity of soil to function as a living system, to sustain plant and animal productivity, maintain or enhance water and air quality, and promote plant and animal health." This is a very concise explanation, but we need tangible benefits, reasons and strategies that can be used on the farm to improve soil health. Leaders in the industry believe that moving towards a more focused and sustainable approach to soil health could make growers more resilient going forward.
So now let us consider what good soil health looks like and why a grower might implement practices that improve soil health. Good soil health will:
* Improve water infiltration due to improved soil structure, increased soil organic matter and reduced compaction of a soil.
* Increase water holding capacity meaning a soil can retain more water (like a sponge) for crop production especially during periods of low rainfall.
* Create diverse communities of soil organisms which have been shown to help alleviate plant disease, insect and weed pests as well as forming symbiotic associations with plant roots.
* Store soil organic carbon which is the main source of energy for micro-organism populations as well as removing that carbon from the atmosphere (greenhouse gases).
Now with an understanding of what soil health is and why a grower would consider improving their soil's health, how could they go about doing that.
1. Minimize soil disturbance –Less microbial disruption and more capacity for those microbes to promote crop development. Less disturbance also improves overall physical, chemical, and biological properties of a soil.
2. Keep soils covered with plant residue (known as soil armor) -This stabilizes soil temperature and reduces erosion creating favorable conditions for soil micro-organisms who in turn recycle nutrients, combat pests, and create pores for plant roots to develop.
3. Maintain living roots year-round (even in cold climates) -Roots provide food sources for beneficial bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi. Roots help overall soil structure and are a key ingredient for increasing soil organic matter.
4. Increase plant diversity -Studies show that soils are more productive when there are various plants/ roots leading to an assortment of microbes. This is accomplished through a diverse rotation and, or multi species cover crops.
5. Incorporate livestock where possible – This could be any type of off-season grazing, forage crops or even applying manure. These options improve nutrient cycling and stimulate nitrogen fixing bacteria activities.
Sounds interesting, right? But, will improving soil health make more money, save more money, gain access to more markets, reduce workload, improve quality etc. etc. The answer is highly likely! Improving soil health should capture some of these benefits in the long-term even though there may be short-term setbacks when learning a new management strategy. Change is difficult and can be risky thus requiring a thorough understanding of the soil health strategy with a strong commitment to the final goal. Studies have shown that as soil health improves, the soil's capacity to produce increases while potentially requiring the same or less inputs. More and more end users are putting emphasis on "how" was it produced instead of "how much" does it cost with sustainable and environmentally friendly practices leading the list. And finally, reduced tillage and potentially fewer pesticide applications mean less man and machine hours at the end of the season.
As stewards of the land, farmers want to leave things better than they found them. What better way to create a legacy than investing some time and focus on building soil health?
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These tasks will help you prepare a piece of writing to enter the Orwell Youth Prize, on the theme for 2023
'Who's in Control?'
LESSON 1 – Behind the scenes: Orwell the Dishwasher!
George Orwell: 'plongeur' – and
Being poor in Paris gave the writer the chance to think carefully about the role of each worker in a restaurant – and how much control each one has. Orwell wrote this:
observer.
The waiter's … work gives him the mentality, not of a workman, but of a snob. He lives perpetually in sight of rich people, stands at their tables, listens to their conversation, sucks up to them with smiles and discreet little jokes. He has the pleasure of spending money by proxy. Moreover, there is always the chance that he may become rich himself, for, though most waiters die poor, they have long runs of luck occasionally. At some cafés on the Grand Boulevard there is so much money to be made that the waiters actually pay the patron for their employment. The result is that between constantly seeing money, and hoping to get it, the waiter comes to identify himself to some extent with his employers. He will take pains to serve a meal in style, because he feels that he is participating in the meal himself. (Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell, Ch. 14)
Now it's your turn to find out Who's in Control – in today's workplace.
1) Research:
Choice 1: Think of a place of work near you – perhaps where a family member or family friend works. Interview at least one employee (ideally two, at different levels in the organisation) with the same questions. You could do this via email, or in person if they're in your own family.
1. How is your organisation led and managed? How would you describe the style of management? How much autonomy do you and other employees have?
2. How are the interests of employees represented to management? Trade union? Professional association? Formal or informal procedures?
3. How do employees express their preferences and grievances?
4. How are conflicts resolved?
Choice 2: Alternatively, research an organisation online and find out the answers to the same questions.
Choice 3: Workplace tour or visit
* Please note: any visits must be arranged with permission of parent or guardian – and following the safeguarding procedures of your school/college and the workplace
Many employers are happy to host students as visitors or for work experience. Careers Guidance personnel at school are often eager to help.
At the visit, observe all you can about who is in control and in what ways. For instance, do managers regularly check workers or give frequent instructions? Do workers seem to be autonomous, making most decisions themselves? And so on. You can use the four questions above as guidance.
2) Share: bring the findings from your research to the class, ready to summarise them and share one or two things you found interesting.
3) Think: always the trickiest part! What have you learnt about 'who's in control' in the workplace? Do certain jobs or roles give more or less control? Is control always a matter of negotiation or is it sometimes enforced? What makes some people feel less in control than others?
4) Write: persuasive letter or neutral report:
Imagine you are an unhappy employee. Write a letter to your employer or manager, to persuade them to give employees more control. Explain how the changes would make you happier and more productive workers.
OR
Imagine you are a consultant, hired to help a company understand its employees better. Write a neutral report which describes how much or how little control the workers feel they have. Then recommend specific changes to help workers feel more in control and become more productive. | <urn:uuid:cae7eefd-19ce-4bd7-af98-db4b9616ead3> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://www.orwellfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Lesson-1-behind-the-scenes-PDF.pdf | 2023-02-01T00:05:06+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499891.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20230131222253-20230201012253-00466.warc.gz | 925,223,299 | 769 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999189 | eng_Latn | 0.999297 | [
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Vocabulary For Kids Police
Are you looking for a fun way to improve your child's handwriting? *Parents and teachers agree that workbooks help to give children the skills that they need to be successful at school. *The Mermaid Jobs & Occupations Handwriting book is a fun way to improve your child's handwriting and help them learn about the different types of jobs that (mer)people and have. 68 Blank lined handwriting practice pages Learn Vocabulary Dotted Traceable text 34 Mermaids and Mermen to Color With Beautiful illustrations by Elena Brighittini, featuring Mermaids and Mermen going about their day today jobs and occupations. ?Jobs include: Actor, Astronaut, Babysitter, Carpenter, Barista, Cartoonist, Chef, Dentist, Doctor, Game designer, Electrician, Farmer, Firefighter, Gardener, Hairdresser, Inventor, Librarian, Mechanic, Manager, Model, Musician, Nurse, Student, Internet Celebrity, Photographer, Plumber, Police Officer, Scientist, Seamstress, Singer, Teacher, Veterinarian, Waitress and Zookeeper Each job has a separate vocabulary page with a list of traceable vocabulary words. Simple format to encourage children to work independently. Suitable for Preschoolers, Kindergarteners and Mermaid lovers of all ages Looking for an educational, non-digital way to keep the kids entertained? Visit the Little Learner Workbook author page to see the rest of our collection.
These books expose children to vocabulary (parts of the body, toys, colors, animals, etc.), phrases, and simple sentences that relate to their daily experiences and activities (dressing, eating, playing, etc.). Level I books are appropriate for children, especially preschool age children, who attempt to imitate signed or spoken words and express themselves through single gestures or words.
A SWAT team is called in when criminal emergencies become too dangerous for regular police officers. Although most SWAT team members are police officers, they are trained in the use of powerful firearms and military tactics, and only used in very high-risk situations. The skills, equipment, training, and courage of these individuals are all discussed in this book, as well as how SWAT teams originated and have become one of our biggest defenses against terrorist attacks. This book will allow students to determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to supporting ideas; provide an objective summary of the text.
Eat. Sleep. Enforce Police
Undercover Police
180 Wonderful Words with Quick and Creative Activities That Expand Kids' Vocabularies, Enrich Writing, and Boost Test Scores
Mermaid Jobs and Occupations - Handwriting Practice for Kids Age 4-7 Proud Son of a Police Officer
This edition is fully updated to give students the support they need to master more than 7,000 words and phrases in American English. Following the popular in Use format, new language is taught in manageable two-page units with presentation of vocabulary on the left-hand page and innovative practice activities on the right. Suitable for self-study or classroom use, the books are informed by the Cambridge International Corpus to ensure vocabulary taught Page 1/7
is useful, up-to-date, and presented in a natural context.
"Police Officers are here to help, they take an oath to protect and serve you... they protect kids like you, your family, friends, and everyone else in the community too!" The perfect book to teach and reinforce positive police/community relationships and show children that police officers are their friends, and there to help them when they need. Learn about how Police Officers do great and kind things each and every day for their communities, and that they are also more than just the job they do. Police Officers take an oath to serve and protect their community, and they will always be there to look out for you! Visit us at www.PoliceKidsBooks.com for more titles! Describes the daily life of a police officer using simple text and photographs.
Read All about It!
Grammar Police
Police K-9 Unit
I Love My Police Officer
Something Happened in Our Town
Kids Word Search Puzzles Police and Detective Themes
The extraordinary, groundbreaking novel from Laurie Halse Anderson, with more than 2.5 million copies sold! The first ten lies they tell you in high school. "Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself. Speak was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.
In Police Officer Patrick, kids read about his day -to-day duties--directing traffic, helping when there's an accident, and more. Safety rules plus object labels on every page enrich vocabulary and encourage parent-child discussion. Each page includes narration and sound effects. Special Bonus Feature: a parent child activity guide.
The children at Napville Elementary School always ignore Officer Buckle's safety tips, until a police dog named Gloria accompanies him when he gives his safety speeches.
Police Officers
Let's Meet a Police Officer
The Book of the Lion
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Real World Word Search
Police Slang
Amazing Machines: Patrolling Police Cars
Includes words and phrases from United States history and from such current subcultures as technology and the Internet, the media, recent immigrants, and fashion.
A brand-new storybook in the perennially popular Amazing Machines series from Tony Mitton and Ant Parker - over 1 million copies sold to date! Patrol the streets with some cool animal drivers in this cheerful picture book all about police cars. Lively wordplay, vibrant art, plus a visual dictionary, make this title a must-have for bookshelves everywhere. This book is filled with humorous rhyming text by the award-winning poet Tony Mitton, which perfectly complements Ant Parker's bold, bright illustrations. A picture dictionary identifying police car parts builds vocabulary and makes learning about police cars exciting and fun.
Audisee eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and text highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! Let's Meet a Police Officer! Do you want to learn more about police cars? Police dogs? Other tools the police use? Then it's your lucky day! Officer Gabby is a police officer. She knows how to keep people safe. She shows a group of kids how she does her job. Three cheers for police officers! "Cartoon-style animated drawings in bright colors introduce diverse characters who will capture children's interest." —School Library Journal "In each book introducing a community-benefiting career, schoolchildren meet one adult to learn about his or her job; information includes the training required to become a firefighter, doctor, etc., daily routines, and primary responsibilities. The content is inclusive and up-to-date but delivered though vapid stories. Peppy computer-generated cartoons are amateur." - The Horn Book Guide Free downloadable series teaching guide available.
Vocabulary in Use High Intermediate Student's Book with Answers
Police Officers Are Our Friends
Proud Police Mom
Cops and Kids
A Day in the Life of a Police Officer
The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English
Hangman Puzzles takes the famous two-player game and turns it into a one-player trivia game of deduction. On his run, he finds a dead man hanging from a tree. The book features 100 puzzles split into two sections with varying levels of difficulty. Each game has a category clue and a unique way of solving the puzzle.From simple vocabulary to extended quotes, you'll be guessing to solve a variety of words and phrases. Each puzzle comes with a category and a visual hint to help you solve the puzzle. Scratch off the letter's clue to find what positions in
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the phrase the letter falls on. If you guess wrong, you add another segment to the poor man's body. Guess wrong five times and you lose. If you run out of guesses, an answer key in the back will help fill in the blanks.
Questions & answers ; vocabulary ; multiple choice ; true or false.
In Police Officers, emergent readers will learn how police officers keep communities safe. Vibrant, full-color photos and carefully leveled text will engage young readers as they discover what police officers do on the job.
Hug the Police
34 Illustrations to Color - 200+ Vocabulary Words to Trace - 60+ Practice Pages
The Police Are Part Of Our Community
Hangman Puzzles - Mini Game - Clever Kids - 110 Lined Pages - 6 X 9 in - 15.24 X 22.86 Cm - Single Player - Funny Great Gift TIME For Kids Nonfiction Readers: Challenging Teacher's Guide Fuck the Police
Surveillance, privacy and public trust form a burgeoning presence within debates surrounding technological developments, particularly in the current 'war on terror' environment. Many issues are invoked in monitoring everyday activities of the population. This is a timely and detailed study of CCTV.
Helps students learn essential words and word parts that are needed for general reading comprehension in high school, college, and the everyday work world.
A fun word search with puzzles designed to bring police slang out of the station house and into your home. Can you find the hidden words? This puzzle book includes: HOURS OF ENTERTAINMENT: Find hundreds of words both familiar and new - from alley court, buzzing the badge, or contempt of cop through to mirandized, thin blue line, or you're nicked; there's plenty to find inside this book. NEVER GET STUCK AGAIN: Can't find a word? Ready to tear your hair out? Not a problem, every puzzle comes with a full solution! THE PERFECT GIFT: Some people are hard to buy for. Find the perfect match for their interests with the right word search. FUN FOR ADULTS & KIDS: Puzzles are full of words to entertain kids and adults alike! TRAVEL SIZE: Five inches by eight means that this book can travel with you wherever you go! Font sizes are ideal for the average reader - no squinting required! NOT TOO EASY, NOT TOO HARD: A medium-level challenge, hunting words which go up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards, and even diagonally. Enough to keep anyone entertained, from beginners to pros. EXCELLENT QUALITY: Puzzles are printed on high quality white paper. Feel free to use pencils, pens, or highlighters without worrying about bleed-through. KEEPS THE MIND
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HEALTHY: Word searches are a proven method for mental health. Keep your kids' minds flexible, help your friends and relatives combat Alzheimer's and Dementia.
Police Officer Jones
A Safety Book for Children
Real Men Marry Police Officers
Police Officer Exam Preparation Book and Practice Test Questions
Police Officer Exam Study Guide 2020-2021
Building Vocabulary Skills
A National Book Award nominee! Returning to the same era of his "In a Dark Wood", Cadnum's majestic novel--part mystery, part history--chronicles the pageantry and brutality of the Crusades under King Richard. Edmund, a young apprentice, is awaiting punishment as a counterfeiter when a knight intervenes on his behalf--and compels Edmund to join Richard Lionheart's forces in the Holy Land. There, amidst the savagery of the twelfth-century Crusades, Edmund learns both courage and compassion, and discovers that cruelty is sometimes considered the will of Heaven. Set in medieval England and the wartorn shores of the Middle East, Cadnum's tale weaves together a rich tapestry of storms at sea, the brutality of hand-to-hand combat, and one of the classic horse and lance battles in recorded history--the Battle of Arsuf.
Kids Word Search Puzzles Police and Detective Themes78 Large Print Puzzles - Law Enforcement Themed Word Search Puzzle Book for Children Ages 7 and Up - Expand Kids Vocabulary - Makes a Great Gift for Children Who Love Action and Adventure
This is an important work that addresses a very timely issue: police stress and its treatment. Its authors both hold doctoral degrees in education and teach at the university level. In addition, both gentlemen have extensive experience treating police stress. The book begins by tracing the history of the treatment (or lack thereof) of police stress, specifically its treatment by peers. It describes the obstacles peer counselors face and their tactics for addressing them. It goes into detail regarding the types of stress that officers face on the job, and the ways in which these stresses make this work so very different from other jobs. It also provides statistics regarding the high rates of divorce, suicide, illness, and premature death that police are subject to. In these ways, it provides a strong argument supporting the establishment of stress-reduction programs for police. The book also makes it clear that peers are uniquely qualified to do this counseling work; they have "been there" and can gain the respect and trust more easily than an outsider. It recounts instances of successful peer counseling, and it recounts instances of sad failure. The book artfully Page 5/7
presents the results of extensive surveys and interviews of the people involved in a large peer counseling program—from both the peers and those they counsel. Perhaps most important, departments and organizations wishing to emulate the work that is profiled will find this to be an invaluable guide.
Mounted Police SWAT Words to Say Out Loud A Child's Story about Racial Injustice Fisher Price Little People Police Officer Patrick Police Lives Matter
After discussing the police shooting of a local Black man with their families, Emma and Josh know how to treat a new student who looks and speaks differently than his classmates.
This book provides a look into the job of a police officer, showing the how men and women of all genders and races can be police officers, and how the police keep us safe while being a positive part of our communities. The book is a tool to help parents provide their children with fair look of what police officers are enlisted to do in our communities. This book can be part of the "talk" that parents are having with their children at an earlier age than in the past and an effort to provide an understanding of what good policing is designed to be. It is crucial that our youth avoid entering police interactions with fear and misinformation, leading to misunderstanding and anger. During the current time of Police Reform, it is important that our children recognize that there are good and bad police officers, and that the bad police officers are being identified and removed from policing. As a learning tool for the youngest of readers, there is also a Vocabulary List in the back of the book to assist parents in explaining some of the vocabulary and policing terms that are used in the book, to their children.
As ex-drug baron Bazza Mackenzie runs for parliament, ex-cop Paul Winter knows that his time with Bazza must, at whatever cost, come to an end, in the 12th in this highly acclaimed series of police procedurals DI Faraday is gone and the police are left reeling. As his boss attempts to limit any possible PR damage, his one time shadow on the force, ex-DC Winter, is ever more concerned that he may have made the biggest mistake of his life throwing in his lot with the city's drug baron, Bazza McKenzie—especially as Bazza becomes increasingly desperate and violent as his empire begins to crumble under the weight of austere times. And, in the person of DS Jummy Suttle there's a new will at the heart of the embattled police force to nail Bazza once and for all, the one man Faraday was always desperate to bring to justice. Graham Hurley's trademark authenticity has been allied to an ever increasing sense of drama as he charts the lives of his vivid characters and paints a stunning portrait of a city and a country at war with itself, a war which throws the police into the front line.
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TREATING POLICE STRESS
Copyright : lsamp.coas.howard.edu
Speak
78 Large Print Puzzles - Law Enforcement Themed Word Search Puzzle Book for Children Ages 7 and Up - Expand Kids Vocabulary - Makes a Great Gift for Children Who Love Action and Adventure
The Work and the Words of Peer Counselors.
Officer Buckle and Gloria
KIDS WORD SEARCH PUZZLES POLICE AND DETECTIVE THEMES - LAW ENFORCEMENT THEMDE WORD SEARCH PUZZLE BOOK FOR CHILDREN AGES 7 AND UP - EXPAND KIDS VOCABULARY - MAKES A GREAT GIFT FOR CHILDREN WHO LOVE ACTION AND ADVENTURE - EASY TO READ LARGE PRINT AND ONE LARGE PUZZLE PER PAGE ( 78 PUZZLES ) 98 PAGES 8.5 X 11 INCHES.
Privacy, Surveillance and Public Trust
This book is for children around the world and any one, young or old in need of WORDS TO SAY OUT LOUD when they are in need of HELP. WORDS TO SAY OUT LOUD - is a safety book for children. It is a HELPFUL BOOK OF WORDS TO SAY OUT LOUD WHEN YOU NEED HELP. These WORDS will HELP keep you SAFE.
Police
Vocabulary Word of the Day
Special Weapons and Tactics
Policing Juvenile Delinquency in Urban America, 1890-1940
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Freeway project unearths a time when camels roamed San Diego
July 20 2020, by John Wilkens, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Paleontologists will tell you that field work is a lot like fishing. Nothing happens for long periods of time. But you can't catch anything if you don't have your line in the water.
In San Diego, they've had their line in the water. Again.
At a freeway construction project in Otay Mesa, paleontologists have found fossils that may open a window into what this part of the world looked like about 15 million years ago.
It was a place where early camels roamed, and prehistoric hoofed mammals, and probably a carnivore or two. And where volcanoes erupted.
"The finds suggest that we have a whole new chapter of our history that we get to explore," said Thomas Demere, curator of paleontology at San Diego Natural History Museum and director of its PaleoServices team, which located the fossils while monitoring the freeway project.
The discovery in June joins a roster of significant unearthings during construction projects in San Diego County—mastodons, dire wolves, sea cows, giant sloths, armored dinosaurs—that are painting a fuller picture of the region and how it's changed over time.
Demere said the geologic record dating to 65 million years ago is fairly complete for this area, but there's a gap in the period from 15 million to 28 million years ago. The new fossils, he said, will help fill it. He suspects they are on the younger end of that range.
He's hoping some new species will emerge as researchers spend the coming months taking a closer look at what's been pulled from the construction site.
The items may wind up on display at the museum, where officials are considering an update to "Fossil Mysteries," a march-through-time exhibit that shows visitors what the region looked like when it got 60 inches of rain every year. When a 34-foot shark swam in a bay. When
saber-toothed cats roamed near Cuyamaca Peak.
"We never would have seen them if they weren't building that road, and now we get the chance to preserve them in perpetuity," Demere said. "People living today, or hundreds of years from now, can come and look at this material and learn what they can from it. Or just marvel that these animals lived here."
The construction site is part of a project connecting state Route 11 to a new Otay Mesa East Port of Entry on the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a joint venture between Caltrans and the San Diego Association of Governments.
Under environmental law, projects in areas where fossils might be are required to have paleontologists on site. San Diego County, because of its layers of sedimentary rock, is a rich area for the remains.
The monitoring work is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of excitement—moments that come when they notice an unusual smear of color in the dirt being scraped by a bulldozer. Or when they see a change in the texture of the soil.
"These people have been fishing for years," Demere said. "They know what they're looking for." A flag gets raised, the area is marked off, and the scientists dig deeper.
A certain amount of tension surrounds the whole process. A fossil find means highway work has to stop in that area, at least for a while, and time is money in the construction world. But Demere said some workers don't see it as a bother. They'll point out fossils when they see them, or welcome the opportunity to learn about what's been found.
This time, what was spotted was in a bowl-shaped area, possibly an
ancient pond. They uncovered plant fossils, including reeds, which suggest water was nearby.
How did animals wind up in a pond? Maybe they fell in and drowned. Maybe they died somewhere along a stream that fed the pond and were washed down.
Once found, the fossils got wrapped in plaster jackets, 3 feet in diameter, so they could be transported back to the museum. When researchers are able to get back in the lab they will remove the surrounding sediment to get a better idea of what is there.
"We found a concentration of vertebrate fossils, limb bones and jaws from a variety of mammals," Demere said. "We found the upper teeth of an early horse, the first horse fossils found here that are older than 3 million years."
They also unearthed remains of a camel—not a new discovery for this region, but always interesting. A lot of people are surprised to learn camels originated in North America before moving to Europe and Asia. They became extinct here about 11,000 years ago.
And they found "volcanic bombs," semi-molten rocks thrown into the sky during eruptions and shaped by airflow while in flight.
None of that figures to stir as much controversy as an earlier dig of mastodon bones that Demere and colleague Richard Cerutti worked from a site discovered during the expansion of state Route 54 near National City in the early 1990s.
A quarter-century of research led a team of scientists to conclude that marks and fractures on the bones were consistent with human activity—a jaw-dropping hypothesis because it placed early man on this
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continent some 100,000 years earlier than previously believed.
Other researchers disputed the conclusion, but that's part of what makes paleontology fascinating, Demere said. It's why he still gets excited about new finds, even after 41 years at the museum.
"When you are sifting through layers and layers of our physical and biological history, you come to understand how dynamic the planet is and has been for 3{ billion years," he said. "You get this very real sense that we are part of this bigger story of the history of life here."
©2020 The San Diego Union-Tribune Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Citation: Freeway project unearths a time when camels roamed San Diego (2020, July 20) retrieved 31 January 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2020-07-freeway-unearths-camels-roamedsan.html
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English and Literacy Home Learning Read and Respond Units Year 4 - Week 7
| | Week Seven | | | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Year 4 | Day 1 | | Day 2 | | Day 3 | | Day 4 | Day 5 |
| Focus theme: Inspirational People! This week you will be exploring people who inspire us. Delve into facts and find out why these people are inspirational. You’ll also have a chance to think about who inspires you too and make your own ‘Inspiration Book’. When following links, parents should monitor that children are remaining on that page only and are keeping safe online. | Focus theme: | Read and enjoy opening | Today you are going to research facts about Martin Luther King. Read the information from the following websites and watch Martin Luther King’s final speech: 'I've been to the mountaintop.' https://www.ducksters. com/biography/martin_ luther_king_jr.php (Note: contains American spelling). https://www.natgeokid s.com/uk/discover/histo ry/general- history/martin-luther- king-facts/ https://www.youtube.c om/watch?v=e49VEpW g61M Vocabulary that you might need to explore today – equality, boycott, tolerant, entitled, segregation. | Today you are going to | Today you are going to research facts about Greta Thunberg. Read the information from the following websites and watch Greta Thunberg's speech to world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit. https://www.natgeokid s.com/uk/kids- club/cool-kids/general- kids-club/greta- thunberg-facts/ https://kids.britannica.c om/kids/article/Greta- Thunberg/632033 https://www.youtube.c om/watch?v=xVlRompc 1yE Vocabulary to explore: activist. Create a mini biography for Greta. (A biography is the story of | Today you are going to | Today you are going to think about who inspires you. Maybe Captain Tom has inspired you. (Captain Tom https://www.bbc.co.uk/ newsround/52673271) Maybe a family member inspires you, or maybe a member of your local community. Perhaps you have more than one person that inspires you. Think about who inspires you and write a paragraph about who they are and why they inspire you. After researching the inspirational people this week, how do you feel? Have you been inspired? Write another paragraph to explain | Today you are going to | My Inspiration Book. |
| | Inspirational People! | extracts from the | | research facts about | | research facts about | | think about who | Today you are going to |
| | | following books in a | | Martin Luther King. | | Greta Thunberg. | | inspires you. | take all the information |
| | This week you will be | series by Kate Pankhurst | | Read the information | | Read the information | | | that you have researched |
| | exploring people who | about several | | from the following | | from the following | | Maybe Captain Tom has | this week and present it |
| | inspire us. Delve into | inspirational women. | | websites and watch | | websites and watch | | inspired you. | in a book of inspiration. |
| | facts and find out why | (You will need to | | Martin Luther King’s | | Greta Thunberg's | | (Captain Tom | |
| | these people are | become a member of | | final speech: 'I've been | | speech to world leaders | | https://www.bbc.co.uk/ | You can present your |
| | inspirational. | LoveReading4Kids. | | to the mountaintop.' | | at the UN Climate | | newsround/52673271) | book in any way you like. |
| | You’ll also have a | Membership is free). | | | | Action Summit. | | | You may choose to make |
| | chance to think about | | | https://www.ducksters. | | | | Maybe a family member | a squash book. If so, use |
| | who inspires you too | As you read, note down | | com/biography/martin_ | | https://www.natgeokid | | inspires you, or maybe a | the video below. Once |
| | and make your own | unfamiliar vocabulary | | luther_king_jr.php | | s.com/uk/kids- | | member of your local | you have made it, write |
| | ‘Inspiration Book’. | and use a | | (Note: contains | | club/cool-kids/general- | | community. Perhaps | your facts into the |
| | | dictionary/thesaurus, | | American spelling). | | kids-club/greta- | | you have more than | different triangular and |
| | When following links, | e.g. | | | | thunberg-facts/ | | one person that inspires | square sections inside. |
| | parents should monitor | https://www.wordhipp | | https://www.natgeokid | | | | you. | Include information you |
| | that children are | o.com/ to find out what | | s.com/uk/discover/histo | | https://kids.britannica.c | | | have read about this |
| | remaining on that page | new words mean. | | ry/general- | | om/kids/article/Greta- | | Think about who | week - some of the |
| | only and are keeping | | | history/martin-luther- | | Thunberg/632033 | | inspires you and write a | inspirational women you |
| | | Fantastically Great | | | | | | | |
| | safe online. | | | king-facts/ | | | | paragraph about who | read about on Monday, |
| | | Women Who Saved the | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | https://www.youtube.c | | they are and why they | Martin Luther King, Greta |
| | | Planet | | | | | | | |
| | | | | https://www.youtube.c | | om/watch?v=xVlRompc | | inspire you. | Thunberg, Captain Tom |
| | | https://www.lovereadin | | | | | | | |
| | | | | om/watch?v=e49VEpW | | 1yE | | | and the person/people |
| | | g4kids.co.uk/book/1687 | | | | | | | |
| | | | | g61M | | | | After researching the | who inspire you. You can |
| | | 1/Fantastically-Great- | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | Vocabulary to explore: | | inspirational people this | add some |
| | | Women-Who-Saved- | | | | | | | |
| | | | | Vocabulary that you | | activist. | | week, how do you feel? | pictures/drawings too. |
| | | the-Planet-by-Kate- | | | | | | | |
| | | | | might need to explore | | | | Have you been | |
| | | Pankhurst.html | | | | | | | |
| | | | | today – equality, | | Create a mini biography | | inspired? | Squash book |
| | | | | boycott, tolerant, | | for Greta. (A biography | | Write another | https://www.youtube.co |
| | | | | entitled, segregation. | | is the story of | | paragraph to explain | m/watch?v=TmQWqkBdj |
Fantastically Great Women Who Worked Wonders https://www.lovereadin g4kids.co.uk/book/1660 0/Fantastically-GreatWomen-Who-WorkedWonders-Gift-Editionby-Kate-Pankhurst.html
Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World https://www.lovereadin g4kids.co.uk/book/1351 5/Fantastically-GreatWomen-Who-Changedthe-World-by-KatePankhurst.html
Select two or three of your favourite texts read today. Create some charts showing key information and/or mind maps.
For example, you could scan the texts to find important dates and create a chart such as the one below.
Use a dictionary, e.g. https://www.wordhipp o.com/ to help you.
Today you are going to write a quiz for your family and friends based on the life of Martin Luther King. You may choose to write using a similar format to The Chase or Who Wants to be a Millionaire, where contestants are provided with a question and three or four possible answers, but only one is correct!
Try to include some of the new vocabulary you have learnt in your questions.
Test your quiz out on your family at home or your friends on an online video platform with you playing the role of quizmaster!
someone's life). Scan the texts to find important dates and numbers, e.g. date of birth, key ages or dates when things have happened in her life.
Read sections carefully (close reading) to find out the following:
* What is she so passionate about?
* Where was Great Thunberg born?
* Why is she inspirational?
Rather than copying chunks of the text from the websites, try to put the information into your own words. If you find any unfamiliar vocabulary, note that down and use a dictionary, e.g. https://www.wordhipp o.com/ to find the definition.
who and what has inspired you this week and how this might influence your actions in the future, e.g. After reading about Greta Thunberg, it has made me consider how everybody's actions affect the environment. From now on, I will consider how I can help my family to be more environmentally friendly.
6c
(Keep pausing the video to make it easier for you to follow. If you can, ask an adult to help you. Instead of using double sided sticky tape you can use glue).
See below for a picture of what your squash book might look like.
| Name | | Eugenie | Try to include some Year 4 sentence types, e.g. fronted adverbials for where or when. A few years later, … From New York, … Once you have finished, check your work back through. Make sure that you have used correct punctuation. If you have used a fronted adverbial, make sure you have put a comma after it. |
|---|---|---|---|
| | | Clark | |
| | 1930s | | |
| | 1950s | | |
| | 1973 | | |
| | 2014 | | |
| Fascinating Facts | Fascinating Facts | | |
| Alternatively, you could | | | |
| create a mind map, | | | |
| noting all the key | | | |
| information you have | | | |
| read about one of the | | | |
| inspirational people. | | | |
Additional Activities:
If you have enjoyed finding out about these inspirational people, you might want to have a look at others.
Florence Nightingale - https://kids.kiddle.co/Florence_Nightingale
Nelson Mandela -https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/history/general-history/nelson-mandela/
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Agriscience Fundamentals And Applications 4th Edition Answer
Sustainable increase in agricultural production while keeping the environmental quality, agro-ecosystem function and biodiversity is a real challenge in current agricultural practices. Application of PGPR can help in meeting the expected demand for increasing agricultural productivity to feed the world's booming population. Global concern over the demerits of chemicals in agriculture has diverted the attention of researchers towards sustainable agriculture by utilizing the potential of Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR). Use of PGPR as biofertilizers, biopesticides, soil, and plant health managers has gained considerable agricultural and commercial significance. The book Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR): Prospects for Sustainable Agriculture has contributions in the form of book chapter from 25 eminent global researchers, that discusses about the PGPRs and their role in growth promotion of various crop plants, suppression of wide range of phytopathogens, their formulation, effect of various factors on growth and performance of PGPR, assessment of diversity of PGPR through microsatellites and role of PGPR in mitigating biotic and abiotic stress.This book will be helpful for students, teachers, researchers, and entrepreneurs involved in PGPR and allied fields. The book will be highly useful to researchers, teachers, students, entrepreneurs, and policymakers.
Agriscience Fundamentals and Applications, 5th edition is an introductory applied science textbook intended for use in high school agriculture programs. The text provides a broad-spectrum overview of the agricultural industry and the industry-based sciences, including basic principles of science as they apply to plants, animals, soils and foods. Agriscience Fundamentals and Applications, 5th edition contents includes chapters that detail the information age, natural resources, integrated pest management, plant sciences (including botany, crops, & ornamentals), animal science, food science, and communication and management. Each chapter includes visual aids such as color photos, sketches, diagrams, and tables. Agriscience Fundamentals and Applications, 5th edition, also identifies chapter objectives, evaluation materials, suggested class activities, key terms, and internet key words to guide student's in-depth study. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. Abstract: This book presents contemporary information on mutagenesis in plants and its applications in plant breeding and research. The topics are classified into sections focusing on the concepts, historical development and genetic basis of plant mutation breeding (chapters 1-6); mutagens and induced mutagenesis (chapters 7-13); mutation induction and mutant development (chapters 14-23); mutation breeding (chapters 24-34); or mutations in functional genomics (chapters 35-41). This book is an essential reference for those who are conducting research on mutagenesis as an approach to improving or modifying a trait, or achieving basic understanding of a pathway for a trait --.
In the context of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries.
Agriscience Fundamentals and Applications Updated, Precision Exams Edition
Introduction to Plant Science
Agriscience Fundamentals and Applications
Microwave Discharges
Agricultural Mechanics : Fundamentals & Applications, fifth edition, has been substantially revised and expanded to cover the latest information in the field of agricultural mechanics. It was written for students and individuals who wish to learn basic mechanical skills. It grew out of the need for an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand, and highly illustrated text on modern agricultural mechanics for high school and postsecondary programs. This book addresses the specific needs of students enrolled in agriscience, production agriculture, ornamental horticulture, agribusiness, agricultural mechanics, and natural resources programs. The text starts with very basic and general information, such as career opportunities, and then provides instruction on basic mechanical skills and applications. - Preface. In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of the agricultural industry and industry-based sciences, the Precision Exams Edition of Burton's AGRISCIENCE: FUNDAMENTALS AND APPLICATIONS, Sixth Edition, aligns to Precision Exams' Agricultural Science exam. The text covers essential topics such as agriscience in the information age, natural resources, integrated pest management, plant science, animal science, food science, and communication and management, giving students with a solid foundation in the basic principles and practices of agriscience. The Precision Exams Edition also features new information related to the National FFA Organization and selecting and planning an SAE; how math, science, and social studies relate to agriscience; current technologies used in the industry; career opportunities; and advice for professional success and business ownership. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook
Agricultural Technical Systems and Mechanics helps prepare individuals for the agricultural mechanics work environment through the application of problem-solving skills and a basic knowledge of agricultural machinery and equipment repair and maintenance. This well-illustrated textbook also presents the proper use of hand tools and power equipment, the construction and maintenance of agricultural structures and fencing, the operation of plumbing and irrigation systems, and the principles behind mechanical, electrical, solar, and wind power. The interactive DVD included with the book features learning tools that reinforce and enhance content knowledge and skills. Agricultural Technical Systems and Mechanics addresses the primary knowledge and skills required for success in the Power, Structural and Technical Systems (PST) career pathway as identified in the National Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (AFNR) Career Cluster Standards. Technical knowledge and skills as well as communication, teamwork, and leadership skills enable individuals to participate in the FFA® agricultural mechanics career development event (CDE).
version.
Fundamentals & Applications
Discover the exciting world of agriculture through EXPLORING AGRISCIENCE, Fifth Edition, the resource that continues to inspire and inform middle school students across the nation. The new, updated Fifth Edition of this respected text combines a strong grounding in fundamentals with information on the latest advances in the field and current opportunities in agricultural education programs, such as the national FFA organization. This comprehensive guide will open your eyes to all agriscience has to offer, including soil, plants, and row crops; floriculture, forest science, and landscaping; livestock, dairy, and poultry industries; aquaculture and companion animals; hand tools; small engine operation; and more. In addition, information on topics such as organic agriculture, biofuels, and biotechnology—and an all-new chapter on urban agriculture—introduces you to the trends and developments shaping the industry today, as well as promising initiatives for the future. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Role of Biotechnology in Agriculture
An agriscience textbook exploring such topics as environmental technology, plant sciences, integrated pest management, interior and exterior plantscape,
A Sustainable Approach to Green Science and Technology, Second Edition animal sciences, food science, and agribusiness.
biotechnology, and more.
Introduces students to the industry of agriculture, plant structures, raising crops, livestock, poultry, forest science, environmental protection,
This is the lab manual to accompany "Agriscience: Fundamentals and Applications."
Agricultural Technical Systems and Mechanics
This trusted text provides a thorough introduction to agricultural mechanics, covering fundamental mechanical and engineering theory, common tools and materials, and a wide range of practical applications. Units explore essential topics such as career opportunities, shop orientation and procedures, woodworking and metal working, tool fitting, project planning, cutting and welding, paints and paint application, power mechanics, electrical wiring, plumbing, hydraulics, concrete and masonry, and agricultural structures. Safety is also emphasized strongly throughout the text, both within each chapter and in a dedicated unit. To engage today's students and make even complicated principles easier to apply, the text features abundant, full-color images, illustrations, charts, and data tables, as well as detailed drawings of over 50 complete project plans. More than 300 of these visuals have been added or updated for the Seventh Edition, which also includes updates to reflect the latest innovations in materials, machinery, and methods, providing a current and comprehensive guide to help students plan and execute agricultural projects effectively. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Plant Mutation Breeding and Biotechnology
Industrial and Technological Applications of Power Electronics Systems
Science of Animal Agriculture
In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of the agricultural industry and industry-based sciences, the Precision Exams Edition of Burton's AGRISCIENCE: FUNDAMENTALS AND APPLICATIONS, Sixth Edition, aligns to Precision Exams' Agricultural Science exam. The text covers essential topics such as agriscience in the information age, natural resources, integrated pest management, plant science, animal science, food science, and communication and management, giving students with a solid foundation in the basic principles and practices of agriscience. The Precision Exams Edition also features new information related to the National FFA Organization and selecting and planning an SAE; how math, science, and social studies relate to agriscience; current technologies used in the industry; career opportunities; and advice for professional success and business ownership.
Proceedings of a NATO ARW held in Vimeiro, Portugal, May 11-15, 1992
Comprehensive, yet easy to understand, AGRISCIENCE FUNDAMENTALS AND APPLICATIONS, Sixth Edition provides readers with an overview of the agricultural industry and the industry-based sciences. With coverage of topics such as the information age, natural resources, integrated pest management, plant sciences (including botany, crops, & ornamentals), animal science, food science, and communication and management, this introductory applied science book ensures that readers will develop a solid foundation in the basic principles and practices of agriscience. In addition to the extensive learning tools found in each chapter, the sixth edition now includes updated visual aids, glossary, and science and agricultural profiles. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
This revised text provides a comprehensive introduction to the fascinating world of plant science. From the basic requirements for plant growth, to genetic engineering and biotechnology, this easy- to- understand book is ideal for the high school level agriscience curriculum or college freshman level plant science course. Students will learn about the origins of cultivated plants, structure and anatomy, photosynthesis, respiration, propagation, production of major agronomic crops, and more.
The Farmer's Handbook
Animal Husbandry and Nutrition
A Textbook of Agronomy
A Problem Solving Approach
The basic required to analyze research data of Agricultural field experiments and sample surveys are covered. Each definition is given after a relevant discussion. Any one who has completed school finals can easily follow the topics. Examples & illustrations are furnished at appropriate places for easy understanding At the end of each chapter exercises & appli-cation of computer software are also added.
"'Published by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, with funding from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture."
"Agricultural Mechanics: Fundamentals and Applications" is a newly expanded fourth edition text, providing the latest information in the diversified field of agricultural mechanics with instruction on basic mechanical skills and applications, as well as career opportunities in the profession. Topics covered range from tool identification and maintenance, small engines, electricity, and electronics, to construction and masonry. Readers will find the content presented in a logical, easy to follow format, allowing them to comprehend concepts for use in practical settings. Vividly portrayed illustrations complement this work with the most current full color photos, charts, and diagrams, reinforcing the book's fluid movement between the principles and application of modern agricultural mechanics. The comprehensive appendices also include extensive reference material, making "Agricultural Mechanics: Fundamentals and Applications" an invaluable industry resource guide.
"In addition to assessing existing conditions and knowledge, the IAASTD uses a simple set of model projections to look at the future, based on knowledge from past events and existing trends such as population growth, rural/urban food and poverty dynamics, loss of agricultural land, water availability, and climate change effects. This set of volumes comprises the findings of the IAASTD. It consists of a Global Report, a brief Synthesis Report, and 5 subglobal reports. Taken as a whole, the IAASTD reports are an indispensable reference for anyone working in the field of agriculture and rural development, whether at the level of basic research, policy, or practice."--BOOK JACKET.
Lab Manual Answer Key
Global Report
A Biological Approach
Exploring Agriscience
Beyond providing a thorough introduction to the field of agricultural mechanics, the Precision Exams Edition of this trusted text aligns to Precision Exams' Agricultural Systems Technology, Level 1 exam. The text covers fundamental mechanical and engineering theory, common tools and materials, and practical applications including shop orientation and procedures, woodworking and metalworking, tool fitting, project planning, cutting and welding, paints and paint application, power mechanics, electrical wiring, plumbing, hydraulics, concrete and masonry, and agricultural structures. Safety is also emphasized strongly throughout the text, and a dedicated unit introduces students to diverse career opportunities. The current edition also features new information on the National FFA Organization and SAEs, first aid, and engine powered equipment, as well as new activities and lab exercises.
The Special Issue "Industrial and Technological Applications of Power Electronics Systems" focuses on: - new strategies of control for electric machines, including sensorless control and fault diagnosis; - existing and emerging industrial applications of GaN and SiC-based converters; - modern methods for electromagnetic compatibility. The book covers topics such as control systems, fault diagnosis, converters, inverters, and electromagnetic interference in power electronics systems. The Special Issue includes 19 scientific papers by industry experts and worldwide professors in the area of electrical engineering.
Covering a broad range of topics, from plant and animal reproduction to genetic engineering, this is the ideal handbook for anyone involved in crop production.
Computer applications are gaining importance in recent times with the growth and development of electronic, communication, information technology and computer industry. The book is designed in such a way that it not only serves as comprehensive knowledge base, but also helps the readers in understanding the fundamentals of computer applications. The book also explains data analysis using Ms-Excel which gives opportunity to the students to analyze their statistical research data. Starting with an introductory chapter, the book goes to cover all topics of computers as well as use of statistical tools in solving the problems. First chapter gives an introduction to computers. This chapter provides an overview of anatomy, generation and classification of computers. In addition to this, it discusses about the personal computers, booting and viruses. Second chapter entitled "Operating Systems" describes about disk operating system and its commands. Chapter three discusses Working in Windows. Chapter four describes word processing and creating, saving, opening and editing a document. Besides formatting options has also been described in chapter four. Introduction to Ms-Excel and creating, editing and saving a document are explained in chapter five and chapter six. Chapter seven describes Mathematical Functions and their use in excel. The various features of data analysis using excel which deals with data analysis tools, tests, graphs and ANOVA along with illustrated examples are described in chapter eight and nine. The tenth chapter introduces the reader with Ms-Access database. Chapter number eleven gives the basic concepts of internet. Chapter number twelve discusses with pictures flow chart and algorithm.
Forthcoming Books
Forensic Science: Fundamentals & Investigations
Environmental Science and Technology
Fundamentals and Applications
Formally established by the EPA nearly 15 years ago, the concept of green chemistry is beginning to come of age. Although several books cover green chemistry and chemical engineering, none of them transfer green principles to science and technology in general and their impact on the future. Defining industrial ecology, Environmental Science and Technology: A Sustainable Approach to Green Science and Technology provides a general overview of green science and technology and their essential role in ensuring environmental sustainability. Written by a leading expert, the book provides the essential background for understanding green science and technology and how they relate to sustainability. In addition to the hydrosphere, atmosphere, geosphere, and biosphere traditionally covered in environmental science books, this book is unique in recognizing the anthrosphere as a distinct sphere of the environment. The author explains how the anthrosphere can be designed and operated in a manner that does not degrade environmental quality and, in most favorable circumstances, may even enhance it. With the current emphasis shifting from end-of-pipe solutions to pollution prevention and control of resource consumption, green principles are increasingly moving into the mainstream. This book provides the foundation not only for understanding green science and technology, but also for taking its application to the next level.
This best-selling full-color book is the third edition of "Agriscience: Fundamentals & Applications," a modern agriscience book that will introduce the "millennium generation" to careers in agriculture. This revision expands on the vision of the original text in the areas of agricultural education and integrating science and technology components with the principles of agriculture. It carefully takes readers through all major science areas - from plant, animal sciences, to food science, and environmental technology, and adds many new applications for practical usage and understanding of the material. Scientific discoveries and internet icons enhance the full-color text, giving students of today the foundation they need to be the agriculturists, scientists, and innovators of tomorrow.
AGRICULTURAL MECHANICS: FUNDAMENTALS AND APPLICATION, International Edition is designed to provide high school students with the latest concepts and applications in a wide variety of agricultural mechanics.
Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR): Prospects for Sustainable Agriculture
Presents a modern approach to the agricultural industry, including horticulture, forestry, natural resources, and the environment, with emphasis on the basics of plant and animal production.
Agriscience Explorations
Building Soils for Better Crops
Animal Production and Management
The third edition of this book exposes the reader to a wide array of engineering principles and their application to agriculture. It presents an array of more or less independent topics to facilitate daily assessments or quizzes, and aims to enhance the students' problem solving ability. Each chapter contains objectives, worked examples and sample problems are included at the end of each chapter. This book was first published in the late 60's by AVI. It remains relevant for post secondary classes in Agricultural Engineering Technology and Agricultural Mechanics, and secondary agriculture teachers.
With today's popular television programs about criminal justice and crime scene investigation and the surge of detective movies and books, students often have a passion for exploring forensic science. Now you can guide that excitement into a profitable learning experience with the help of the innovative, new FORENSIC SCIENCE: FUNDAMENTALS AND INVESTIGATIONS, 2E. This dynamic, visually powerful text has been carefully crafted to ensure solid scientific content and an approach that delivers precisely what you need for your high school course. Now an established best-seller, FORENSIC SCIENCE: FUNDAMENTALS AND INVESTIGATIONS, 2E offers a truly experiential approach that engages students in active learning and emphasizes the application of integrated science in your course. Student materials combine math, chemistry, biology, physics, and earth science with content aligned to the National Science Education Standards, clearly identified by icons. This book balances extensive scientific concepts with hands-on classroom and lab activities, readings, intriguing case studies, and chapter-opening scenarios. The book's exclusive Gale Forensic Science eCollectionTM database provides instant access to hundreds of journals and Internet resources that spark the interest of today's high school students. The new edition includes one new chapter on entomology and new capstone projects that integrate the concepts learned throughout the text. Comprehensive, time-saving teacher support and lab activities deliver exactly what you need to ensure that students receive a solid, integrated science education that keeps readers at all learning levels enthused about science. FORENSIC SCIENCE: FUNDAMENTALS AND INVESTIGATIONS, 2E sets the standard in high school forensic science . . . case closed. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. Agriscience Fundamentals and ApplicationsCengage Learning
This book focuses on the animal husbandry and nutrition based on significant evaluations by the authors of the chapters. Many chapters
Copyright : africanamericanstudies.coas.howard.edu contain general overviews on animal husbandry and nutrition from different countries. Also, the sections created shed light on futuristic overlook with improvements for animal husbandry and feeding sector. Details about rearing and feeding different animal races are also covered herein. It is hoped that this book will serve as a source of knowledge and information on animal husbandry and nutrition sector. Introduction to Agricultural Engineering Technology
Fundamentals Of Agricultural Statistics
Agricultural Mechanics: Fundamentals and Applications Updated, Precision Exams Edition
Agricultural Mechanics
Cover crops slow erosion, improve soil, smother weeds, enhance nutrient and moisture availability, help control many pests and bring a host of other benefits to your farm. At the same time, they can reduce costs, increase profits and even create new sources of income. You¿ll reap dividends on your cover crop investments for years, since their benefits accumulate over the long term. This book will help you find which ones are right for you. Captures farmer and other research results from the past ten years. The authors verified the info. from the 2nd ed., added new results and updated farmer profiles and research data, and added 2 chap. Includes maps and charts, detailed narratives about individual cover crop species, and chap. about aspects of cover cropping. Computers In Agriculture
Agriscience: Fundamentals and Applications
A Convenient Reference Book for All Persons Interested in General Farming, Fruit Culture, Truck Farming, Market Gardening,
Livestock Production, Bee Keeping, Dairying, Etc
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Positive Youth Development
Rachel Hart-Brinson | 4-H Program Educator
Planning with a partner to begin a Juntos/Bilingual 4-H club. This effort will expand access to the 4-H program to the Latino community in Eau Claire and the surrounding area.
Planning for the Eau Claire County 4-H Awards Banquet. This event is to honor and celebrate the accomplishments of youth and adult volunteers in the 4-H program.
Connecting 4-H youth volunteers with L.E. Phillips Library to have a 4-H partner in the library's Science Fair day. Through this partnership, the 4-H volunteers will build partnerships with the library and provide two hands-on science activities, practicing public speaking and leadership and showcasing 4-H opportunities.
A service project and learning opportunity where multiple 4-H clubs picked fruit and vegetables at local farms, and then donated the produce to local food pantries in partnership with Picking Promises. This effort was designed to help 4-H members learn about the growing process and to perform acts of generosity by donating fresh food to food banks.
Planning for a six-week hybrid "Discover 4-H" program for youth in grades K-4, in collaboration with three county 4-H educators. The goal of this program is to expose new audiences to 4-H.
Horticulture
Margaret Murphy | Horticulture Educator
An online course for consumer audiences (home gardeners) where participants learned fundamental knowledge of Wisconsin horticulture with an emphasis in Integrated Pest Management. The goal is to increase decisionmaking and problem-solving skills, improve the productivity / health of gardens and landscapes, and to implement gardening practices that have a positive impact on the environment.
Four sections of an online Lab component for the 2022 Foundations in Gardening (previously Foundations in Horticulture) course where participants from the Foundations in Gardening course (home gardeners) apply what they learned from the Foundations course through interactive activities. This effort is designed to encourage best horticultural practices in Wisconsin for better environmental outcomes.
Planning for a statewide webinar series for consumer horticulture audiences where participants will learn about pollinator decline, climate change and environmental contamination and pollution. The goal of this effort is to increase adoption of horticultural practices addressing identified environmental issues in Wisconsin.
Agriculture
Lyssa Seefeldt | Agriculture Educator
Planning for the VITAL (Valuably Informed Thriving Agricultural Leader) program for women in agriculture. The goal of this program is to enhance farm women's access to research-based dairy and livestock management practices to improve adoption of best management practices, which will improve farm economic viability, through productivity and efficiency.
A training for emergency response personnel in the Planning for Emergency Livestock Transportation Response (PELTR) course where they learned how to respond to incidents involving livestock trailers. The purpose of this program is to increase the effectiveness of emergency planning and the preparedness of local emergency response agencies.
A statewide webinar series (Badger Dairy Insight) for dairy farmers, employees, industry representatives promoting the latest research-based information.
Planning for the bi-annual 2023 Midwest Manure Summit conference for farmers, consultants, engineers, and other agribusiness industry professionals. The goal of this effort is to show innovation, research, and solutions in handling dairy manure in an environmentally and financially sustainable manner so that farmers can protect the environment and community.
Planning for webinar series on Robotics for farmers, managers, business owners, bankers, consultants, and other agri-business professionals. The goal of this effort is to teach individuals the latest, unbiased, university-based research on emerging automation technologies, so that they can improve farm efficiencies and increase farm business viability.
Health & Well-Being
Sandy Tarter | FoodWIse Coordinator Joy Weisner | FoodWise Educator Jael Wolf | FoodWIse Educator
A 3-lesson series for 4K preschoolers at Eau Claire Head Start to learn about fruits, vegetables and keeping their bodies healthy. This effort helps children to learn to use their senses with colors, music, and tastes to explore foods and physical activity.
A 3-lesson series for 4-K/ Head Start youth at Menomonie and Colfax Head Start Centers to learn about fruits, vegetables and keeping their bodies healthy. These lessons use color, music, and exploration of the senses to teach children that healthy eating and physical activity are FUN!
A 6-week nutrition education series to 1st graders at River Heights Elementary where students engage in language arts while learning about eating healthy, being active, and the importance of handwashing. This effort will help students explore, identify, and taste new fruits and vegetables.
A 6-week nutrition education series to 3rd graders at River Heights Elementary to learn about the importance of eating five food groups, breakfast, and how to read a nutrition facts label. Following lessons, students chose a goal to try more fruits and vegetables at each meal.
A series of follow-up emails and phone calls to area partners to discuss FY23-24 agreements and collaborations with FoodWIse. This effort strengthens local relationships and ensures understanding between partners.
Human Development & Relationships
Yia Lor | Human Development & Relationships Educator
Planning for a parenting series for Latinx parents and caregivers in collaboration with a literacy community partner. This effort is designed to support family stability and resiliency.
Planning and development of digital parenting resources for parents/caregivers in collaboration with familyserving professionals. This effort is designed to support family stability and resiliency while increasing social emotional development in children.
Planning and development of parenting and early literacy programming to expand into laundromats serving small and rural communities. This effort is designed to support family stability, resiliency, and build community capacity.
A coaching program for families and individuals, where participants learn how to create financial goals and gain money management skills. The goal of this program is to enable participants to prepare for and take charge of household financial situations that occur due to changes in income or unforeseen hardships.
An article for parents of preschoolers where they learned what toddlers go through developmentally, how to build confidence and love, and stay connected to a rapidly growing and changing child. This effort is designed to support family stability and resiliency.
Community Development
Addison Vang | Community Development Educator
A community event held at a local grocery store for HMoob individuals where participants learned about Extension resources and upcoming programs, specifically around community development, families, and wellness. This effort is designed to support community development, family stability, and resiliency.
Basic grant proposal workshop for local government, businesses, and organization members and staff. The goal of this effort is for people to learn how to find, write and apply for grants so that they can carry out the activities of their organization, business, or government unit.
A community conversation with people from several counties and the Black as UR film-maker Michael Rice about gender, race, and sexuality. The program was hosted by the Center for Racial and Restorative Justice at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire and focused on ways to help people in the community feel valued and safe to be who they are without fear of violence or reprisal.
Planning for a basic grant proposal workshop for local government, businesses, and organization members and staff. The goal of this effort is for people to learn how to find and apply for grants, so that they can carry out the activities of their organization, business, or government unit.
Staff Highlights
Margaret Murphy | Horticulture Educator
firstname.lastname@example.org
I belong to a newly formed team consisting of several horticultureeducators that focuses on Expanding Outreach to Lower-income Households. A strategic priority of the horticulture program is to 'reach new audiences, especially lower-income households who may not own their dwelling; that regardless of the housing situation, opportunity exists to reach new and historically underrepresented audiences.' This team's goal is to generate ideas and strategies that we can use locally to expand outreach.
After planning, preparing and planting the pollinator habitat project at Lake Wissota State Park finished for the season. We added over 400 native plant seedlings and three new educational signs to the area. The goal of this effort is to increase pollinator habitat and raise awareness of the need for such habitat through demonstration and educational signage. Beginning in 2023, we will conduct programming and provide educational handouts for the public on pollinator habitat and the use and value of native rain gardens.
We have installed a little free library in the garden outside of the Eau Claire County Extension office. We plan to include books for kids/families, seasonal factsheets about gardening and, in the spring, offer some free seed packets. A huge thank you to the Eau Claire Area Master Gardener who built and donated the library plus the two Master Gardeners who installed it!
Lastly, for the next several months, I am participating in a community of practice program offered through the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development. This program, labeled 'Changing the
Narrative for Youth in the Outdoors' will explore ways and resources to ensure all youth can flourish in the outdoors. We meet virtually once a month. I am excited to dig into ways we can continue to grow and enhance our youth gardening programs to include a multifaceted approach that embraces nature / environment topics.
Lyssa Seefeldt | Agriculture Educator
email@example.com
October kicked off another cohort of the Planning for Emergency Livestock Transport Response (PELTR) for emergency responders that deal with livestock accidents on the road.
Our second dairy program e-newsletter went out after working out some of the hiccups from our first mailing. You can sign up to be on the dairy program e-newsletter mailing list to keep up to date what programming is being offered and new factsheets / articles that have been added to our dairy website.
I did some timely preparation with a colleague to help get information out to farmers that we had a Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) program update webinar scheduled for November 9. Our new Dairy Markets and Policy outreach specialist, Leonard Polzin, planned to touch on changes between the old Dairy Margin Protection program to the new DMC program and how to use the online decision tool to help make better decisions on what coverage is appropriate for their farm. This webinar program is a timely one as the DMC program (administered by the Farm Service Agency) sign-up period runs from October 17 - December 9.
Rachel Hart-Brinson | 4-H Educator
firstname.lastname@example.org
October 2-8 was National 4-H Week. Thanks to funding provided by Extension's Dean, 4-H launched a state-wide 4-H promotional campaign that week to promote joining 4-H. You may have seen or heard the ads on Spotify, Television, or Facebook. We have seen new families express interest in the program. I am looking forward to building up our base of volunteers and family participants.
I am working on building partnerships with other organizations in the community. We had 6 young people lead science activities at the LE Phillips Memorial Library's "Family Science Festival" on October 14. Teams of three led slime-making and a milk bubbles activity. (See photo.)
One of our clubs, Pleasant Hill GoGetters, in partnership with the Older Youth Council, planned, built, and staffed a haunted barn experience, "The Trail of Screams" the weekend before and weekend of October 31. This was both a fundraiser and a community service project. Attendees
got a reduced admission price for bringing non-perishable items to donate to Feed My People Food Bank. Over 2,600 pounds of food were collected and dropped off along with a $2,000 donation check. These hard-working young people (and adult volunteers) donated a LOT of time to give a great experience to over 4,700 people. Plus, they helped an integral community organization.
Plus, Eau Claire 4-H partnered with 4-H volunteer, Norm Joseph, and his non-profit, Picking Promises, to pick fruit and vegetables from local farms and donate them to Feed My People Foodbank and the Community Table. Eau Claire 4-H participated in 12 picking events and donated over 2600 pounds of produce! Thank you to Norm for working the local farms to make this possible. It was a great experience for people to pick produce together, meet local farmers, learn about growing produce in Wisconsin, and being generous.
Yia Lor | Human Development & Relationships email@example.com
'Tis programming season! Extension launched a digital parenting program called Raising Caring Kids with a few partners last month to get more resources out around social and emotional learning for children. The EC BRAIN Team is sharing these resources every Tuesday through the month of February. Check out their Facebook page here to follow along!
Speaking of the BRAIN Team… Please save the date! Extension along with many other partners will be hosting the 2023 BRAIN Conference on April 19th. Last year, participants shared that the conference was "enlightening" and that our team "once again…hit it out of the park." Don't miss this!
Did you know that Extension has a partnership with Volume One Magazine to share Parenting the Preschooler fact sheets? They have an estimated total print readership of 45,000 from the Chippewa Valley! Pick up the latest magazine or check out the fact sheet here.
November is a very full month of programs. Topics range from raising bilingual children and early literacy strategies to embracing family traditions and relational savoring. Follow our Extension EC Facebook as I'll occasionally share pictures of my programs!
Andy Heren | Administrative Specialist II
firstname.lastname@example.org
Preparations for the December County 4-H Awards Banquet are finished! So many accomplishments by our 4-H youth will be recognized that day. Makes you feel good about our future!
The process for attaining your Private Pesticide Application license has changed. Training manuals are now bought through DATCP, not at our office. Some in person classes will be offered in our area, so please watch our website for information.
I am in the process of learning a new block format for our Extension website.
Sandy Tarter | FoodWIse Nutrition Coordinator
Joy Weisner | FoodWIse Nutrition Educator
Jael M. Wolf | FoodWIse Nutrition Educator email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.org email@example.com
Sandy, Joy, and Jael attended the Webinar on Indigenous Food Sovereignty and Health with Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan on October 7. Dr. Jernigan explained part of her work on fostering long-term relationships with Indigenous communities that promote tribal sovereignty and build the capacity of Indigenous communities to improve health through food.
Joy and Jael started and finished their series of lessons with HeadStart Eau Claire, Menonomie and Colfax. They taught a series of 3 lessons of the Color Me Healthy curriculum to four HeadStart classrooms in Eau Claire, three classrooms in Menomonie, and one classroom in Colfax. All of these lessons provide hands-on and engaging activities, as well as tastes such as frozen mangoes and jicama.
Joy and Jael finished their lessons with first and third grade River Heights Menomonie. They taught a series of 6 lessons of the Serving Up MyPlate, Show Me Nutrition and Read for Health curricula to three first grades and three third graders. All these lessons provide hands-on and engaging activities, as well as tastes, such as spinach, red apples vs green apples, whole wheat crackers, and pea pods. First graders also receive a taste chart with information of the tastes in English and Spanish. First and third graders are exposed to the lesson's vocabulary in Spanish, too.
Jael attended the Extension New Educators Training, Cohort 11 in Madison November 25-26. The two-day-long New Educator Colleague
Onbroading prepares colleagues with core competencies for their educational role, engages staff in learning that models Extension's purpose, mission, and values, creates a learning community of colleagues across institutes, and creates awareness of resources to support educational delivery and how to access them.
Sandy and Jael are working with Eau Claire Health Communities Coalition in developing the Winter Wellness Challenge. More to come on this initiative to engage the community with a focus on seniors this winter.
FoodWIse staff joined colleagues in touring the HmongStop and Amerasian Food Plus stores. Thanks to Addison and Yia for coordinating this team outing. We learned a lot and tasted an array of amazing foods!
Sandy is working with all three counties' coalitions and UW-Stout students regarding promotion of Diabetes Prevention Month in Nov. Flyers will be distributed through Feed My People, local food pantries, and partners. Take the prediabetes risk assessment at PreventDiabetesWI.org
Kristi Peterson | Office Coordinator
firstname.lastname@example.org
With budget deliberations being extremely long in Eau Claire County, we are excited to be granted a small levy increase to aid in our success for programming and outreach. This will be helpful in achieving our goals in 2023.
I continue to post our events and share our achievements on Facebook We have some very busy educators! Follow and like our page to see updates and important dates.
.
Kristen Bruder | Area Extension Director - Eau Claire, Chippewa, and Dunn Counties email@example.com
The role of the AED is like that of the department head in the county. If you have ideas, thoughts, or want to chat about Extension please reach out! Below is a brief overview of the role of AEDs:
Extension fully invests in Area Extension Directors (AEDs) who oversee an area. These administrative positions are responsible for partnership management, staff development, financial management and program coordination.
Through the many interactions the AED has with county partners and local educators, the AED develops a solid understanding of the local
needs and county priorities and helps to align Extension educational programs to ensure the programs address county needs. Educators also communicate local needs to their programmatic Institutes which collectively identify opportunities to address statewide needs. Some additional primary duties of the AED include:
* Serve as the county Extension Department Budget Officer and Administrative Officer for the counties in their area. Specific signatory authority is agreed to by the county to allow the AED to serve in this capacity.
* They are the hiring authority of Extension staff and serve as the direct supervisor of Extension educators, conducting annual and mid-point performance evaluations with each Extension employee.
* They support educators and staff who direct Extension volunteers.
* They are responsible for the regular operations of county Extension offices and provide oversight to county staff within the office.
* They engage when volunteer behavior concerns expand beyond coaching or if dismissal of the volunteer is warranted.
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Cirrus clouds and climate
Cirrus are thin, wispy clouds that appear at high altitude and consist of ice crystals. At midlatitudes, clouds with base heights above about 6 km (20,000 ft) are designated as high clouds, a category that includes cirrus (Ci), cirrostratus (Cs), and cirrocumulus (Cc). Cirrus clouds are globally distributed at all latitudes over land or sea at any season of the year. They undergo continuous changes in area coverage, thickness, texture, and position. The most striking cirriform cloud features are produced by weather disturbances in midlatitudes. In the tropics, cirrus clouds are related to outflows from tower cumulus associated with the convective activity over the oceans. The global cirrus cover has been estimated to be about 20–25%, but recent analysis using the satellite infrared channels at the 15-micrometer carbon dioxide (CO2) band has shown that their occurrence is more than 70% over the tropics.
Cirrus composition. Cirrus clouds usually reside in the upper troposphere, where temperatures are generally colder than −20 to −30 ◦ C (−4 to −22 ◦ F). Because of their high location, direct observation of the composition and structure of cirrus clouds is difficult and requires a high-flying aircraft platform. In the 1980s, comprehensive information about cirrus composition became available because of the development of several airborne instruments to sample their particle-size distribution with optical imaging probes using a laser beam, high-resolution microphotography, and replicators, which preserve cloud particles in chemical solutions.
Ice crystal growth has been the subject of continuous laboratory, field, and theoretical research in the atmospheric sciences discipline over the past 50 years. It is the general understanding now that the shape and size of an ice crystal in cirrus is primarily controlled by the temperature and relative humidity inside the cloud. If ice crystals undergo collision and coalescence due to gravitational pulling and turbulence, more complicated shapes can result. In midlatitudes, where most of the observations have been made, cirrus clouds have been found to be composed of primarily nonspherical ice crystals with shapes ranging from solid and hollow columns to plates, bullet rosettes, and aggregates, with sizes spanning from about ten to thousands of micrometers. Observations in midlatitudes also revealed that at cloud tops pristine small columns and plates are predominant, whereas at the lower part of the cloud bullet rosettes and aggregates are most common (see illusration).
Limited measurements from high-flying aircraft in tropical cirrus clouds, which extend as high as 15– 18 km (8–11mi), show that their ice crystal sizes range from about 10–2000 µm with four predominant shapes—bullet rosettes, aggregates, hollow columns, and plates—similar to those occurring in midlatitudes. In the tropics, observations reveal that large ice crystal sizes are associated with warmer temperatures or the development stage of clouds re- lated to convection. Ice crystal data in arctic cirrus have also been collected which show their shapes to be a combination of pristine and irregular types with sizes appearing to be larger than about 40 µ m. In the Antarctic, the extensive collection of ice particles at a surface station reveals the prevalence of long, needle-shaped ice crystals.
Ice crystals vary substantially in size and shape from the tropics, to midlatitudes, to the polar regions. In addition to the variety of intricate shapes and a large range of crystal sizes, the horizontal orientation of some cirrus columnar and plate crystals has been observed from a number of lidar backscattering depolarization measurements, as well as limited polarization observations from satellites. Also, the fact that numerous halos (sundogs) and bright arcs surrounding the Sun have been observed demonstrates that a specific orientation of the ice particles must exist in some cirrus. An understanding of the climatic effect of cirrus clouds must begin with a comprehensive understanding of their microscopic composition and associated radiative properties.
Cirrus radiative forcing. The amount of sunlight that cirrus clouds reflect, absorb, and transmit depends on their coverage, position, thickness, and ice crystal size and shape distributions. Cirrus clouds can also reflect and transmit the thermal infrared emitted from the surface and the atmosphere and, at the same time, emit infrared radiation according to the temperature structure within them. The ice crystal size and shape distributions and cloud thickness are fundamental cirrus parameters that determine the relative strength of the solar-albedo (reflecting of sunlight) and infrared-greenhouse (trapping of thermal radiation) effects, which are essential components of the discussion of cirrus clouds and climate. These radiative effects are determined by the basic scattering and absorption properties of the ice
1
crystals. Unlike the scattering of light by spherical water droplets (which can be solved by Lorenz-Mie theory), an exact solution for the scattering of light by nonspherical ice crystals, covering all sizes and shapes that occur in the Earth's atmosphere, does not exist in practical terms. Recent advances in this area have demonstrated that the scattering and absorption properties of ice crystals of all sizes and shapes, which commonly occur in the atmosphere, can be calculated with high precision by a unified theory for light scattering. This theory combines the geometric optics approach for large particles and the finite-difference time-domain numerical method for small particles. Results of this theory have been used to assist in the remote-sensing and climate-modeling programs involving cirrus clouds.
To comprehend the impact of cirrus clouds on the radiation field of the Earth and the atmosphere and thus climate, the term "cloud radiative forcing" is used to quantify the relative significance of the solar-albedo and infrared-greenhouse effects. Cloud radiative forcing is the difference between the radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere in clear and cloudy conditions. The addition of a cloud layer in a clear sky would lead to more sunlight reflected back to space, reducing the amount of solar energy available to the atmosphere and the surface. In contrast, the trapping of atmospheric thermal emission by nonblack (-body) cirrus clouds enhances the radiative energy, or heat, available in the atmosphere and the surface. Based on theoretical calculations, it has been shown that the infrared greenhouse effect for cirrus clouds generally outweighs their solar albedo counterpart, except when the clouds contain very small ice crystals on the order of a few micrometers, which exert a strong solar-albedo effect. The relative significance of the solar-albedo versus infraredgreenhouse effects is clearly dependent on the ice crystal size and the amount of ice in the cloud. Because of the complexity of sorting cirrus signatures from satellite observations, actual data to calculate the global cirrus cloud radiative forcing is not yet available.
Cirrus and greenhouse warming. An issue of cirrus clouds and greenhouse warming produced by the increase in greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (NO2), chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), and ozone (O3), is the possible variation in their position and cover. Based on the principles of thermodynamics, the formation of cirrus clouds would move higher in a warmer atmosphere and produce a positive feedback in temperature increase because of the enhanced downward infrared flux from higher clouds. A positive feedback would also be evident if the high cloud cover increased because of greenhouse perturbations. Climate models have illustrated that high clouds that move higher in the atmosphere could exert a positive feedback, amplifying the temperature increase. However, the extent and degree of this feedback and temperature amplification have not been reliably quantified. The prediction of cirrus cloud cover and position based on physical principals is a difficult task, and successful prediction using climate models has been limited. This difficulty is also associated with the uncertainties and limitations of inferring cirrus cloud cover and position from current satellite radiometers. In fact, there is not sufficient cirrus cloud data to correlate with the greenhouse warming that has occurred so far.
Another issue that determines the role that cirrus play in climate and greenhouse warming is related to the variation of ice water content and crystal size in these clouds. Based on aircraft observations, some evidence suggests that there is a distinct correlation between temperature and ice water content and crystal size. An increase in temperature leads to an increase in ice water content. Ice crystals are smaller at colder temperatures and larger at warmer temperatures. The implication of these microphysical relationships for climate is significant. For high cirrus containing primarily nonspherical ice crystals, climate model results suggest that the balance of solar-albedo versus infrared-greenhouse effects, that is, positive or negative feedback, depends not only on ice water content but also on ice crystal size. This competing effect differs from low clouds containing purely water droplets in which a temperature increase in the region of these clouds would result in greater liquid water content and reflect more sunlight, leading to a negative feedback.
Contrail cirrus. In addition to naturally occurring cirrus, the upper-level ice crystal clouds produced by high-flying aircraft, known as contrails, or condensation trails, have also been frequently observed. Contrails are generated behind aircraft flying in sufficiently cold air, where water droplets can form on the soot and sulfuric acid particles emitted from aircraft or on background particles and then freeze to become ice particles. Based on a number of recent field experiments, contrails were found to predominantly consist of bullet rosettes, columns, and plates, with sizes ranging from about 1 to 100 µm. Persistent contrails often develop into more extensive contrails in which the ice supersaturation is generally too low to allow cirrus clouds to form naturally. Consequently, contrails may enhance the extension of the natural cirrus cover in the adjacent areas where the relative humidity is too low for the spontaneous nucleation of ice crystals to occur, although this is an indirect effect that has not yet been quantified.
The climatic effect of contrail cirrus also includes their impact on the water vapor budget in the upper troposphere, which is important in controlling the thermal infrared radiation exchange. It has been estimated that aircraft line-shaped contrails cover about 0.1% of the Earth's surface on an annually averaged basis, but with much higher values in local regions.
An analysis of cirrus cloud cover in Salt Lake City based on surface observations revealed that in the mid-1960s a substantial increase in cirrus clouds coincided with a sharp increase in domestic jet fuel consumption. A similar increase has also been detected at stations in the midwestern and
northwestern United States that are located beneath the major upper tropospheric flight paths. Satellite infrared imagery has recently been used to detect contrail cirrus, but long-term observations are needed for assessment purposes. Analysis of contrail cirrus and radiative forcing indicates that the degree and extent of net warming or cooling would depend on the cloud optical depth (a nondimensional term denoting the attenuation power of a light beam) and the ice crystal sizes and shapes that occur within them. Projections of air traffic show that the direct climatic effects of contrails could be on the same order as some tropospheric aerosol types. It appears that the most significant contrail effect on climate would be through their indirect effect on cirrus cloud formation, a subject requiring further observational and theoretical modeling studies.
Indirect effects. The indirect aerosol-cloud radiative forcing has usually been connected to low clouds containing water droplets via modification of the droplet size and cloud cover/precipitation. Recent analyses of ice cloud data, however, suggest that mineral dust particles transported from Saharan Africa and Asia are effective ice nuclei capable of glaciating supercooled middle clouds. Thus, it appears that major dust storms and perhaps minor eolian (wind) emissions could play an important role in modulating regional and global climatic processes on the formation of cirrus clouds through an indirect effect.
Currently, it is certain that, through greenhouse warming and indirect effects via high-flying aircraft and aerosols, cirrus clouds play a pivotal role in shaping climate and climate change of the Earth and the atmosphere system in connection with the solaralbedo and infrared-greenhouse effects. However, there is not sufficient global data from satellite observations to ascertain the long-term variability of cloud cover, cloud height, and cloud composition to enable the construction of a climate model to assess the impact of their changes in terms of temperature and precipitation perturbations. Moreover, many thin and subvisual cirrus clouds, with an optical depth less than about 0.1, have not been detected by the present satellite radiometers and retrieval techniques. The subject of cirrus clouds and climate is a challenging problem and requires substantial observational and theoretical research and development.
For background information see AEROSOL; ALBEDO; ATMOSPHERE; CLIMATOLOGY; CLOUD; CLOUD PHYSICS; GREENHOUSE EFFECT; HALO; HEAT BALANCE, TERRESTRIAL ATMOSPHERIC; INFRARED RADIATION; METEOROLOGICAL OPTICS; RADAR METEOROLOGY; SATELLITE METEOROLOGY; TERRESTRIAL RADIATION in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. K. N. Liou
Bibliography. K. K. Liou, Influence of cirrus clouds on weather and climate processes: A global perspective, Mon. Weather Rev., 114:1167–1198, 1986; K. N. Liou, An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, 2d ed., Chap. 8, Academic Press, 2002; K. Sassen, Saharan dust storms and indirect aerosol effects on clouds: CRYSTAL-FACE results, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 10.1029/2003GL017371, 2003; U. Schumann, Contrail cirrus, in D. K. Lynch et al. (eds.), Cirrus, Oxford University Press, pp. 231–255, 2002.
Reprinted from the McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science & Technology 2005. Copyright c ⃝ 1999 by The McGrawHill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Home > Creating an Excellent Presentation
Creating an Excellent Presentation
Liya Panayotova, Psychologist, liyap.com6.4K reads
The ability to create a solid presentation can be a tremendous aid to your public speaking events. Although you will address the most important information orally, your audience will also need the visual stimulation of a presentation.
A well-made presentation is an excellent opportunity to create a long-lasting, positive impression of yourself and your topic. Visual aids are not demanding, in terms of time and effort, in addition to being a great source of tension relief, through creativity. Besides, a visual presentation would remind you of what follows next in your speech, so that your mind is left to focus on quality explanation, rather than progression.
Keep It Simple
If you decide to use PowerPoint or a similar program, you will find a lot of options that allow you to experiment with color and design. Although your slides should certainly stand out and make an impression, the focus should be on the content, not on the form. It is usually most effective if you use simple slide designs, with no more than a few colors. If you have the time and desire, you can do some color research, and see what colors usually appeal most to people.
Use Only Key Information
It might seem very appealing to place all of your written content within the visual slides, but that is not a good idea. Sure it could save the time you plan to spend on memorizing your speech, but a presentation with a lot of words will confuse and distract the audience. Instead, use only partial sentences and key points, that would remind you of what you need to say and will elicit important information to the audience. What is more, having a lot of written content in your presentation is visually displeasing.
Use Graphs and Images, Instead of Words
Whenever you can explain something via a graph, table or chart, it is useful to consider doing so. Presenting data in this way makes it easy for the audience to assimilate and remember. Besides, it is a great way to remind yourself of statistics, without using an overwhelming amount of written content. If the topic of your speech permits it, use images that can replace sentences, but make sure they are practical and purposeful.
Use Standard Fonts
While designing a presentation, you may feel tempted to use extravagant fonts, to make your visual aid unique and distinguishable. However, that can backfire – the audience may have a difficult time reading what you've written, the computer at the event may not recognize the fonts and fail to display them, etc. When choosing a font, you can't go wrong with an option that is clean, simple, and classic. After all, the visual form of your presentation should be in service to content, not the other way round.
Use Flash Cards
Create a flashcard for each slide in your presentation, and use it while rehearsing. Whether your flash cards are in paper form or electronic is up to you, and there are now plenty of phone applications you can use as well. With each rehearsal, you'll rely on your flash cards less and less, until you don't need them at all. You compose your entire speech on the cards, but in that case, be sure to rehearse your tone of voice. If you read your presentation, word for word, many times, you run the risk of sounding robotic, but rehearsing your intonation can help you sound smooth and natural.
Create Structure
An outstanding presentation always has its cleverly planned structure. The framework consists of an introductory part, which can contain your introduction, and icebreakers, such as a joke, as well as an opening question, to engage your audience. What follows is the main body, where you elaborate on the topic. Finally, you arrive at the conclusion, which should cover consequences, implications, summary, and perhaps even inspirational food for thought.
Be Cautious of the Time
Make sure that you plan, organize and execute your presentation in a way that leaves you with enough time for questions and impressions from the audience. If you have 20 minutes to speak, use approximately 15 minutes for the presentation, so there's enough time for questions. When rehearsing, use a stop-watch or timer, so you are aware of your time requirements, as well as the adjustments you need to make, to fit into the preset timeframe.
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Earth Day Heroes:
Why is Protecting the Environment Important to You? – ANR Staff Share Their Inspiration
Since 1972, people all over the world have been celebrating Earth Day. At the ANR, we're celebrating too! Every staff member at the Agency of Natural Resources works to uphold the same organizational mission: to protect, sustain and enhance Vermont's natural resources for the benefit of this and future generations. At the same time, each of us individually have had experiences and learned lessons that have led us to the work that we do. Many people with varied beliefs and ideas, all working toward a shared goal –that is the landscape of environmental protection and management at the ANR - and across Vermont. In honor of Earth Day, we wanted to share some of the reasons that we are inspired to care for the environment:
"I like living creatures: fish and frogs and turtles and people. The beauty, complexity and interconnected harmonies of natural systems delight me and fill me with awe. I don't think that I am unique in this way; I think that anyone who pauses to reflect on nature can feel this connection. And yet, in our busy lives we often forget about those things that sustain us and give our lives meaning. The work I do to protect the environment has two primary motivations: first, to do what I can to improve the relationship between people and the natural world; and second, to act here and now in this messy intersection of science, economics, politics and competing values so that we can do the least harm and the most good for fish, frogs, turtles and people." - Eric Palmer, F&W Administration
"Protecting the environment is important to me, because I want my children to live on a healthy planet and appreciate the Earth as a shared resource. It's a tall order - but I believe in what I come to work every day to do, and I am uplifted and empowered by the passionate people around me." - Jenna Calvi, Environmental Analyst, Stormwater Program, DEC
"Because a good planet is hard to find." - Chris Olson, Addison County Forester, FPR
"The earth is a living organism; treat it like family." - Sheila Remick Lilley - Financial Administrator, ANR
"The environment sustains us and all life. I work to protect it for selfish and un-selfish reasons alike, including a belief that nature has intrinsic value." - Josh Kelly, Environmental Analyst, Waste Management & Prevention, DEC
"What a wonderful world. Why squander it?" - Jodi Shippee, Vermont Natural Heritage Inventory, F&W
"Protecting the environment is important so that our resources will be available for future generations to enjoy." – Nicole Corrao, Information and Education Specialist, Hunter Education, F&W
"Because I like being able to breathe without getting sick." – Siobhan Perricone, Systems Developer, Information Technology Division, ANR
"Protecting the environment is important for so many reasons, but the ones that stand out to me the most are preserving the land, flora and fauna for future generations as well as opposing the often well-funded interests that threaten our environment. Whether it is fining bad actors, or in my case, funding projects that will abate pollution, many of us here at the Agency of Natural Resources take pride in our daily duties serving to protect the state we and so many others care dearly about. Making sure our children and their children get to breath clean air, drink clean water, and have access to productive ecosystems is vital to me and my colleagues. I love that my means to financially support myself also benefits the environment and that is an intangible part of why I enjoy working for the Vermont Dept. of Environmental Conservation." – John DosSantos, Financial Administrator, Facilities Engineering Division, DEC
"Protecting the environment is important to me so that I can share the natural world around me with those I love and help to conserve our plants, animals, and habitat for many future generations of Vermonters to enjoy." – Alyssa Bennett, Small Mammals Biologist, F&W
"We aren't separate from our environment, we are part of it. We have a responsibility to be stewards, given how big our footprint is as a species. And protecting wetlands is a pretty big bang for your buck. Want clean water? Want wildlife? Want flood resiliency? Protect wetlands!" – Shannon Morrison, District Wetlands Ecologist, DEC
"We are connected to the environment; how we treat the environment mirrors how the environment will treat our next generations." – Debra Bordo, Environmental Engineer, Waste Management & Prevention Division, DEC
"I grew up as a member of a large family and we raised 90-95% of what we ate and nothing was wasted. My parents taught me at an early age to take care of the earth and it will provide what you need. We didn't use fertilizers or other additives to grow our fruits and vegetables and they grew just fine. We were selective in the wood that was cut to heat our home and lumber to provide money for what we couldn't grow. I participated in Green Up Days with my children to teach them of the importance of not "trashing" our environment and they have shared with their children. There were many lessons that I learned growing up that I didn't ask why as Mom and Dad gave the messages, but working at the DEC has educated me on the whys and taught me so much more! I have learned that everything is interconnected and if one area is destroyed or damaged it will have impacts on others. Environmental resources are not unlimited and if not treated with respect and given the protection they need, they will disappear as well as the elements that we need to survive." – Linda Riddell, Executive Assistant, DEC Commissioner's Office
"The unregulated economic development of the past, left the present generations with a legacy of environmental issues, affecting both the economy and health of the community. Working in environmental protection today builds possibilities for a sustainable community in the future." – Hugo Martinez Cazon, Waste Management and Prevention Division, DEC
"Because the reality of a world without clean water, clean air, and the amazing diversity of life we have on this planet is too awful to contemplate. Humans need individuals to envision how we can live as part of the natural processes that sustain us, lead the way, and drag along the reluctant." – Angela Shambaugh, Aquatic Biologist, Watershed Mgmt.
Division, DEC
"Human pursuit for quality of life may soon result in stark difficulties and effects in regard to the quantity and diversity of life as the Holocene extinction continues into the 21 st century. It is important to me to be acting as an individual and as a member of a global society to foster conditions that maximize quality of life and the potential for sustainability of life. It is imperative to fully recognize the miracle and beauty of Earth's ecosystems and life forms, and to solve one of humanity's greatest problems – habitat preservation. As stewards of the Earth it is our responsibility to protect the natural environment to minimize the natural and anthropogenic sources of acute and accumulative toxins (and chemicals leading to climate perturbation) that lead to detrimental health effects. Our descendants deserve our concerted effort to maintain an environment to flourish in as enjoyed by us and our ancestors." – Dan Nielsen, Environmental Scientist, DEC
"I grew up hunting and fishing and appreciating the outdoors in the State of Vermont with my family. I cherish those memories. I work to protect fish and wildlife and this heritage so that my daughter and all children like her can have the opportunity to have those same experiences." – Robert Sterling, VT State Game Warden Law Enforcement Division, F&W
"Biologically speaking, all living things are related – we all evolved from the same early life forms. Practically speaking – we are all dependent on each other and on functioning natural systems to live. Protecting the environment is important to me because we're all a part of it, and we're all a part of each other too – birds, trees, bugs, mountain lions, salamanders and human beings – we're all connected in countless ways, and we all need each other to stay healthy and so that our children inherit a healthy world. I care because I love the natural world and am grateful for everything it provides." – Leila LaRosa, Outreach Coordinator, ANR
"I'm really proud to be an eighth generation woodchuck. I'm hoping, in just a small way, to conserve some of Vermont's natural heritage; both to give back to my ancestors, and to leave at least a piece of the Vermont I knew to my children and my grandchildren." – Doug Blodgett, F&W
"It's not too late yet. Native people of this land had the answer and they knew that we needed to look today toward the 7 th generation to be sustainable on this planet. They were right." – Tom Cady, State Parks Division, FPR
"The environment is not just important to me in a romantic-aesthetic, "greenie-weenie" sort of way, but also in a practical, "this-is-our-foundation-can't-live-without-it" sort of way. Protecting the environment is not a luxury but a series of practical choices that ensures that me, my family, my community and future generations have productive soil, clean water, healthy forests with all the critical diversity within it to both enjoy and depend on today, and into the future." – Keith Thompson, Chittenden County Forester, FPR
"To me "environment" is nature and the role of humans in it. I feel blessed and cursed with awareness – of people, of nature and of how we act to damage or protect our planet and the life we are a part of. The Earth is going through incredible losses of biodiversity right now; during my lifetime. I choose to live with love, honor, beauty and respect." – Ned Swanberg, Mapping & Planning, Vermont Rivers Program, Watershed Management Division, DEC
"I work to protect the environment because my wife and I are having our first child in a couple of months and I want them to grow up in a world in which they can find something as amazing as a spotted salamander right in their own backyard." – Tom Rodgers, Outreach, F&W
"Because it shows respect and appreciation to the One who created it all, and to future generations." – Jud Kratzer, Fisheries Biologist, F&W
"This habitat we call Earth generously provides all the basic building blocks that we need to survive (clean air and water, raw materials for shelter, etc.). It also supports all the experiences, people and other things that make our lives worthwhile. An unpolluted and ecologically-intact environment is the key to the basic survival and well-being of all species. Protecting something so precious should be nothing short of a core responsibility for a species that named itself Homo sapiens ("wise man")." – Jeff Merrell, Environmental Analyst, Air Quality & Climate Division, DEC
"Clean, safe drinking water is essential – period." – Heather Campbell, Blue-Green Algae Coordinator, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection Division, DEC
"As a high school student growing up in New Jersey, I had the opportunity to explore chemicals in the environment – and I was hooked. How could one NOT become both concerned about and dedicated to helping create a preferred future; one which included a respect for the environment. That we, as co-habitants of a planet with limited natural resources and limited waste sinks, mine became a passion for "becoming the change I wished to see in the world," and encourages others to think ecologically, and to live more sustainably." – Doug Kievit-Kylar, Compliance Analyst, Drinking Water & Groundwater Protection Division, DEC
"My answer is an easy one. I have children and a new grandchild, along with an appreciation of geologic time, environmental change, and extinction." – Marjorie Gale, Environmental Scientist/Geologist, Geology Division
"We as individuals exist on this planet but for the blink of an eye. As a species we can be one of the most fragile in existence, requiring modification to the environment including construction and protection to exist. We have enormous power both mental and physical to bring about that change, but we are repeatedly awed by the ability of the earth to exert forces which will sweep those changes aside, reminding us that no matter how hard we try, our existence as we know it can be and likely will be fleeting in the grand scheme of things. Protecting the environment is protecting our ability to continue a productive and healthy existence on this planet. We owe it to the generations who come after.
Our existence will continue to require interaction and modification to the physical world around us, we must find and maintain a balance that allows that existence to continue, but in a manner that is within the capacity of our world to accept and recover. We have inherited a situation that will require more than our lifetimes to correct, which makes preparing the next generation that much more important. I believe that the next generation must be connected with the natural world in order to understand and appreciate that the resources we need in which to live are not necessarily infinite, but then again not necessarily finite if we recognize the need to steward their use and renewal.
I believe the natural world is not something to be set aside and placed out of touch. Humans are on this earth and must learn how to interact with their environment in a sustainable manner. That also means inviting them into it - even if that means impacting it. Without exposure there is no understanding; without understanding there is less appreciation; without appreciation there will be little will for protection. Protecting the environment is important, for humankind." – Frank Spaulding, State Parks Division, FPR | <urn:uuid:217fd0dd-86df-4109-8b94-41513da17964> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | http://files.ctctcdn.com/a2bee447101/35a8e8f8-5322-48d4-9496-c7ae6d9f1d6c.pdf | 2021-10-25T14:24:48+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323587711.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20211025123123-20211025153123-00111.warc.gz | 23,572,275 | 2,824 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997769 | eng_Latn | 0.99796 | [
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CONTENTS
Values and Principles
Admissions
Attending SSC
Infection Prevention and Control
Administering Medication
Complaints/Feedback
Positive Behaviour
Confidentiality
Whistle Blowing
Safeguarding & Child Protection
Health & Nutrition
Intimate Personal Care
Appendix 1: Policy Document signature form
Appendix 2: Special Dietary Requirement Form
15 Church Street Portstewart BT55 7AH
Current Crèche Manager Mrs Christina McFarland
Office: 028 7083 3200
Mobile: 07925192505
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Current Chairperson of Board of Directors Dr Emeir McSorley
Email: email@example.com
Values and Principles
Stepping Stones Crèche is committed to providing a welcoming, friendly and stimulating environment for children aged 0-5years old, by acknowledging the children's achievements and supporting their learning progression through play.
We encourage trust and respect regardless of race, religion, gender, disability or special needs. Stepping Stone Crèche welcomes parent's involvement and guidance on these matters to enhance and support the children's growth and experience.
These policies have been compiled and agreed by the staff and the Board of Directors of Stepping Stones Crèche (SSC) (Review Date: October 2016); to ensure quality in all aspects of our service to families. You will find that many overlap in content because they cannot operate in isolation.
Good practice is underpinned by adherence to policies and practice guidelines. The development of these policies is a reflection of the collaborative relationship between staff and the volunteers on the Board of Directors.
Opening Hours
Monday - Friday
8.00am - 6.00pm
Information Regarding Sessions
Each day is divided into two sessions
8.00am to 1pm 1pm to 6.00pm
Admissions
Stepping Stones Crèche (SSC) 15 Church Street, Portstewart, BT55 7AH, is a limited company (NI010464), not-for profit registered charity (NIC102354), for the provision of childcare services, in the form of a Day care setting.
SSC is registered with Northern Health and Social Care Trust (028 2766 1340).
Admission will also be considered with regards to our Equal Opportunities Policy.
The total number of children to be cared for at any one time on the premises is 56 over the three rooms that operate as part of SSC:
Closure Days
New Year's Day
St. Patricks Day
Easter Monday
12th July
Christmas Day
Boxing Day
Attending Stepping Stones
Your chosen sessions must be booked on registration. Booked sessions, regardless of sickness or casual days off, must be paid in full.
If you wish to make changes to your booked sessions, please discuss this with the Room Supervisor or Crèche Manager. If it is not possible to offer alternative sessions immediately, then you will be offered a place as soon as one becomes available.
If you are changing your booked sessions, or terminating your place at the crèche, then it is essential that you give one months' notice in writing.
A minimum of 3 sessions per week are required in order to secure a place but this is subject to a more restricted availability and the manager's decision will be final. Less than 3 sessions will only be permitted in exceptional circumstances.
Each year, SSC is allocated some funded preschool places by the Department of Education. Parents with children at the appropriate age will automatically be given forms to complete in order to apply for a funded pre-school place.
Opening Hours
Monday - Friday
8.00am - 6.00pm
Information Regarding Sessions
Each day is divided into two sessions
8.00am to 1pm 1pm to 6.00pm
Settling Children into the Setting
At Stepping Stones Crèche (SSC) we are aware and are sensitive to how difficult the process of separation may be for both parent/carer and child.
All children will have to make new relationships with adults and children.
The adults and equipment have to be shared with other children.
The noise level is generally greater and they may have difficulty in understanding what is being said or in making themselves understood.
This is an important stage in the child's development and learning. Together the parent, room supervisor and other members of staff, play crucial roles in making the experience a positive one. The staff understand that while their role is important, they need to be sensitive to your individual needs.
Closure Days
New Year's Day
St. Patricks Day
Easter Monday
12th July
Christmas Day
Boxing Day
Through discussion, we endeavour to work out with you a settling in period, which suits both you and your child. We recommend that all children, no matter what age, come for one hour settling in time, free of charge, before attending for a full session.
Parents/carers are encouraged to say goodbye and reassure the child they will come back.
Parents/carers are free to ring as often as they wish to put their mind at ease.
Be prepared for a delayed reaction in the child who appears to have settled very quickly.
There can be no time limit to settling in a new child.
Flexibility understanding will ensure the procedure occurs as easily as possible for both parents/carers and child involved.
Infection Prevention and Control
In order to protect your child and other children, no child should be left at SSC if they are unwell.
If a child falls sick during the session, his/her parent/carer will be notified. At this time, the parent/carer will be informed by a member of staff that their child is unwell; the nature of the illness and that it is in the best interest of the child that the parent/carer should arrange that the child is collected as soon as possible.
In the instance that the child has a high temperature but appears otherwise well, liquid paracetamol/ibuprofen will be administered (based on prior parental/carer consent).
If the child is still running a temperature two hours after the administration of liquid paracetamol/ibuprofen, then the parent/carer will be asked to take their child home as soon as possible. This will allow the child to receive medical help if necessary, or to be cared and comforted in their own home and to reduce or limit any further spread of possible infection.
Important
Children must be free from infection before returning them to SSC, please see table regarding time periods Parents/carers are asked to ensure that they can be contacted on an emergency telephone number at all times
Infection Control
Control
The following is a list (right) of common childhood illnesses and the minimum recommended length of time for which the child should not attend SSC.
Your absolute support on this matter is required in order to ensure the health and well-being of all the children and staff. In cases of doubt the decision of the manager is final.
Further Advice
Parents/carers should inform management if they consider their child particularly vulnerable to infections.
Please refer to guidance from the Department of Health, or visit their website for further advice:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/522337/ Guidance_on_infection_control_in_schools.pdf
Administering Medication at Stepping Stones
The Manager and Supervisors of each room are authorised to administer medication to a sick child i.e. liquid paracetamol e.g. Calpol, antibiotics etc.
In the absence of the room Supervisor the Manager should administer medication; failing this another room supervisor can administer the medication if necessary.
At any time, medicine is to be administered, 2 members of staff need to be present and the 2nd person will witness the medicine form.
All medicine administered must be recorded immediately on a medicine consent form and signed by the parent.
All prescription and non-prescription medicines must be clearly labelled and all medicines must be stored in the medicine fridge situated in the manager's office.
To ensure medicine is only administered if necessary – Supervisors will check with Management first before being given.
Administering Medicine outside Stepping Stones grounds
If medicine needs to be administered on a trip or outing, this will be done in accordance with the SSC policy, with the medicine form being filled in as soon as possible upon return to the building. The child's condition will be monitored and if necessary, the group will return to SSC or the parent/emergency contact will be called to come and pick the child up
Administering Medication at
Stepping Stones
The medicine forms are located in the individual playrooms and the following must always be recorded
- Day and Date
- Type of Medicine and Dosage
- Name of Child
- Time Medicine Administered
- Parents Signature
- Staff Signatures (given by and checked by)
Expiry dates on children's medicine stored at the crèche should be checked and disposed of correctly.
Should the child's condition worsen the parent/ guardian will be contacted and asked to collect their child.
Parents will be consulted if in any doubt about administering liquid paracetamol or other medicines, in accordance with the permission slip signed by them at the registration to nursery.
Breach of this policy will result in disciplinary action for all staff concerned.
Complaints/Feedback or Comments Procedure Policy
We welcome any feedback and comments (positive and negative) regarding your opinion on how the crèche operates. You are free to do this in any of the following ways:
1. At any time, you can make an appointment to speak to the Manager or a member of the Board of Directors about a particular concern or problem.
You can contact them using the following contact details:
Current Crèche Manager Mrs Christina McFarland
Office: 028 7083 3200
Mobile: 07925192505
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Current Chairperson of Board of Directors Dr Emeir McSorley
Email: email@example.com
Complaints/Feedback or
Comments Procedure Policy
2. If you are dissatisfied with the care your child receives or you have any other concerns or queries, which you do not want to discuss with the Manager or a member of The Board of Directors, you can contact the link Social Worker directly at:
Early Years Team
Northern Health and Social Services Trust 1st Floor Route House 8e Coleraine Road Ballymoney BT53 6BP
Telephone Number: 028 2766 1340
Positive Behaviour Policy
SSC had adopted the policy on discipline and child management from EARLY YEARS in their publications "Discipline/Child Management in Early Childhood Settings" and "Valuing Play, Valuing Early Childhood". In adopting Early Year's Policy in discipline and child management we stress particularly the following points:
1. We aim to provide a happy stimulating play environment for children, thereby reducing the likelihood of problem behaviour.
2. We seek to create a disciplined environment in which children learn to control their own behaviour, to feel good about themselves, to understand the consequences of their actions and to become increasingly independent and responsible.
3. We appreciate the difference between discipline and punishment, the latter being to cause a person to suffer for an offence or to inflict a penalty. These tactics usually produce negative reactions in children.
4. We appreciate the difference between praise and encouragement, the latter being to support a child in his/her efforts and acknowledge his/ her individuality.
Contact Us
Current Crèche Manager Mrs Christina McFarland
Office: 028 7083 3200
Mobile: 07925192505
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
5. We aim to keep specific rules to a minimum, these being negotiated/discussed with the children to ensure that they understand the reasoning behind them.
6. We will endeavour to express suggestions and directions in a positive way rather than a negative form, and to emphasise what a child can do, rather than what he/she cannot do.
7. We will acknowledge a child's feelings (e.g. aggression, disappointment, frustration) and help him/her to deal with these through pretend play and activities using natural materials.
Current Chairperson of Board of Directors Dr Emeir McSorley
Email: email@example.com
8. When a child behaves inappropriately, he/she will be withdrawn from the group activity. This we call "Time Out". In withdrawing the children from the activity we:
a. Safeguard the other children
c. At all times it will be made clear that it is the behaviour rather than the child of which we disapprove
b. Ensure through one-to-one discussion that the child understands why the behaviour is unacceptable
d. A child will only be restrained if they are in danger of hurting themselves or others.
Early Years Team
1st Floor
Northern Health and Social Services Trust
Route House
Ballymoney
8e Coleraine Road
BT53 6BP
Telephone Number: 028 2766 1340
9. All staff will be made aware of the policy on discipline so that a consistent approach will be followed within the group.
10. If or when problems arise staff will liaise with parents to develop and agreed strategy for handling the child's behaviour both in the group and at home.
11. Bullying is wrong, harmful and unacceptable behaviour. We aim to inform children age appropriately and encourage within a sense of self-confidence and self-worth.
Confidentiality
Every effort is made to ensure that all information records are stored to ensure the strictest of confidentiality.
Any information regarding parents/carers, clients, the Board of Directors and staff should not be repeated outside the setting.
Staff, members of the Board of Directors and all volunteers are required to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Any information passed between management and individual staff should not be shared to colleagues.
Parents/carers should be in private area, where possible, when receiving information from staff regarding their child.
Parents/carers who wish to speak to a member of staff about a private matter should be brought to a quite area e.g. the office.
In instances where staff: child ratios do not allow this, an appointment will be made between the member of staff and the parents/ carers for a suitable time to discuss the matter in private.
Confidentiality
Comparison to other children should not be made when a parent/carer is discussing their child's development.
All staff including trainees and students are made aware of SSC's Policy on Confidentiality and breach of this will result in dismissal or further action as felt appropriate by management and the Board of Directors.
Whistle Blowing Policy
Whistle blowing refers to any disclosure internally or externally by employees of malpractice, illegal acts or omission at work.
Stepping Stones Crèche (SSC) is committed to the highest standard of openness, integrity and accountability, to enable staff and other members of SSC to voice their concerns in a responsible, non-threatening and effective manner.
The policy is in place to safeguard all members of SSC and should not be regarded as a threat.
If staff suspect or have concerns relating to their work place they should speak to the Manager. The Manager is responsible for investigating the matter and taking appropriate action.
The SSC Chairperson will be advised of the situation if needed. In the event that it is felt inappropriate to raise a concern with the Manager then a member of the Board of Directors should be approached.
Details of Board of Directors are displayed on the notice boards.
Contact Us
Current Crèche Manager Mrs Christina McFarland
Office: 028 7083 3200
Mobile: 07925192505
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Confidentiality
Staff/parents/carers should not hesitate to approach the Manager or any member of the Board of Directors with concerns, small or big.
Any concerns raised will be treated with respect and in confidence. However, should there be serious allegations that have to be taken further; the person raising the issue might be asked to come forward. It is important that for staff/ parents/carers to understand that there will be no adverse repercussions for raising cases.
Current Chairperson of Board of Directors Dr Emeir McSorley
Email: email@example.com
Safe Guarding and Child Protection
Stepping Stones Crèche (SSC) is registered with Northern Health and Social Services Trust, under the requirements of the Children (NI) Order 1995, and as such we understand that a child's welfare is paramount.
The Board of Directors, staff, students and volunteers in the crèche will work to provide the highest care and protection for the children in our care.
This policy outlines the agreed procedures staff and management are bound by to protect our children. The code of conduct for staff, students and volunteers is given to all who have childcare responsibilities in our group.
Important Contacts
Early Years Team
Creating a Safe Environment
Stepping Stones
We recruit and select staff following Fair Employment Guidelines.
t
Staff Recruitment
All staff, students and volunteers undertaking childcare responsibilities must undergo a police check, using the new ACCESS NI system.
For further information please look at www.accessni.gov.uk
Staff Training
All staff will receive Child Protection Training. SSC Management will carry out an induction for all new staff, students and volunteers.
As part of this induction, the Manager will go through the signs and symptoms of abuse and clearly state SSC's procedures for handling concerns, allegations or suspicions.
Suspected Abuse
SSC will keep records of unusual behaviour, physical signs, and comments where abuse might be suspected. These written records will be kept confidential and only shared on a 'need to know' basis.
Creating a Safe
EnvironmentStepping Stones
In usual circumstances this information will be shared with the Manager and the Room Supervisor.
The Designated Child Protection Officers are the Manager, one member of the Board of Directors and a room supervisor. All such records will be kept in a separate file in a locked cabinet.
Safety Precautions when entering and leaving the building
SSC will ensure the safety of children entering and leaving the building. Children will only be allowed to leave with an adult known to staff. Parents/carers must inform staff if there will be any changes to normal arrangements when collecting their children from SSC.
In cases where the Manager/member of staff is unsure, they will not release the child until confirmation is received from the parent/carer.
The person collecting a child, if not the parent, has to be 18 or over. Parents/carers are responsible for the safety of the child/children until they have been handed over to staff in the room.
Creating a Safe Environment
Code of Conduct
SSC has a code of conduct for all staff, students and volunteers. Management will be responsible for ensuring that all staff are aware of its' content and taking action where guidelines are breached.
Link Social Worker
SSC has a collaborative relationship with our Link Social Worker, who also will act as a point of reference for the Manager should they need to discuss concerns, check out worries or make a referral.
In the unlikely event of a child being investigated by Social Services, we are obliged to provide any information requested. However, we will ensure that families are kept informed during this process.
SSC can also share any information with Social Services without parent's/carers consent if there are concerns relating to child protection.
Child's development
SSC will work in partnership with parents/ carers, to pass on information on how their child is settling and developing. We would also like to offer help and support if parents have any concerns regarding their child.
Important Contacts
Early Years Team
Creating a Safe Environment
Child supervision
At all times SSC adheres to the legal ratio of
1 adult to 8 children over 3 years
1 adult to 3 babies.
1 adult to 4 children aged 2-3 years
If any off-site visits are arranged, the ratio is carefully looked at. The ratio may change to 1 adult per three children depending on the age, size of group and destination.
When children need help toileting or need a change of clothes, permanent staff will supervise this and ensure an adult is not left alone with a child.
In The Care Bears room, the changing room is off the main room, but with a gate fitted so that staff are not left alone behind a closed door. An agreement will be made with parents on how they wish their child to be wiped or cleaned.
Staff are responsible for monitoring each other and will report concerns where necessary. In addition, any concerns that parents may have should be reported through the appropriate channels.
Creating a Safe Environment
In The Care Bears room, the changing room is off the main room, but with a gate fitted so that staff are not left alone behind a closed door. An agreement will be made with parents on how they wish their child to be wiped or cleaned.
SSC will ensure that all staff, students and volunteers handle children in a caring manner so the children feel safe and secure within our setting.
Child Management Policy
All staff, students and volunteers will be familiar with our Child Management Policy and it will be implemented under the guidance of the Crèche Manager.
Children will be helped to learn how to manage emotions such as anger, fear and frustration in a way that does not frighten other children. We will also ensure that staff reassure and comfort children when needed in an appropriate and caring manner.
The Manager will be responsible for ensuring that the Child Protection Policy is implemented.
Regional Emergency Social Work Service / Out of Hours
Creating a Safe Environment
Handling Complaints
We will handle complaints of abuse against children by staff, students or volunteers through the Manager.
All complaints of this nature will immediately be passed to the Chairperson who will seek advice from the Link Social Worker, Support Agency Advisor and Labour Relations where appropriate.
Decisions about whether to suspend staff while an investigation is ongoing will be taken in light of advice given.
Health and Nutrition
What we eat can play a critical role in determining our health, whatever our age. The eating patterns established in the first few years of life influence our health during childhood and adulthood. Encouraging good nutrition during the early years of life is therefore an investment in the health of our children for years to come.
A weekly menu will provide the children with varied foods. A rotating 3-week menu will be on display and emailed in advance to all parents. Recipes and food ingredients are available to parents. Parents are encouraged to offer menu suggestions or comments on the nutrition policy.
The Health and Nutrition Policy at SSC is based on the advice and ideas provided by the Public Health Agency on healthy eating for your young child 'Nutrition Matters for the Early Years' available to download at:
http://www.publichealth.hscni.net/sites/default/ files/Nutrition_Matters_for_the_earl y_years_ LR_06_16.pdf
When deciding on the menu in the provision of food/drinks, SSC will consider the following points:
Nutrition Matters for the Early Years'
Available at http://www.publichealth.hscni.net/sites/default/ files/Nutrition_Matters_for_the_earl y_years_ LR_06_16.pdf
Health and Nutrition
Mothers will be supported to continue breastfeeding their babies and are encouraged to feed their babies within their child's room at SSC or in the Managers office if they require more privacy. Expressed breast-milk can be supplied by parents in suitable bottles which will be stored in a fridge in the baby room.
Babies/infants who are taking Formula Milk will have the Formula provided by the parents/ carers in pre-measured out portions. Babies/ infants bottles must be supplied by the parent with the correct measurement of sterile water (corresponding to the portion supplied) and the bottles sealed appropriately. Staff will make up the Formula Feeds when required by the baby/ infant. Children will be held upright while bottle feeding. No bottles will be propped.
Children cared for all day will receive most of their food whilst in childcare. Children need to eat regularly and it is recommended that they are offered something to eat at least every three hours, therefore SSC have fixed meal/ snack times where children are offered the food prepared. In general, it is recommended that children being cared for over a normal working day receive at least one main meal and two
Creating a Safe Environment snacks (one being breakfast). Fruit and healthy snacks will be available in between meals if the child is hungry.
SSC recommend milk or water as a suitable drink for young children. Drinking water will be readily available at all times. Fizzy drinks will not be provided. On occasion, well-diluted fruit squash or diluted pure unsweetened fruit juice will be served with main meals to avoid damage to teeth.
Cultural dietary habits are respected. Parents should provide details of these to management.
All children need a breakfast – either at home or provided in childcare. SSC will provide an opportunity for children to eat shortly after their arrival in the morning.
Young children are very active and have high energy (calorie) and nutrient needs in proportion to their small body size and therefore need to be provided with nutritious foods that meet their requirements. These requirements can be met by including a variety of foods from each of themain food groups (bread, rice, pasta, potatoes; fruits and vegetables; milk and dairy
Creating a Safe Environment foods; meat, fish, eggs, beans). Please note all eggs/meals containing eggs are well cooked to reduce the risk of food poisoning.
Whole milk is recommended once the child is 1 year and up until they are at least 2 years. Between 2-5 years' children can drink whole or semi-skimmed milk but skimmed milk or 1% milk should be avoided as they don't provide enough calories.
Full fat spreads and dairy products are recommended to ensure children attain the energy requirements they need in the food they eat. Low fat/diet products are not recommended for children under the age of 2 years.
Children between the ages of two and five should gradually be encouraged to increase their intake of higher fibre foods. For example, wholemeal bread, wholemeal pasta, wholemeal crackers, breakfast cereals such as Weetabix or porridge. SSC will incorporate a variety of higher fibre foods into the menu plans.
It is recommended not to add salt to food during preparation, especially for young infants (<1 year) as their kidneys may not be fully developed.
Health and Nutrition
Whole nuts are unsuitable for children under the age of five years because of the risk of choking. Care will be taken with other foods that may pose a choking risk, e.g. large pieces of uncooked carrot, large pieces of unpeeled apple.
A healthy lifestyle is promoted through a variety of activities including active play, outing, cookery, stories and music etc.
SSC will participate in public health campaigns tailored for young children. SSC promotes good dental hygiene and encourage tooth brushing (without rinsing) after the child's breakfast. In addition, we organise visits by health care professionals to reinforce health promotion in areas such as dental care and personal hygiene.
Nutrition Matters for the Early Years'
Available at http://www.publichealth.hscni.net/sites/default/ files/Nutrition_Matters_for_the_earl y_years_ LR_06_16.pdf
Special Dietary Needs
Providing special diets
We aim to ensure that special dietary requirements are observed, consistent with the needs of the individual child and the pattern of care provided by the family environment.
If the child needs a special diet, it is the responsibility of the parent/carer to inform SSC management of this, so that arrangements can be made to accommodate the child's requirements. All parents must complete the document
'SPECIAL DIETARY NEEDS INFORMATION SHEET''
to inform management whether your child has or has not special dietary requirements.
The Public Health Agency advises it is unwise to restrict food choice among young children without professional help and advice. Parents requesting special diets for their children because of food allergy should do so based on medical advice.
Special Dietary Needs
Special diets for children with coeliac disease (a gluten free diet), diabetes or those who need to avoid milk or nuts and all products made from them can be quite complex. Parents must provide a diet-sheet about their child's special dietary needs that has been prepared by a registered dietitian.
Food allergy
Where parents believe that their child is sensitive or allergic to certain foods they should contact the crèche manager regarding this. Parents will be required to provide a copy of the diet sheet from a registered dietitian or specific guidance in agreement with the child's doctor. If required, the identified sensitive food will be restricted and all parents will be notified of this.
Peanut allergy
Peanut allergy is usually severe. Therefore, as a precaution, SSC will not provide peanuts or foods containing peanuts including peanut butter to any child in our care.
Parents/carers must inform SSC if their child has a known peanut allergy.
It is advised, by the Public Health Agency, that all children with a peanut allergy carry identification and where necessary a pre-filled syringe of adrenaline (e.g. epipen) which can be administered if they have a reaction.
A labelled epipen and instructions for use can be left under the care of management at SSC. It is the responsibility of the parent/carer to ensure the epipen is maintained within the expiry dates and that SSC has all recent information required to care for your child.
Recent advice from the Department of Health states that if there is a family history among parents, brothers or sisters of conditions such as asthma, eczema or hay fever, parents should speak to their GP, health visitor or medical specialist before introducing peanuts to the child for the first time.
Nutrition Matters for the Early Years'
Available at http://www.publichealth.hscni.net/sites/default/ files/Nutrition_Matters_for_the_earl y_years_ LR_06_16.pdf
Peanut allergy
It is also advised that those children who are breastfed should be breastfed throughout weaning and that high allergen foods (milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, wheat, soya, peanuts, tree nuts, sesame seeds, celery and mustard) are introduced one at a time so that is a reaction occurs the specific food causing the response can easily be identified.
Other foods which are to be avoided such as honey because of the risk of botulism in the under 1 age group, fish high in mercury such as marlin, shark, swordfish and any raw shellfish.
Birthday celebrations
Birthdays are special and SSC will celebrate this with your child should their birthday fall on a day when they attend crèche.
To comply with Health & Safety and to meet the healthy eating guidelines for Early Years, we will celebrate your child's birthday where a special birthday crown/tiara will be provided and the birthday boy/girl will eat their meals using special birthday plate/cutlery and a place mat.
Special Dietary Needs
Intimate Personal Care
The purpose of this policy is to ensure the appropriate processes with regard to intimate personal care are known and adhered to within the setting.
SSC is committed to ensuring that all staff responsible for the intimate care of children will undertake their duties in a professional manner at all times.
We recognise that there is a need to treat all children with respect and dignity when intimate care is given.
This policy has been introduced to ensure that staff, students and volunteers within the setting are aware of the Intimate Personal Care Policy and conform to the expectations of SSC in line with current standards of care.
Intimate Personal Care
Procedure
At all times management and staff will ensure that:
There is adequate support for children with intimate care needs.
Individual intimate care plans will be drawn up for particular children as appropriate to suit the circumstances of the child.
Staff who provide intimate care are trained to meet the needs of individual children.
Only vetted staff will be involved in the intimate care of the children.
All staff will adhere to SSC Safeguarding and Chid Protection Policy.
Suitable equipment and facilities are made available.
Intimate Personal Care
Staff carrying out intimate care are appropriately supported.
Where possible one to one care will be provided unless there is an identified need for more adults.
Intimate care is discussed and agreed with parents and carers.
The needs and wishes of the child are taken into consideration.
Each child has their own nappies, wipes and cream supplied by parent/carer.
Gloves and aprons are put on by staff before changing starts and the area is prepared. The changing mat is cleaned after use.
There is an appropriate sanitary bin designated for the disposal of nappies.
Special Dietary Needs
Consent Form
Consent Form
By signing below, you consent that SSC staff can assist with intimate personal care of your child and that you have read this policy and you are aware of the procedure within SSC for Intimate Personal Care.
Policy Document For Parents)
I _______________________ have read the following policies and procedures and agree to adhere to them.
I have read and understood the policies and procedures on the following
(Please tick)
Values and Principles
Admissions
Attending SSC
Infection Prevention and Control
Administering Medication
Complaints/Feedback
Positive Behaviour
Confidentiality
Whistle Blowing
Safeguarding and Child Protection
Health and Nutrition
Intimate Personal Care
Signed ________________________ Date ____________________
15 Church Street Portstewart BT55 7AH
Current Crèche Manager Mrs Christina McFarland
Office: 028 7083 3200
Mobile: 07925192505
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Current Chairperson of Board of Directors Dr Emeir McSorley
Email: email@example.com
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What to Do if Someone Goes Missing:
*This information was adapted from work by Lissa Yellowbird-Chase, Sahnish Scout of North Dakota. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/ScoutsND/ or email email@example.com
This information is meant to help families and communities find and protect people they care about. This is not everything that may need to be done and is simply meant to be a starting point. You are not alone. Connect with organizations and people for help.
Make the Call!
* Many family members do not want to call law enforcement because they think they are "overreacting"
* Law enforcement may not be "responsive" to calls for help
* They don't want to cause trouble for a family member because they may be doing something illegal
* Get the Report Number
* Document EVERYTHING
* It is not normal behavior to be gone for long
Beginning your Search:
* Learn local laws
* Document EVERYTHING
* Important tools include a journal and digital audio recording device
* Set aside items for canine searches/DO NOT TOUCH to retain scent
* Protect your scene/evidence
* Identifying information sources
* Create a poster
* Use social media
* Use clear pictures including both face and body
* Contact Information
* Known location(s)
* Medical Information, including identifiable birthmarks, tattoos, etc.
Planning should include who you can ask to help with:
* Documenting EVERYTHING
* Monitoring social media
* Making calls
* Putting up posters
* Identifying who the contact person/s
* Searching immediate & frequented areas
* Taking photos of different possible locations ASAP for future reference
Start a Timeline:
* The most crucial information comes from tracking your loved one's last known location and up to 72 hours before their disappearance
* Document EVERYTHING
* Answer the who, what, where, why, and when?
* Ask your Law Enforcement Agent to file a "Letter of Preservation" to Cell phone company
* *If your search passes the 48–72-hour mark, days & weeks start to blend together and you'll have to rely on your timeline.
* Most cell phone companies begin to purge info within 72 hours
* In many cases the concern for "preservation" happens too late
* Additional apps on the phone will require a separate letter directly to the App provider (texting apps, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.)
Additional sources to track:
* Bank records
* Child support
* Social service ~ EBT cards
* Social Security
* Digital footprints
* Tribal/BIA accounts
* Document EVERYTHING
Be watchful for potential fraudsters or opportunists:
* People wanting financial gain
* Document EVERYTHING
* If fundraising, be careful with who acts as financial agent
* For example, providing "services" for a cost
* People taking advantage of vulnerable families
* Most legitimate helpers do not charge
Self-Care:
* It can be easy to exhaust yourself under these circumstances.
* Remember to sleep, nap, rest as you are able
* BREATHE!
* Drink lots of water
* Seek out spiritual help. Remember spiritual help is not always human.
* Eat nourishing food | <urn:uuid:af1fdf9a-da43-48ba-be90-611dbd7c6c7c> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://www.miwsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/What-to-Do-if-Someone-Goes-Missing-MIWSAC.pdf | 2021-10-25T12:48:55+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323587711.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20211025123123-20211025153123-00112.warc.gz | 1,063,831,821 | 663 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.995238 | eng_Latn | 0.995424 | [
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Physical Development
- Use hall equipment to make an obstacle course and to move in a variety of ways, under, over and through. Talk about the physical effects this has on their body.
- Using larger areas to mark make i.e. outside with chalks, draw bear feet, paint fence etc.
- Talking about healthy eating, children to explore a variety of healthy foods.
- Scissor control, have different size bears for them to cut out, more abled children to follow the lines.
- To help the children with pencil control.
Mathematical Development
- Children to count steps, using happy street people pretending they are going on an adventure.
- Whilst playing for children to Count from a larger group in play i.e. can you give me five, six etc.
- Using a variety of shapes to create pictures.
- Talk about sizes Big, little, linking with Goldilocks and the three Bears.
- Begin to match numerals and quantity correctly.
- When story mapping talk about how many people are joining our adventure, how many vehicles we will need, are they big or little etc.
Expressive arts and design
- Wellie, hand, feet printing etc, on large paper outside, where can the prints take us?
- Make clay models, using bears cutters, then decorate them. With the playdough add eyes and buttons with cutters to extended their imagination.
- Draw pictures on pebbles or card of different places, transport, animals etc hid them in sand and see if they can make a story around it.
- Follow bear footprints to find a hidden bear in the forest, giving clues along the way.
- Build up stories with available props, set a scene for the children to use their imagination.
Understanding the World
- Talk about special events i.e. Pancake Day, Easter etc.
- Talk about the environment and community we live in, take photos of local places, i.e. the shops, library, park, rose gardens to help with the decisions.
- Ask the children where they would go on an adventure, would it be with their family, what's their favourite place.
- Plant veg/flowers outside/inside, watching them grow and how taking care of them.
- To provide a variety of technology for the children to operate.
Communication and Language
- Carry on with jigsaw Jenie, complete puzzle 1 and move on to puzzle 2.
Literacy
- Story telling – we're going on a bear hunt.
- Look at main characters, events, setting of the stories.
- To story map with the children, emphasising how a story is structured, start, middle, end, adding characters, place etc.
- To encourage the children to access the story area and rhyme basket more, to introduce wooden rhymes characters for the children to use independently.
- Help the children to write their own stories by scribing for them.
- When the children are at the mark making table, to continue placing their name cards in front of them to encourage them to form recognisable letters.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Whilst joining the children's play, use prepositions, such as "can you put the person on top of the house? put the train next to the track, put the baby under the blanket" etc.
- Encourage children to talk about past events, i.e. 'I went to the shop' staff to ask questions i.e. 'who went to the shop, what shop' etc.
- To support the children to use their words to build up on their vocabulary, modelling language back.
- Story mapping – encourage the children to listen to others with increasing attention and recall when mapping together using each other for ideas (link with Literacy).
- Who we live with, children to talk about who they live with at home and who's in their family.
- The children can bring in their favourite teddy and together we will have a teddy bears picnic. To make a list of food the children would like and ask parents to help cater for this.
- To continue with restorative practice, encouraging the children to use the effective statements, to solve conflicts themselves with less adult support.
- Look at the feelings of characters in books that we share, relating them to experiences that has happened.
- Support the children in their play extending on their ideas, building up a role-play with others. For example, adventures on a pirate ship, train journey, to the sea side. | <urn:uuid:90d269b1-29dd-4b7d-ae7f-f23ffe9ad137> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://moat.academy/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Bears-adventure-Term-4.pdf | 2021-10-25T14:32:18+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323587711.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20211025123123-20211025153123-00112.warc.gz | 510,720,341 | 904 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997442 | eng_Latn | 0.997442 | [
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Published on Explorable.com (https://explorable.com)
Home > Was Tycho Brahe Murdered?
Was Tycho Brahe Murdered?
Martyn Shuttleworth21K reads
Renaissance Astronomy and Hamlet
When we think of Renaissance scholars, we tend to think of dusty, pasty-faced scholars locked in darkened rooms, poring over ancient tomes and tinkering with alchemy equipment.
Part II: The Exhumation of Tycho Brahe - Renaissance Astronomy and Hamlet
This stereotype, in some cases, may have an element of truth, but it does many of the great Renaissance men a great disservice. Michelangelo was a rugged man, given to dressing in rags and he was renowned for his hot temper, once suffering a broken nose in a fight with a rival sculptor.
"When, according to habit, I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky, I noticed a new and unusual star, surpassing the other stars in brilliancy. There had never before been any star in that place in the sky."
Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe – Living On the Edge
Another man who breaks the stereotype was Tycho Brahe, surely one of the most fascinating scholars of the Renaissance, renowned for his hard drinking, 'bad boy' image. He allegedly lost his nose in a drunken rapier duel, so he had to wear a silver and gold prosthesis. However, despite this questionable lifestyle, he was one of the most brilliant astronomers of all time, marrying natural intelligence with intuition and dedication.
Tycho Brahe, in 1572, was the first astronomer to describe a supernova, using its appearance to challenge the Ptolemaic, geocentric model of the universe. In an era before the invention of the telescope, his accurate measurements of celestial bodies, using instruments he designed himself, laid the groundwork for the development of astronomy through the Renaissance [1] and the Enlightenment [2].
However, controversy surrounds the death of Tycho Brahe, and modern research has shown that the official cause of death, a twisted bladder, may be open to question. A research team from Aarhus, Denmark, has been given permission to exhume the body and is looking at a new angle: Was Tycho Brahe murdered?
The Life of Tycho Brahe
Portrait of Tycho Brahe (Public Domain)
Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) was born in Scania, a region of Denmark that is now part of Sweden. His father, Otto Brahe, was a member of the Danish nobility, and he was taken in by his uncle, Jurgen Brahe, at the age of two. In 1559, at the age of 13, Tycho entered the University of Copenhagen, initially to study law, but he soon developed an interest in astronomy. The catalyst for this interest was the eclipse of August 21st, 1560, a phenomenon that had been predicted by astronomers, the accuracy of the eclipse forecasts impressing the young scholar deeply and determining his life course.
He purchased an astronomical book, known as an ephemeris, which gave the location of celestial bodies at different times. After studying this and many of the other available texts, he came to realize the weakness of astronomy; very few texts and astronomers agreed about certain phenomena, making it difficult to make observations. In 1563, he wrote that this piecemeal gathering of information held back progress and that a concerted, long-term to chart the heavens was essential.
With the aid of his sister, Sophia, he began to take detailed measurements of the heavens, meticulously recording positions of celestial bodies, although this was before the discovery of the telescope, restricting the accuracy. The young astronomer also made many improvements to the available astronomical instruments in his quest for accuracy and perfection.
In 1572, Brahe, on a journey home from a dinner in Copenhagen, noticed people staring at the sky in amazement. Following their lead, he looked up and saw that a new star had appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Tycho immediately realized the importance of this discovery – the model of the universe proposed by Ptolemy must be wrong, because this new object proved that the heavens were not unchanging or fixed in a firmament and there was a much more dynamic process in action.
Sky Map, in Tycho Brahe's notebook (Public Domain) Intrigued by the possibilities opened by this discovery, Brahe set out to make measurements of the new object, using surveying techniques to measure the position of the star at 6am and 6pm, every day. This twice-daily measurement, looking at the star at every half of a rotation of the earth, allowed him to use a method called the diurnal parallax to establish if the star was moving when compared to the background stars. After establishing that the parallax of the star was zero, this allowed him to state that the object was much further away than the moon or planets.
In his book, De Stella Nova, Brahe published his belief that the star was a new celestial object and proposed that the heavens could not be regarded as unchanging. We now know that the object was a supernova, a dying star in one last great explosion. The subtle findings contained in the book contributed to an upswing in Brahe's fortunes, as the king of Denmark and Norway, Frederick II, financed Brahe's astronomy in Uraniborg, an observatory that incorporated underground rooms packed with astronomical equipment.
At one point, Brahe's research consumed 5% of the yearly economic output of Denmark; such was the King's devotion to his astronomer. Brahe used the wealth to build huge astronomical instruments in an underground station, complete with a roof that could be pulled aside with pulleys. Brahe remained here for 20 years, making observations that would eventually fall into the hands of Johannes Kepler, allowing him to formulate his theories about the universe, including his Laws of Planetary Motion.
These good times had to end and, in 1596, when Frederick II died and was succeeded by his son, Christian IV, Brahe found that the royal goodwill ended, and he had to flee the country. In 1597, he settled in Prague where he became the court astrologer of Emperor Rudolph II, of the Hapsburg dynasty.
The Death of the Astronomer – Was Tycho Brahe Murdered?
As the story goes, Brahe, a vivant with a taste for copious amounts of rich food and good wine, died at a banquet. He was too polite to excuse himself from the table to go to the bathroom and this caused his bladder to twist under the pressure of the accumulated urine, ultimately killing him. Kepler related that the astronomer took 11 days to die, unable to urinate and in a great deal of pain. On November 4th, 1601, the astronomer was given a full state burial in Prague, his body kitted out in full armor and his coffin escorted by 12 imperial guards.
Rumors of murder resounded around Europe, with wild speculation and conspiracies dominating conversation in aristocratic circles, although there was little evidence to support these theories. That is, until 1991, when the Prague National Museum, with Brahe's mustache in its collection, sent a few hair samples to Denmark for analysis, in an attempt to establish the cause of death once and for all. The lab tests found that the hairs contained a huge amount of mercury, more than 100 times larger than the normal level expected in a body of that period.
This cause of death was believable, considering the lifestyle of Brahe, but modern researchers made interesting discoveries that cast some doubt upon this official story, creating a whodunit worthy of a Shakespearean play, with some literary historians speculating that the death of Tycho Brahe gave the Bard the idea for the play, Hamlet.
Source URL: https://explorable.com/tycho-brahe?gid=1599
Links
[2] https://explorable.com/science-and-enlightenment
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For years, the humble moth has existed in the shadows behind the spectacular and well-loved butterfly, forever compared to its beautiful lepidoptera cousin.
Recently, there's been a change in mindset towards these nocturnal flying insects with several articles expounding the virtues of this nighttime pollinator and its importance in the ecology of the backyard garden. As adults, moths are an essential food source for many animal species including birds such as martins, flycatchers, whippoorwills, bats, toads, and other small vertebrates. And moth caterpillars are extremely important as food for most of our baby songbirds including chickadees, nuthatches, bluebirds, and the rose breasted grosbeak. As entomologist Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope says, "Caterpillars are like the bread of the diet of baby birds. They're a staple."
Moths are not only valued as an essential food source for other species but like bats are nocturnal pollinators. Planting pale or white fragrant flowers, flowers that open late afternoon or night, grow in clusters, provide easy landing platforms, and are ample nectar producers such as morning glory, heliotrope, four o'clocks, monarda, tiarella and oenothera, will attract pollinating moths to your nighttime garden. An interesting factoid: While most pollinators travel about to different gardens, moths may live their entire lives in one garden.
But for all their beneficial garden work, they've been generally considered pests of the night sky, relegated to electric moth zappers engulfing them in shots of flame or sprayed with insecticide as they gather around outdoor light fixtures. Asked in a recent interview if outdoor lighting affects insect populations, Doug Tallamy said, "Yes, particularly moths and those powerful lights that draw them in. The Saturniids [a family of large North American moths including the Luna Moth and Cecropia Moth] that are drawn into the security lights and never leave. A lot of these moths don't eat as a moth and so they emerge as an adult with all the energy they will have. If they spend it all flying around light, then they run out of energy and that's that. It's also a place where the bats come and pick them off. So, these night-time lights are death traps for moths and many other insects. Lastly, you can put motion sensors on your security lights or replace white bulbs with yellow LEDs. White lights draw insects all night long, exhausting them and making them easy prey but yellow bulbs attract few insects. If each of the millions of lights we turn on in this country, mostly out of habit, kill a few insects each night — well, you can do the math."
With the moth's new-found fame, it's not surprising that comparisons with their cousin, the butterfly, would arise. Physically, some differences are readily apparent. In most species of moths, wings are positioned vertically rather than the horizontal positioning of most species of butterflies. At rest, butterflies usually fold their wings back, while moths flatten their wings against their bodies or spread them out horizontally. Although butterflies often appear in spectacular colors, moths are generally not conspicuously colorful, with few exceptions; the luna and hummingbird moths are both beautifully colorful. Note: both luna and hummingbird moths have horizontal wing positions just like butterflies.
Many species of moths and butterflies overwinter in leaf litter such as luna moths, great spangled fritillary butterfly and woolly bear caterpillars (the Isabella tiger moth) another similarity in both the moth and butterfly.
The differences become more apparent when you compare their behavioral traits; moths are nocturnal and butterflies are diurnal, or active during the day. But they do work compatibility within these split shifts, with some minor exceptions. There are some moths active by day, most notably the hummingbird moth. Generally, after dark, moths, and bats, take over the night shift for pollination.
And there's one more tragic similarity between moths and butterflies. Moth populations, just like butterfly populations, have declined approximately 85% since the 1950s due to the use of chemical pesticides and loss of safe habitats. Additionally, a European tachinid fly, (Compsilura concinnata), introduced to control gypsy moth populations also kills the larvae of over 200 other species of moths and butterflies.
So, let's take Doug Tallamy's advice and change those white security lights to yellow bulbs or motion sensors, leave the leaves under trees to preserve moths and butterflies, and plant flowers that attract these amazing nightshift pollinators to our gardens. | <urn:uuid:2405e5b3-b915-4a94-9fea-72631070850f> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | http://nebula.wsimg.com/29d120d0754aa3caffc7afec89f4fb10?AccessKeyId=D2195B5438568F141D86&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 | 2021-10-25T14:25:15+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323587711.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20211025123123-20211025153123-00116.warc.gz | 51,338,024 | 986 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998251 | eng_Latn | 0.998434 | [
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Introduction to Plant Indicators
Weeds, those pests in your fields, are going to become your most valuable tool for testing your soil.
seedling you know that these requirements were met at least for a short time.
Most fields have weeds. They are there day and night, rain or shine, experiencing the forces that shape plant growth. Weeds can be used as dynamic and sensitive indicators of growing conditions in a field.
For millennia, farmers and ranchers have been observing weeds and making decisions based on their observations. Acquiring this detailed information has been a long and arduous task.
This specific weed information has been stored in a computer database to enable everyone to make use of this skill. High-tech tools now give modern farmers, ranchers, and gardeners information that formerly took a lifetime to acquire. This is the basis for the reference section of Reading Weeds.
Let's consider the use of plant indicators in modern agriculture. A chemical soil test is a snapshot of what is happening at that moment in the soil. From this you can infer how the crop plant might react. This is an educated guess, based on the factors of a chemical reaction and comparison to similar situations, but still a guess.
In contrast a weed seedling has survived at least several weeks of the nearby conditions, and its development tells much about those conditions. The ability to translate its message is especially valuable because it measures directly the field's ability to grow plants. This, of course, is the soil quality you most want to know.
Chemical laboratory techniques and field assays are in no sense competitive, but closely complement one another. In addition to your other conventional methods of field evaluation, weed indicators give you different information. Also whenever you are in your field, you can make observations.
Surveys of weed seeds have shown ranges of 10,000 to 50,000 seeds per square foot of soil in a field. In most fields these don't all sprout at once. Since a seed waits to germinate until conditions are right, when you see a weed
To germinate, seeds may require standing water, freezing, fire, fermentation, a lot of oxygen, or other factors. Knowing this helps you predict a crop's performance. After the plant is up, its growth shows that its growing conditions are also being met, giving you that much more information about the soil.
Clements said that "Every plant is a measure of the conditions under which it grows, an index of soil and climate, an indicator of the behavior of other plants and of animals in the same spot."
Three broad categories of plant properties are used as indicators. These are floristic composition, morphology, and elemental composition. Your choice of category will differ with the system you are studying.
Floristic Composition
A classic plant indicator is a single species whose presence or absence indicates the level of a soil quality. Some plants need a particular mineral to grow. For instance halogeton needs salt to grow (this is very rare), so its presence indicates a high level of salt in the soil.
Generally, though, it has been recognized that the entire plant community, or at least a large part of it, should be used as an indicator of conditions. The community gives repetitive, but more reliable, information about soil qualities.
Morphology
Morphology, or the study of form, is usually used to indicate plant vigor and can be used to indicate the level of soil qualities. In areas where high levels of toxic minerals occur, toxicity often results in changes in plant form and vigor. Levels of elements that are not toxic may also affect the vigor of plants whose requirements and tolerance differ widely from the levels found locally.
For instance salt can make plant leaves thick and fleshy, and high levels of nitrogen can make the distance between leaves longer.
Not only a specific quality, but the entire environmental complex may be assessed by the morphology of an indicator plant. For example, work in the western USA has shown that the growth and vigor of bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum L.) may be a good indicator of the productivity of a site for forest trees.
Elemental Composition
Levels of a particular mineral within the plant tissue can often be used as an index of its levels in the soil. Plants vary in what minerals they concentrate, passively uptake and exclude. Some plants take up a nutrient to the extent it is available in the soil. These are valuable for assaying agricultural areas. Studies of grassland weeds show that the level of potassium in buckhorn plantain leaves is directly proportional to the potassium in the soil.
Other plants concentrate minute amounts of a mineral many fold in their structure. This is the basis of geobotanical surveying, the art of finding economic mineral deposits by plants growing on the site. In Canada alpine fir needles are found to be a very sensitive indicator of molybdenum in the soil. The fir concentrates molybdenum five fold in its needles where it is easily collected and analyzed.
Use of Plant Indicators - Factor, Process, Practice
There are three main types of uses for indicator plants: factors, processes, and practices. Factors include climate (both macro and micro), light, temperature, soil, nutrients, and toxins. Processes include fire, lumbering, cultivation, erosion, and so forth, and practices are agriculture, forestry, and grazing.
Factors in a Plant's Growth
Not all weeds are created equal. Some are more valuable indicators than others because they have more stringent needs. They are conservative and refined, and opt for quality sites. Others live frivolous, gregarious lives, growing just anywhere.
For example, pigweed only indicates a generally temperate climate, whereas sheep sorrel requires low lime, acid soil that has insufficient drainage, and a hard pan. Thus sheep sorrel is much more valuable as an indicator than pigweed. This illustrates the great difference in the amount of information you can get from one plant.
Eco-Geographic Range
A plant has a definite eco-geographic range. This means a fairly well-defined geographic area, altitude range, climate range,
soil type, and moisture level. In the middle of this range the plant grows well in a variety of soils, but at the limits it becomes very selective. No longer does it tolerate just any old soil, but must have a special one. Thus a plant is a better indicator at the limits of its range.
Altitude
Altitude affects plant growth through temperature. Under normal conditions temperature generally decreases with increasing elevation: when you go up, the air gets colder. The rate of decrease is not uniform but varies with time of day, season, and location, generally averaging about 3.6 º F (2.0 º C) for each 1,000 ft. rise.
Plants use chemical reactions to grow. The speed or rate of chemical reactions slows by half with an 18 º F (10 º C.) drop in temperature. Thus, considering just altitude, plants will grow half as fast at 5,000 feet than at sea level,
Plant Form
The form a plant takes affects the way it absorbs water and nutrients. Different forms of roots pick up water from different depths of the soil. Fibrous roots spread out just under the surface to catch frequent rains or irrigation, while tap roots dive deep to bring up water when none has fallen for a while.
Water
Water is necessary for life, but too much excludes air, which is also needed. Ideally for crops an equal mix of soil particles, water, and air make up the soil. Water also mobilizes nutrients, or leaches them away from the root zone. Knowing how, when, and where a weed likes its water tells you useful information about a field's water budget.
Soil Texture
Soil texture can affect water drainage and water availability. This in turn favors one kind of root system over another and thus one plant over another.
The parent material of the soil, and its particle size and shape, determine what minerals are available and how easy it is to release them. Granitic, limestone, and alluvial soils have different balances of nutrients. The smaller the size of the grains, the more surface area is exposed to weathering or attack by plant roots.
Clays have plates of minerals. If worked moist, the plates are separated and the soil friable. But worked wet, clay becomes brick-like, and an unreceptive home for crop roots. However, some weeds (called colonizers) even thrive and flourish in this soil in stark contrast to the puny crop plants.
A simple test is used to determine if a clay soil is too wet to work. A handful of soil is squeezed in the palm of the hand and the hand opened. The resulting clump is flicked with the thumb. If the clump falls apart the soil is dry enough to work. If the clump sticks together the soil is too wet.
Puny crop plants and colonizer weeds indicate that the soil structure has been destroyed.
Organic Matter
Organic matter in the soil helps plants grow directly and indirectly. Plants mainly take up elements dissolved in the soil solution (or colloid). In many sterile soils, vital elements are chemically locked up and do not dissolve well in water. Decomposed organic matter or humates solubilize (chelate) these nutrients, keeping them available for roots to drink. After all, plants eat soup, not steak.
Organic matter, in various stages of decay, feeds microbes that mobilize minerals from the native rock. Microbes also hold precious nutrients on a water film on the soil particles. The amount one alga, fungus, or bacterium contributes is not impressive, but consider the nutrients contained by 5-25 tons of living organisms in an acre plow slice (top 8") of soil.
Some of these microbes also have symbiotic relationships with the plant roots, swapping minerals for sugars. Many common garden weeds need this lively community atmosphere, while others, like hermits, prefer rugged, sterile soils.
Limitations of Weeds as Indicators
Of course, reading weeds isn't foolproof. Some situations complicate using indicator plants. For instance, anomalies in the soil can
permit a plant to take root. Then once rooted, the plant modifies its environment to please itself. The plant then correctly indicates the qualities of the micro-site, but not the general condition of the area.
Ecotypes confuse the picture further. An area may select a genetic extreme from a weed's gene pool. Where the average weed of that type may barely tolerate an acid soil, an ecotype that developed in an acidic area may live only in acid soils.
Considering a community of plants rather than a single individual keeps these cases from influencing your field evaluation. One plant that just doesn't fit in with the rest of the community you can give special consideration. It could indicate pockets of different soil or could just be an oddball plant. More thorough investigation may show a spot with special qualities or expose it as a fraud.
Weed communities have been extensively studied by ecologists, and in fact, are part of a special field of ecology called plant sociology. Plant sociology evaluates interactions and associations of plants (including weeds) to determine which develop in each area and in what order. Although this becomes extremely involved, some parts can be applied to everyday experiences.
What we notice is that one group of plants will colonize a particular type of soil. Then another group will gradually build up numbers crowding out the first group. This is refered to as succession. One group inherits a realm that has been civilized by the colonizers.
Weeds as Indicator Plants
The best way to start using indicator plants is to map the weeds in a particular field. Next, determine their indicator value and interpretation. Then overlay this map with other maps of the same field, comparing the new information to land features and soil variations.
Besides the weed's presence, the shape of its growth can indicate excess or deficient nutrients, heavy grazing, or compacted soil. For instance hawkbit and dandelion have only half the leaf length and plant diameter in heavily grazed pasture that they do in lightly grazed pasture. The percentage of English daisy leaves
flat on the ground increases from lightly grazed, to heavily grazed, to mowed lawns.
Basic Factors
Now let us look at some factors important to the average grower.
Water has probably the most dramatic plant indicators. Chickweed and annual bluegrass show a good steady supply of water to the surface. Common horsetail shows a high water table, while swamp horsetail indicates that water stands in the spot for part of the year. Deep-rooted weeds like purslane suggest a lower water table.
Compaction by traffic promotes the growth of plants with low rosettes that can tolerate being trampled regularly, like plantains and hawkbit, or plants whose seeds need to be crushed to sprout, like pineapple weed. Layers of compaction, like plow pan, encourage docks, dandelion, and wild lettuce. Thoroughly compacted soil has primary colonizers (if anything), like lupines.
Small dips in the surface of the soil allow cooler air or frost to collect. The difference can be enough to stimulate the growth of a particular set of weeds and retard the growth of the common weeds. Thus patches of different weeds can indicate surface relief and its temperaturecaused changes.
Air temperature is usually highest close to the ground and decreases with height, since most atmospheric heat is received directly from the surface of the land and only indirectly from the sun. In cold areas plants hug the soil surface or snuggle up to rocks. Darker colored soil absorbs more of the sun's heat and thus affects plant growth.
Macro nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur) usually aren't considered to be reliably indicated by weeds. Despite this, some general guidelines can be useful. Legume weeds grow where nitrogen is low, and grasses where nitrogen is high. If redroot-pigweed and other weeds are reddish-purple and stunted, there is a low level of available phosphorus. The concentration of potassium in several grasses, especially sweet vernal grass, cocksfoot, and German velvet grass, responds directly to the amount in the soil.
Plants can't stand much salt, so it's important to know when and where salt may be increasing. Salt buildup in the soil can be inferred by the presence of halogeton, Russian thistle, or shepherds-purse - all plants that can stand salt or need it to survive.
Since the pH, or acid-base balance, determines what metal ions will move with the soil solution or stick to the soil particles, it dramatically influences weed growth. Some plants that like a low pH or acid soil are wild oat, smartweed, knotweed, curled dock, sorrel, corn spurry, buckhorn plantain, and English daisy. A high pH or alkaline soil favors orache, chickweed, columbine, shepherds-purse, hares-ear mustard, wormseed mustard, klamath weed, and broadleaf plantain.
One of the common current uses of plant indicators is to determine toxic substances in the soil. Cucumbers, oats, beans, and annual ryegrass are used to determine herbicide residue and evaluate drift. Plants have been used by prospectors to locate metal deposits. Some of these plants could be used in specialized situations, such as in serpentine (acid, high nickel, manganese) areas, to check for toxic heavy metals. There is a spiderwort (Tradescantia sp) variety that is used as a radiation monitor. This spiderwort is used by environmentalists to evaluate and document low level radiation leaks from nuclear power plants.
Scope of Book and Reference Section
The database covers the soil preferences of 500 common weeds, pasture plants, and native plants, focusing on the indicator value of the plants. To make this more generally useful I have included notes on non-chemical control, botany, climate, allelopathic interactions with crop plants, competition, value as groundcover or nurse plant, related microbes, food, fodder, and uses.
The plants selected are all of those listed in "Common Weeds of the United States" Dover reprint of a USDA publication, and "World's Worst Weeds" by Holm. A number of others were added from "Range Plant Handbook" by Phillips Petroleum and "Weeds" by Muencher based on occurrence and available information. Some plants were excluded because they grow solely in water. Some ground cover and crop plants were included because they are often found escaped from cultivation.
This should permit anyone in the continental United States to look around in their yard, garden or cultivated field, find several weeds listed in this book and interpret the condition of the soil. The written material should give one enough background to start reading weeds.
Value
Weeds are valuable, they can tell you what you are doing right or wrong. And just as a rowdy pet is both loved and irritating, weeds are viewed with ambivalence. Reading Weeds adds some more items to the positive side of the balance sheet.
The more you know about the plants growing in your area, the more you will enjoy working around them. So investigate the plants you see every day, learn their special indicator value, and begin reading the messages in the weeds. | <urn:uuid:9dd24564-197c-4eca-9a0d-5238e2441652> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://eco-farm.org/sites/default/files/documents/Conference%20Session/post/4865-Ron%20Whitehurst%20-%20Introduction%20to%20plant%20indicators.pdf | 2021-10-25T15:01:35+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323587711.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20211025123123-20211025153123-00117.warc.gz | 325,110,286 | 3,649 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997228 | eng_Latn | 0.997999 | [
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WATER QUALITY STANDARDS IN OHIO GRAND RIVER (UPPER) WATERSHED
Table of Contents
C
C1 Introduction
TMDLs are developed as a step towards achieving water quality standards (WQS) in waters where the standards are not being met. The purpose of WQS is to protect public health and wellbeing and ensure that public water resources can be utilized to their full potential.
The basis of water quality standards across the United States is the Clean Water Act (CWA). This legislation was passed by Congress in 1972 with the intent to address the growing need to restore and protect the country's deteriorated water resources. Its objective is to restore the quality of the nation's waters in terms of chemical, physical and biological integrity, ultimately protecting for recreation and the propagation of fish, shellfish, and wildlife.
Under the CWA, authority is extended to all states and tribal nations to develop their own set of WQS, which must be as protective of the use as the federal standards. Ohio has developed WQS that are consistent with the CWA.
WQS are made up of three basic parts: beneficial uses, water quality criteria, and antidegradation. Water resources are assigned beneficial use designations which reflect the kinds of activities or conditions that the waters can reasonably be expected to support. Examples include public water supplies, recreation, and supporting fish and other aquatic organisms. Water quality criteria are the "measuring stick" used to determine if each of the use designations are being met. When the criteria are violated there is impairment of the use. Antidegradation serves to restrict further degradation of water quality from current conditions.
C2 Use Designations
In Ohio the uses of surface waters are divided into three broad categories which deal with supply, recreation, and the support of aquatic life. Supply uses deal with direct human consumption of water, livestock watering, crop irrigation, or water use in some industrial or other process. For supply uses, the water resource is evaluated in terms of its chemical quality and the presence of microbial organisms. Recreation uses deal with the safety of the water for human contact where incidental ingestion may occur and/or direct contact with the skin, eyes, or other body parts. The presence of harmful microbes is the basis for evaluation. Aquatic life uses require taking a broader view of the water resource where not only water chemistry is relevant but also the physical nature of the system itself, namely the stream's habitat features and flow regime. Table C-1 lists each of Ohio's beneficial use designations and describes the defining features of the use category and a general assessment of the implications to its associated water quality criteria.
As conditions or circumstances change, sometimes it is appropriate to change a use designation. Examples might include a stream that recovers from past channelization and regains habitat suitable for a healthier aquatic community or streams that increase in the frequency of recreation use due to new boating opportunities. Determining the appropriate use designations for a water body uses a process called a use attainability analysis (UAA), which is based on the best information available. The factors to be considered include the physical, chemical, biological, and economic use removal criteria described in EPA's water quality standards regulation (40 CFR 131.10).
Use designations for Ohio's water bodies are codified in the Ohio Administrative Code (OAC) 3745-07 through 3745-32. Changing a use designation requires a rulemaking procedure which includes an opportunity for public review of the proposed action.
Table C-1. Water use designations applied to water bodies throughout Ohio.
| | | | Key Attributes | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Beneficial Use | | (or Why a Water Would be | | |
| | | | | | Practical Impacts |
| | Designation | | Designated the Beneficial Use) | | |
| | Designations for the Protection of Aquatic Life Uses | | | | |
| | (see Figure C-1 for distribution of use designations in Ohio) | | | | |
| Coldwater habitat - Subcategories - inland trout streams - native fauna | | Native cold water or cool water species; put-and-take trout stocking | | More stringent ammonia, cyanide, dissolved oxygen, phenol, pH, silver, and temperature criteria; may result in additional wastewater treatment requirements | |
| Exceptional warmwater habitat | | Unique and diverse assemblage of fish and invertebrates | | More stringent temperature, dissolved oxygen, and ammonia criteria; may result in additional wastewater treatment requirements | |
| Seasonal salmonid habitat | | Supports lake run steelhead trout fisheries | | More stringent ammonia, cyanide, dissolved oxygen, phenol, pH, silver, and temperature; slightly more restrictive chlorine disinfection practices | |
| Warmwater habitat | | Typical assemblages of fish and invertebrates, similar to least impacted reference conditions | | Baseline regulatory requirements in line with Clean Water Act “fishable goal” expectations | |
| Limited warmwater habitat | | Temporary designations based on 1978 WQS and not subjected to use attainability analysis; being phased out | | Exempt from TDS criteria and may also be exempt from pH, iron and zinc criteria as well | |
| Modified warmwater habitat | | Tolerant assemblages of fish and macro-invertebrates, but otherwise similar to WWH; irretrievable condition precludes complete recovery to reference condition | | Less restrictive requirements for dissolved oxygen and ammonia; may result in less restrictive wastewater treatment requirements | |
| Limited resource waters | | Fish and macroinvertebrates severely limited by physical habitat or other irretrievable condition | | Less restrictive aquatic life criteria for majority of pollutants; may result in less restrictive wastewater treatment requirements | |
| | Designations for the Protection of Recreational Activities | | | | |
| Bathing waters | | Bathing beach with lifeguards/bath house; greatest potential exposure to bacteria | | Lowest risk of swimmer’s illness after exposure; greater disinfection of wastewater | |
| Class A primary contact recreation | | All lakes with publicly or privately improved access points; otherwise specifically designated in rule | | Relatively low risk of illness from normal water recreation activities | |
| | | | Key Attributes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Beneficial Use | | (or Why a Water Would be | |
| | | | | Practical Impacts |
| | Designation | | Designated the Beneficial Use) | |
| Class B primary contact recreation | | All waters of the state receive this designation unless they meet the criteria for other recreation uses | | |
| Class C primary contact recreation | | All historically channelized waterways that have a drainage area of less than 3.1 square miles; otherwise specifically designated in rule | | |
| Secondary contact recreation | | Water depth precludes full body immersion; low proximity to residential areas; lowest potential exposure to bacteria | | |
| | Designations for the Protection of Water Supplies | | | |
| Public water supply | | All waters within 500 yards of all public water supply surface water intakes, all publicly owned lakes and reservoirs, all privately owned lakes and reservoirs used as a drinking water source, all emergency water supplies | | |
| Agricultural water supply | | Water used, or potentially used, for livestock watering and/or irrigation | | |
| Industrial water supply | | Water used for industrial purposes | | |
C3 Water Quality Criteria
Water quality criteria are developed to define and protect a level of water quality that will sustain a water body's designated uses. When a violation of the criteria is observed, the designated use is not being met. Designated uses often have several different criteria established for their protection such as concentration limits for several different metal and organic compounds. Aquatic life uses are evaluated using three criteria based on biological indices. Use attainment decisions are predicated on the results of each of these metrics when the scores are available. A violation of some but not all of the biological criteria results in partial attainment of the use, while a violation of all of the biological criteria places the water body in a nonattainment category. When all of the applicable water quality biological criteria are met the water body is in full attainment of its use.
Ohio's water quality criteria are expressed both numerically and narratively. Numeric criteria are estimations of concentrations of chemicals and degree of aquatic life toxicity allowable in a water body without adversely impacting its beneficial uses. Although numeric criteria are applied to water bodies, they primarily are used to regulate dischargers through NPDES permits. The criteria are used to calculate how much of each pollutant is allowed in waste water. Table C-2 highlights the criteria established to protect recreation uses and Table C-3 displays the biological criteria to protect aquatic life uses.
Narrative "free froms," located in rule 3745-1-04 of the OAC, are general water quality criteria that apply to all surface waters. These criteria state that all waters shall be free from sludge, floating debris, oil and scum, color and odor producing materials, substances that are harmful to human, animal or aquatic life, and nutrients in concentrations that may cause algal blooms. Much of Ohio EPA's present strategy regarding water quality based permitting is based upon
the narrative free from, "no toxics in toxic amounts." Ohio EPA developed its strategy based on an evaluation of the potential for significant toxic impacts within the receiving waters. Very important components of this evaluation are the biological survey program and the biological criteria used to judge aquatic life use attainment.
C3.1 Recreation Criteria
Water bodies are held to recreation use criteria only during time of the year when people are most likely to be engaging in water activities such as swimming, wading, or boating. This recreation season has been defined as starting on May first and ending on October thirty-first.
Criteria are established to protect against disease causing organisms that may be ingested or introduced to the eyes, skin or other body parts during water recreation. The criteria are set for maximum concentrations of bacteria associated with human or animal wastes which serve as surrogates for a wide array of disease causing organisms that are much more difficult to detect due to their relatively low concentrations in the environment and the variety of methods needed to correctly identify them. Table C-2 displays the criteria for the various recreation use designations (from Table 7-13 of OAC 3745-1-07).
Table C-2. Water quality criteria established for recreation uses within water bodies throughout Ohio.
1 Except as noted in footnote a, these criteria shall not be exceeded in more than ten per cent of the samples taken during any thirty-day period.
| | | | E. coli (colony forming units per 100 ml) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Recreation Use | | Seasonal Geometric Mean | Single Sample Maximum1 |
| Bathing water | | 126 | | |
| Class A primary contact recreation | | 126 | | |
| Class B primary contact recreation | | 161 | | |
| Class C primary contact recreation | | 206 | | |
a This criterion shall be used for the issuance of beach and bathing water advisories.
Water bodies with a designated recreation use of PCR "...are suitable for one or more full-body contact recreation activities such as, but not limited to, wading, swimming, boating, water skiing, canoeing, kayaking, and scuba diving" [OAC 3745-1-07 (B)(4)(b)]. There are three classes of PCR use to reflect differences in the potential frequency and intensity of use. Streams designated PCR class A support, or potentially support, frequent primary contact recreation activities. Streams designated PCR class B support, or potentially support, occasional primary contact recreation activities. Streams designated as PCR class C support, or potentially support, infrequent primary contact recreation activities. Streams designated as SCR use are rarely used for water-based recreation.
C3.2 Aquatic Life Biocriteria
Ohio uses biocriteria to determine if aquatic life uses are being met. Biological criteria are based on aquatic community characteristics that are measured both structurally and functionally. The biocriteria use three multi-metric indices that are each based on measures of the aquatic community (e.g., number of different species). The use of biocriteria is an exceptional way for determining if aquatic life uses are being met since the use is measured
directly instead of using less reliable surrogate measures. Investigations into the water quality problems that lead to impaired aquatic life uses is carried out through field observations and analysis of the water quality data collected. A weight of evidence approach is taken in linking the impaired biological community to specific environmental stressors such as a pollutant or poor habitat quality.
The three multi-metric indices used by Ohio EPA are the Index of Biotic integrity (IBI), the Modified Index of well being (MIwb) and the Invertebrate Community Index (ICI). These three indices are based on species richness, trophic composition, diversity, presence of pollutiontolerant individuals or species, abundance of biomass, and the presence of diseased or abnormal organisms. The IBI and the MIwb apply to fish; the ICI applies to macroinvertebrates. Ohio EPA uses the results of sampling reference sites to set minimum criteria index scores for use designations in water quality standards. Table C-3 displays the criteria for the various aquatic life use designations in different ecoregions of the state while Figure C-2 is a map of the ecoregion boundaries in Ohio.
Table C-3. Biological criteria applicable to rivers and streams throughout Ohio for three aquatic life use designations.
Note: Criteria are established based on ecoregion and assessment method.
1 Coldwater habitats (CWH), limited warmwater habitat (LWH), resource waters (LRW) and seasonal salmonid habitat (SSH) do not have associated biological criteria.
| | | | | | | | Biological Criteria for the Applicable Aquatic | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | | | | Life Use Designations1 | | | |
| | | | Biological | | Assessment | | | | | |
| | Ecoregion | | Index | | Method2, 3 | | WWH | | EWH | MWH4 |
| Eastern Cornbelt Plains (ECBP) | | IBI | | Headwater | | 40 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Wading | | 40 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Boat | | 42 | | 48 | | |
| | | | | | Wading | | 8.3 | | 9.4 | 6.2 |
| | | | MIwb | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | Boat | | 8.5 | | 9.6 | 5.8 / 6.6 |
| | | ICI | | All5 | | 36 | | 46 | | |
| Erie-Ontario Lake Plains (EOLP) | | IBI | | Headwater | | 40 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Wading | | 38 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Boat | | 40 | | 48 | | |
| | | | | | Wading | | 7.9 | | 9.4 | 6.2 |
| | | | MIwb | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | Boat | | 8.7 | | 9.6 | 5.8 / 6.6 |
| | | ICI | | All5 | | 34 | | 46 | | |
| Huron-Erie Lake Plains (HELP) | | IBI | | Headwater | | 28 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Wading | | 32 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Boat | | 34 | | 48 | | |
| | | | | | Wading | | 7.3 | | 9.4 | 5.6 |
| | | | MIwb | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | Boat | | 8.6 | | 9.6 | 5.7 / 5.7 |
| | | ICI | | All5 | | 34 | | 46 | | |
| Interior Plateau (IP) | | IBI | | Headwater | | 40 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Wading | | 40 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Boat | | 38 | | 48 | | |
| | | | | | Wading | | 8.1 | | 9.4 | 6.2 |
| | | | MIwb | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | Boat | | 8.7 | | 9.6 | 5.8 / 6.6 |
| | | ICI | | All5 | | 30 | | 46 | | |
| | | IBI | | Headwater | | 44 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Wading | | 44 | | 50 | | |
| | | | | Boat | | 40 | | 48 | | |
| | | | | | Wading | | 8.4 | | 9.4 | 6.2 / / 5.5 |
| | | | MIwb | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | Boat | | 8.6 | | 9.6 | 5.8 / 6.6 / 5.4 |
2 The assessment method used at a site is determined by its drainage area (DA) according to the following: Headwater: DA ≤ 20 mi 2 ; wading: DA >20 mi 2 and ≤ 500 mi 2 ; boat: DA > 500 mi 2.
3 MIwb not applicable to drainage areas less than 20 mi 2
5 Limited to sites with appropriate conditions for artificial substrate placement.
4 Biocriteria depend on type of MWH. MWH-C (due to channelization) is listed first, MWH-I (due to impoundment) is listed second, and MWH-A (mine affected) is listed third (only applicable in the WAP).
C3.3 Public Drinking Water Supply Criteria
The Public Drinking Water Supply (PDWS) beneficial use represents the intersection of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The goal is for Ohio public water systems to produce safe drinking water using only conventional treatment, resulting in reduced financial cost to communities and minimized risk to human health. Ohio applies the public drinking water supply use to all waters within 500 yards of an active public drinking water supply intake and all publically owned lakes. Ohio EPA has developed a set of water quality criteria for protection of the PDWS use and applies the criteria to water quality data collected in the raw source water.
The water quality standards for protection of the public drinking water supply use were developed with the acknowledgment that source waters undergo a certain amount of treatment and contaminant removal prior to human consumption. This baseline expectation of treatment was defined as "conventional treatment" and includes conventional filtration, coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation and disinfection. Source waters meeting these instream water quality standards could be treated with conventional processes only in order to comply with Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) standards for finished water. Therefore, instream standards for source water contaminants not effectively removed by conventional processes are based directly on the finished water SDWA standards.
Ohio is focusing on contaminants that pose the greatest risk to human health, impact treatment costs, and can be controlled within the watershed through source water protection efforts or existing permit programs. Initially, the focus is on nitrate, pesticides, microbial pathogens (Cryptosporidium) and other contaminants with established SDWA standards. Treatment options for these contaminants often exceed conventional measures and can be quite costly. Assessments in the future will be expanded as additional water quality standards are established.
C3.4 Human Health Criteria
Ohio has adopted human health WQS criteria to protect the public from adverse impacts, both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic, due to exposure via drinking water (applicable at public water supply intakes, see Section C3.3) and to exposure from the contaminated flesh of sport fish (applicable in all surface waters). Specific criteria for pollutant concentrations to protect human health are found in rule 3745-1-33 and rule 3745-1-34 of the OAC.
The purpose of the non-drinking water criterion is to ensure levels of a chemical in water do not bioaccumulate in fish to levels harmful to people who catch and eat the fish. Ohio measures contaminants in fish tissue and uses the data in two comparisons: (1) to determine if the human health criteria are being violated, thus identifying the water for restoration through a TMDL or other action, and (2) to determine the quantity of sport fish that may be safely consumed with the water in the current condition.
Two common contaminants in fish tissue in Ohio are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and mercury. PCBs are currently banned from use in the U.S. and are expected to decrease in streams over time. Mercury is a ubiquitous contaminant in streams throughout the U.S. and its primary source is thought to be mercury deposited from the atmosphere. Mercury as a surface water pollutant is being addressed in a variety of ways outside of the traditional TMDL process, including limits on mercury emissions from air sources, mercury take-back programs, and legislation prohibiting the sale of most mercury-containing products. Unless there are known or suspected local surface water sources, reducing the levels of these pollutants is more effectively accomplished via general source reduction than through individual watershed TMDLs.
Information regarding fish consumption advisories can be found at: http://epa.ohio.gov/dsw/fishadvisory/index.aspx.
C4 Antidegradation
Antidegradation refers to provisions that must be followed before authorizing any increased activity on a water body that may result in a lowering of water quality including an increase in the discharge of a regulated pollutant, or activities that may significantly alter the physical habitat. The antidegradation rule is required by the Clean Water Act and federal regulations. Antidegradation must be a part of any state's water quality standards program. The antidegradation rule is the last of three elements required in a water quality standards program. The antidegradation rule must protect the existing use of the water body and allow a lowering of water quality only when it is necessary to support important social and economic development. Simply put, the antidegradation rule establishes a procedure to determine that a discharge is necessary before authorizing it.
The state's antidegradation rule establishes procedures and requirements to ensure that the concepts outlined by the federal regulations are met. These requirements include public participation activities, intergovernmental coordination, a determination of important social and economic development, an alternatives analysis and greater protection for exceptional quality streams. Table C-4 lists Ohio's antidegradation categories, key attributes of that category, and the associated practical impacts regarding activities involving that water resource.
Table C-4. Antidegradation categories used for water bodies throughout Ohio.
| | | | Key Attributes | Practical Impacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | or Why a Water Would be | Bold = Stream Segments/Miles Classified in |
| | Category | | Designated in the Category | Rule |
| Outstanding national resources waters (Tier 3) | | Water has unique attributes and has national significance; may not be adequately protected by beneficial use classification system | | |
| Outstanding state waters (exceptional ecological value) (Tier 2+) | | Water is among the very best within Ohio; supports very diverse aquatic life and endangered or threatened species | | |
| Outstanding state waters (exceptional recreational value) (Tier 2+) | | Water body supports highly valued or unique recreational usage | | |
| Superior high quality waters (Tier 2+) | | Supports diverse aquatic life and endangered or threatened species | | |
| State resource waters - general high quality waters (Tier 2) | | Diversity of aquatic life unknown or typical of a warmwater community; water body listed in 1978 (or later) as SRW based on adjacent park or preserve | | |
| General high quality waters (Tier 2) | | Supports typical aquatic life community | | |
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Lesson 16: Constructing Nets
Classwork
Opening Exercise
Sketch the faces in the area below. Label the dimensions.
© 2014 Common Core, Inc. Some rights reserved. commoncore.org
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Exploratory Challenge 1: Rectangular Prisms
a. Use the measurements from the solid figures to cut and arrange the faces into a net.
b. A juice box measures 4 inches high, 3 inches long, and 2 inches wide. Cut and arrange all 6 faces into a net.
c. Challenge: Write a numerical expression for the total area of the net for part (b). Explain each term in your expression.
Exploratory Challenge 2: Triangular Prism
Use the measurements from the triangular prism to cut and arrange the faces into a net.
© 2014 Common Core, Inc. Some rights reserved. commoncore.org
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Exploratory Challenge 3: Pyramids
Pyramids are named for the shape of the base.
a. Use the measurements from this square pyramid to cut and arrange the faces into a net. Test your net to be sure it folds into a square pyramid.
b. A triangular pyramid that has equilateral triangles for faces is called a tetrahedron. Use the measurements from this tetrahedron to cut and arrange the faces into a net.
© 2014 Common Core, Inc. Some rights reserved. commoncore.org
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Problem Set
1. Sketch and label the net of the following solid figures, and label the edge lengths.
a. A cereal box that measures 13 inches high, 7 inches long, and 2 inches wide
b. A cubic gift box that measures 8 cm on each edge
c. Challenge: Write a numerical expression for the total area of the net in part (b). Tell what each of the terms in your expression means.
2. This tent is shaped like a triangular prism. It has equilateral bases that measure 5 feet on each side. The tent is 8 feet long. Sketch the net of the tent, and label the edge lengths.
3. The base of a table is shaped like a square pyramid. The pyramid has equilateral faces that measure 25 inches on each side. The base is 25 inches long. Sketch the net of the table base, and label the edge lengths.
4. The roof of a shed is in the shape of a triangular prism. It has equilateral bases that measure 3 feet on each side. The length of the roof is 10 feet. Sketch the net of the roof, and label the edge lengths.
© 2014 Common Core, Inc. Some rights reserved. commoncore.org
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Partners in Engineering: Outreach efforts provide holistic engineering education for middle school girls 1
Abstract
The Partners in Engineering (PIE) program brings together 8 th grade girls and female engineering students from Clarkson University to experience mentoring, leadership, and real-life engineering problem solving. The program aims to empower young women to make informed and educated choices for advanced coursework and careers in engineering and technology-related fields. A team of female engineering student mentors teaches a three-week long engineering problem solving unit to 8 th grade technology classes, in which students apply an engineering problem solving process to address and solve an issue that is relevant to their school or community. Students are exposed to the creative side of engineering problem solving and the breadth of the engineering disciplines. The holistic nature of the problem solving activity emphasizes the relevance of engineering problem solving to community, society, humanity, and the environment. Extracurricular mentoring activities provide participants with opportunities to interact more closely and to develop stronger personal relationships. Evaluations have consistently shown that the mentoring/role model component is the most widely appreciated aspect of the program, valued highly by the college mentors, the 8 th grade girls, and their parents.
While the overall assessment plan includes a combination of quantitative and qualitative instruments to provide an in-depth understanding of the program's impacts, this paper reports findings from the qualitative aspects of the program evaluation. The assessment has shown that the program improves participants' understanding and appreciation of engineering problem solving, increases the younger girls' general understanding of engineering and the potential role of women in engineering careers, provides leadership opportunities and opportunities for increasing self confidence and self-efficacy, and provides positive role model and mentoring experiences. Positive feedback from teachers and parents supports these findings. Comments indicate that the 8 th grade girls benefit from their participation in the PIE program - through their contact with the women engineering students, the breath of exposure to professional women in general, and the experience of using math and science to solve a meaningful problem.
Introduction
The underrepresentation of women and minorities in engineering, science and technical (SET) fields is well documented. [1-5] Women and minorities (both sexes) comprise about two thirds of the entire U.S. workforce, but account for only 25 percent of the technical workforce, [2] while minority and non-minority females represent a mere16 to 17 percent of the SET workforce. [6] Trends in the composition of the U.S. workforce show a steady decline of white male representation and an increase in female and minorities, yet representation of women and minorities in the SET fields remains flat. [3, 7]
1 Dewaters, J., S.E. Powers, M. Graham. "Partners in Engineering: Outreach efforts provide holistic engineering education for middle school girls" In: Proceedings of the 113th Annual ASEE Conference & Exposition (Chicago IL June 2006, paper number 2006-1471)
The need for scientists, engineers and advanced-degree technologists in the U.S. workforce is expected to grow as the economic and cultural aspects of our society become increasingly grounded in technological advances. The U.S. Department of Labor projects that the growth of jobs requiring technical degrees will grow at three times the rate of occupations in general, while twenty-five percent of our current scientists and engineers are expected to reach retirement age by 2010. [2, 6] The net result will be an anticipated two million new jobs in science and engineering by 2010. If the number of American women and minorities obtaining degrees in quantitative disciplines such as math, engineering, computer and physical sciences were representative of their proportion in the general population, it is estimated that there would now be over a million more qualified workers in those fields. [1] Efforts to bring the composition of the SET labor market more in line with that of the general U.S. workforce will help to avoid the projected severe shortages in SET professionals. The operative question is: where do women and minorities disappear from the pool?
Engineering enrollment vs. bachelors degree data indicate that the problem of female scarcity is one of enrollment into, rather than one of dropping out of, engineering programs. [8] Once enrolled, women are more likely than their male counterparts to complete a science/engineering program rather than dropping out or switching to a different major. [7, 9] Still, the fraction of all engineering degrees awarded to women has remained at or below 20 percent since the mid 1990's, and recent enrollment data indicate that these stable patterns are not expected to change in the near future. [4, 5]
The science and engineering gender gap has more to do with perceptions and beliefs than it does with achievement levels. [7, 8] According to data from the College Board, [10-12] with few exceptions, sex differences in high school math and science achievement levels and course selection are by now minimal, yet differences in SET college and career aspirations are great. Thus, young women – particularly non-minority women – are qualified to pursue SET studies, but are choosing not to. The reasons for this are varied and complex, and likely stem from a number of complex issues that permeate throughout family, school, and society, including for example the lack of exposure to technology-based toys and experiences as children, teacher expectations and classroom climate, lack of encouragement, gender-biased literature, subtle parental and societal influences, lack of female professional role models, peer pressure to avoid academic subjects deemed decidedly "unfeminine," feelings of isolation, lack of confidence in math and science, and a perception that SET subjects are the domain of "white boys" [7] and are not particularly useful to themselves or to humanity in general. [2, 7, 13-20]
Aside from negative perceptions of or lack of confidence in engineering and science, many girls approaching college age have only a vague notion, or no notion at all, of what engineers actually do, or of the breadth and variety of engineering disciplines. Efforts to attract girls to engineering need to include the promotion of engineering as a "normal" choice, not just an "outstanding" choice reserved for the top girls in the class. Moreover, girls need to be made aware that science and engineering are social endeavors that involve working with and helping people and communities. [8, 21] In focus group interviews, representatives from Simmons School of Management found that middle school girls generally held high career aspirations, expecting to work full time, but highly rated the importance of helping others and making the world a better place, as well as living a balanced life. [22] Engineering is seen largely as a solitary, rather than a social, occupation. Efforts to frame engineering and technical careers in a broader, more holistic light, emphasizing the usefulness of engineering to social, environmental, medical, and other people-related needs, will help to make engineering a more female-friendly option.
Interventions have been implemented throughout the U.S. to help increase pre-college girls' participation in SET studies, beginning largely with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Program for Women and Girls, created in 1993, and continuing to the present day. [8, 23] Strategies have included exposure to role models and mentors, job shadowing, providing career information, the introduction of more "female friendly" instruction methods, summer camps, parent activities, and both in-school and out-of-school experiential programs related to science and math. For example, the WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) program at the State University of New York in Stony Brook matches 20 college students with 55 middle school girls for a two-week summer program, followed by continued work on a science project during the school year. [24] Single gender science and technology clubs provide opportunities for students to participate in hands-on, team-based activities within a non-threatening environment, and in two Massachusetts schools the clubs were shown to improve girls' participation in the co-ed classroom. [25] Likewise, a variety of summer programs bring girls from middle and high schools to college campuses throughout the country to participate in engineering, math, and technologyrelated activities, and are reported to improve girls' confidence, independence, and problem solving skills. [23] A summer camp run by North Carolina State's Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education engages middle school girls in mathematical investigations of community problems, to help show math's relevance to their lives and community. [26]
High quality after-school, weekend, and summer programs have been shown to strengthen education and career aspirations. [27] However, scheduling and recruiting constraints often limit participant enrollment. Programs are most effective when implemented within the school system, preferable integrated into the existing curriculum. [2, 15] Similarly, programs that introduce girls to science, math, and engineering through experiencing the creative, communityoriented aspects of engineering problem solving, within a supportive, team-based environment, will give them a more positive and inviting impression of engineering studies and careers.
This paper provides a descriptive analysis of an outreach program conducted at Clarkson University that brings female engineering students into a local middle school classroom to experience mentoring, leadership, and multidisciplinary problem solving within the context of the regular school curriculum. The program capitalizes on the holistic problem-solving nature of all engineering disciplines as a means to engage girls in the relevance of technology-based careers to people and community. A thorough description of the full assessment plan is provided, with results from the qualitative portion of the evaluation. The program's value is demonstrated with a combination of summative and cumulative assessment results.
Program Description
The Partners in Engineering (PIE) program was piloted in 1999 with seed funding from the Engineering Information Foundation, an agency located in New York, NY that works to improve engineering education and practice and to increase women's role in engineering; and was further developed with additional funding from the National Science Foundation's Program for Gender Equity, housed in NSF's Division of Human Resources Department, Directorate for Education and Human Resources (DUE-9979279). The full-scale program was funded by NSF from 2000 through 2003, and continues to operate as part of Clarkson's more general K-12 outreach efforts.
The overall goals of the program are to increase the interest and participation of middle school girls in SET studies and activities, to positively alter their impression of the engineering career field, and ultimately to empower the young women to make informed and educated choices for advanced coursework and careers in SET. The project design has been guided by the following objectives:
1. Provide both middle school girls and college women with an appreciation of the holistic nature of engineering problem solving required to tackle real-world problems;
2. Increase critical-thinking and problem-solving skills;
3. Foster an understanding of engineering as a profession, and the role of women in engineering and technology-related careers;
4. Provide both middle school girls and college women positive mentoring experiences and opportunities to work with role models;
5. Provide leadership opportunities for both college women and middle school girls; and,
6. Provide opportunities for increasing self-esteem and self-confidence.
The PIE program relies on a combination of in-school and out-of-school components to achieve our overall goals. The mainstay of the program consists of a series of regular classroom sessions at the middle school where students explore active, hands-on learning in a team setting as they tackle the solution of a real-world problem under the direction of a team of Clarkson's female engineering students. These college-age mentors are trained as part of a semester-long directedstudy course at Clarkson, which provides them with basic skills in classroom instruction, lesson plan preparation and interpretation, project management, and content knowledge regarding the particular middle school curriculum that they will teach. In addition to basic instruction and skill development, the training component of the program emphasizes the importance of teamwork and commitment, and provides an opportunity for the mentors to form a cohesive group as they practice lessons, seek guidance, and work through problems as they arise.
The Clarkson mentors work with a dedicated partner teacher from the technology department of a nearby middle school to plan the details of their instructional unit. They then teach this threeweek long project-based unit on problem solving to selected 8 th grade technology classes at the school. Middle school girls are recruited during the spring of their 7 th grade year, and girls who enroll in the program are scheduled, to the extent possible, into one of the mentor-instructed technology periods. This program structure has evolved through a series of changes since the program's inception. The program was initially offered to 8 th grade girls as an enrichment activity, whereby participants were allowed to leave their regularly scheduled technology classes to work with mentors for the three-week long problem solving unit. While transition into the regular, mixed-group classroom meant the loss of what many appreciated as a "safe, supportive" single-sex environment, there were many benefits realized by the move, including: increased learning opportunities for more students; opportunities for 8 th grade boys to work with bright, professional women involved in non-traditional careers; increased support from the partner teacher; and increased exposure and recognition for the program in general.
Clarkson mentors also arrange and host a program orientation, a final dinner/panel discussion with area engineers or additional female engineering students, and several extracurricular activities for the middle school girls. The additional mentoring events have included a variety of evening and weekend activities such as teambuilding and leadership experiences, game nights, bowling, crafts, movie nights, and pizza dinners. These gatherings provide opportunities for interaction and communication between the participants in a setting that fosters the development of role-modeling and peer-like relationships between the two groups of students. In fact, many of the participants over the years have come to value this aspect of the program as particularly important – besides the enjoyable social aspects for 8 th graders and college women alike, several mentors have attributed the successful development of their strong connections with the 8 th graders, as peers and as mentors, to the opportunities provided by the mentoring events. Many of our mentors have exchanged phone numbers, email, and IM addresses with the girls over the years, which has encouraged them to communicate and become personally involved with some of the girls.
Participant numbers have varied over the years (Table 1). To date the program has involved 30 Clarkson women engineering students and 116 8 th grade girls. Since technology classes are typically fairly well balanced in terms of male/female student ratio, the in-class PIE component usually reaches roughly twice as many students (boys and girls combined) as the participant numbers indicate. Additionally, the technology teacher uses the PIE problem solving curriculum in his nonmentored sections, so the total number of students exposed to the problem-solving project is on the order of 115 to 125 students per year.
Problem Solving Curriculum
While mentoring and role model concepts are an important part of any program designed to encourage young women to consider engineering careers, the application of a project-based learning approach integrated with holistic engineering problem solving brings an added dimension to this gender equity program. The concept of project-based learning incorporates a big-picture approach to enhancing science, math, and technology knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving skills, and nicely demonstrates "engineering in action." Under the direction of their college student mentors, the 8 th graders gain first-hand experience with tackling a real-world engineering project as they work
| Table 1. Summary of Participant numbers | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Program Year† | | Middle school | participants | Clarkson | mentors |
| AY01 | | 21 | | | 8 | |
| AY02 | | 23 | | | 10 | |
| AY03 | | 19 | | | 2 | |
| AY04 | | 17 | | | 4 | |
| AY05 | | 19 | | | 2 | |
| AY06 | | 17 | | | 4 | |
toward solving a problem that is relevant to their school and community. A problem assignment that illustrates the positive social benefits of science and technology is particularly appealing to women and girls; not only does it demonstrate the connections between math, science, and technology and their application for problem solving in general, but moreover, it exposes students to the potential connections engineering can have to human and societal issues.
The three-week curriculum outlined in Table 2 brings students through the stages of a formalized problem solving process that mirrors an approach used by practicing engineers and professionals. Students begin the unit with a problem assignment – in this case, the problem is concerned with waste minimization. Students are tasked with developing a usable product that incorporates nonbiodegradable solid waste as a raw material. Students then enter the problem solving process, starting with problem identification and investigation. Students investigate the nature of the assigned problem, assess current disposal practices, and identify critical issues and constraints stemming from environmental, community, or other impacts. Students then explore potential solutions to their problem. Through guided discussions facilitated by the college mentors, the students arrive at the idea of using waste materials as aggregates in a concrete mix. This conclusion necessitates more learning: students must gather basic information about concrete, including how it is made and its potential uses; explore material properties of concrete and of different types of waste materials; learn about different types of production and materials processing methods; and finally, with respect to concrete, they need to understand compressive and tensile forces and stresses. Students construct concrete test cylinders using different types of waste materials as fine and coarse aggregates, and measure their compressive strength during a field trip to Clarkson University's Civil Engineering testing laboratory. The strength results are evaluated, together with additional qualitative criteria, with a matrix approach that demonstrates the use of a multi-criteria engineering decision making process. Students ultimately select their best choice of waste aggregate material and produce their final product.
Table 2. Environmental Problem Solving Curriculum: Converting nonbiodegradable solid waste into a usable product
1. Define our problem: Introduction to Problems associated with Solid Waste
* Definitions and statistics about solid waste generation, including an historical perspective of the impacts technology and society have had on waste generation
* Current technological solutions: landfills, 3-R's
* Understanding the composition of solid waste - biodegradable and non-biodegradable components
2. Brainstorm and Investigate Possible Solutions
* Defining products we can make from non-biodegradable solid waste
* Identify concrete as potential for reusing solid waste
3. Evaluate Potential Solutions: Non-biodegradable Wastes as Aggregates in Concrete
* Concrete basics, internet research
* Making concrete – materials, tools, safety
* Material properties
* What is compression/tension? tests with pasta
* Weighted objectives table for engineering decisions – criteria and evaluation
* Testing for engineering decisions – compressive strength of concrete test cylinders
4. Implement our Solution: Putting the Waste-amended Concrete to Use
* Concrete product - production and evaluation
5. Evaluate our Solution: Marketing Our Product
* Introduction to marketing
* Understanding the value of our products
* Importance of communication in engineering
* Developing & presenting a marketing plan
During the past two years students have produced waste-amended concrete stepping stones, which they have sold to raise money for a local charity. This has allowed the students to follow through with a real-life marketing lesson. Students were required to create posters and advertisements for their product, and in the process learned essential elements of a marketing plan and an effective advertisement.
Assessment Procedures
Program assessment follows a mixed-methods quantitative/qualitative design that uses a variety of written and verbal instruments intended to measure our success in meeting the six program objectives outlined above. On-going assessment activities to date have included pre/post questionnaires, problem solving worksheets, and focus group discussions with both middle school and college student participants, as well as questionnaires administered to parents of the middle school participants. The assessment plan has varied throughout the lifetime of the program (Table 3), with a higher degree of formalized assessment during the period of NSF funding, specifically AY01 and AY02. The initial assessment program was designed and implemented with the assistance of Dr. Mary Graham, Associate Professor in Clarkson's School of Business. More recently, our approach to assessment has been much less formal, using a combination of exit interviews and post program questionnaires that are primarily designed to provide sufficient information to ensure that the program continues to meet our original objectives and continues to improve from year to year.
| Table 3. Assessment Program, by Year: Instrument Used and Area Surveyed | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assessment Instrument (years used) Area Surveyed | | Mentor pre/post | questionnaire (1,2,6)† | | Mentor pre/post problem | solving quiz (1,2) | | Mentor post focus group | (2) | | Student pre/post | questionnaire (1,2,4,6)† | | Student pre/post problem | solving quiz (1,2) | | Student post focus group | (2,3) | | Parent post questionnaire | (1,2,6) |
| Perception of engineers | x | | | | | | x | | | x | | | | | | x | | | | | |
| Number of engineers known | | | | | | | | | | x | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Problem-solving knowledge | x | | | x | | | x | | | x | | | x | | | x | | | | | |
| Engineering capability | | | | | | | | | | x | | | | | | x | | | | | |
| Student consider engineering career | | | | | | | | | | x | | | | | | x | | | x | | |
| Self-esteem[28] | x | | | | | | x | | | x | | | | | | x | | | | | |
| Self-efficacy[29] | x | | | | | | x | | | x | | | | | | x | | | | | |
| College activities, leadership | x | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Program satisfaction‡
x
x x
x x
†pre-post program assessment and 8 th grade control group used only during AY01 and AY02; other years used post-only, no control group.
‡ Program satisfaction measured post program only.
Questionnaires contain a combination of Likert-scale and free-response questions. Most survey items were generated by the authors, with existing survey instruments used where possible (e.g., self-esteem [28] and self-efficacy [29] scales). Focus group interviews with PIE participants were conducted by Dr. Mary Graham and her assistant. Questions for participants focused on participant likes and dislikes about the program, self-perceived impacts, and suggestions for improvement. Interview sessions were voice-recorded and transcribed by the evaluator; issues that were identified in the focus group discussions are discussed within the appropriate context of the analysis, below.
Assessment Results
As described above, the assessment results consist of a combination of quantitative and qualitative data collected from Clarkson mentors, middle school participants, parents, and teachers. The results presented and discussed in this paper focus primarily on qualitative data gleaned from questionnaires and focus group discussions.
Appreciation of holistic nature of engineering problem solving, critical thinking skills. Mentors receive formal training, through the directed study course, that reinforces their understanding of and ability to apply a formal problem solving process that most of them learn in their other engineering courses at Clarkson. These problem-solving skills are further reinforced throughout the program, as they teach this process to the middle school technology students.
Questionnaire and focus group responses from mentors regarding the program's impact on their problem solving skills have varied with group characteristics. Mentors who reported feeling well-grounded in problem solving capabilities generally did not see this as a major benefit of their experience in the program. On the other hand, mentors with lower aptitude for problem solving reported that they felt their problem solving skills had improved through the program, and some added that they felt they improved in their ability to teach problem solving to other students. Thus it seems that, where there is room for improvement, the PIE program strengthens problem solving capabilities for the college mentors.
Focus group discussions with 8 th grade PIE participants suggest that the opportunities to experience first hand the application of a formalized problem solving process to a real-life problem positively impacted their understanding of problem solving, which was not realized in the standard technology curriculum. Participants cited problem solving and teamwork as the most significant curricular benefits of the program. They noted the importance of spending a long time on one problem, learning to work as a team, and learning a lot of different things along the way. One participant (AY01) stated: the "problem solving process is something that middle school students learn to memorize in their technology and science classes," but through the "PIE program students get a chance to experience first hand how that process is actually used" (to solve a problem).
Survey and focus group results indicate that middle school participants and parents both agreed: through the program the participants learned more about engineering, and the collaboration and teamwork involved in the project was a particularly valuable learning experience for the participants. One focus group participant (AY02) reported that she learned, "… how to talk it out with people without having to get in an argument and that actually causes negotiating, agreeing, and compromising." And from another participant: "I really like PIE because it was interactive, and hands on. We made stuff and weren't just told what to do."
Understanding of engineering as a profession, and the potential role of women as engineering professionals. Working through the solution of a holistic engineering problem, in close collaboration with college students who are themselves studying various disciplines of engineering, fosters an understanding of what engineering is all about and helps to make the prospect of an engineering career more tangible to the students. Additionally, the final dinner and panel discussion held each year with female engineering professionals and college engineering students is consistently well attended (typically all participants attend). Discussion at these dinners typically focuses on such topics as lifestyle, outside interests and hobbies, engineering studies, what courses to take in high school in preparation for engineering, college life, family life for working mothers, college and job atmosphere among mostly men, possibilities for job transfer and promotion, part-time flexible hours, and so on.
PIE participants have reported an increased exposure to female engineers, more conversations with adults about engineering careers, and more discussions with guidance counselors as a result of their participation in the program. The technology teacher reported (AY03) that he felt the program encourages students to pursue science and technology careers. Many students have indicated that they would consider the profession. Focus group discussions further revealed that while all participants felt they had the skills needed to pursue engineering, their decision of whether or not to choose engineering was just a matter of interest. Many students lack an interest in math, which – according to the technology teacher – may have more to do with the "drill/practice/test" mode of teaching that is practiced at this particular school. The technology teacher indicated that more girls than boys are discouraged by this teaching approach. This observation is supported by the literature (e.g., [30] ). Thus, while girls feel they are capable of becoming engineers, many opt not to pursue engineering because they are turned off by the way in which math (and, at this particular school, science) is taught. He stressed the importance of teaching students the application of math to technology as a way of attracting and maintaining their interest in math.
Focus group comments and post-program questionnaire responses indicate that participants did indeed receive the message that women can be engineers. For at least some of the middle school PIE participants, this was new information:
* "I learned that there are so many females out there that have actually made a difference… there are girls that are doing engineering."
* "I thought engineering was working with mechanics and that I would be treated different if I wanted to be/was a girl in engineering. I found out about engineering… now I might do it."
* "The PIE program has made me less scared of engineering."
* "We're learning how to do all kinds of awesome things that I never knew you did in engineering. I thought it was just drawing pictures of buildings and doing "boring" stuff like that."
* "I thought [engineering] was only for guys. But I learned girls can have fun and like engineering, too."
* "I thought engineering was pretty cool and it wasn't just for (like) dorks."
In fact, out of 15 post-survey respondents (AY06), 14 girls indicated that the program helped to improve their understanding of what engineering is about, including such specific comments as:
* "…insight as to many aspects of engineering… it broadened my horizons in the engineering career."
* " didn't really know what it was… now I know.."
* "…engineering is fun… loved engineering after this program…"
* And finally – "I am now thinking about a possible career in engineering."
Thus, overall, it appears while PIE may not be overwhelmingly successful in convincing participants to study SET and become engineers, the program is effectively educating girls about possible careers in engineering, knowledge that they may not have otherwise had access to.
Informal feedback from parents consistently provides a clear message: the most significant value of the program from their perspective appears to be the contact it affords their 8 th grade daughters with women studying science and engineering, and the increased breadth and depth of exposure to professional women in general. Particular curriculum content is interesting, but secondary. "…[T]he PIE program enriched my daughter's academic program…her exposure to goal-oriented women and the opportunities available had a positive impact on her outlook for career choices," (parent, AY02). Parent surveys generally indicate that, while parents would support their daughter's potential desire to become an engineer, they would be equally supportive of other career options and appreciate the emphasis on removing gender-stereotypes from potential careers:
* "It is her decision. She is swinging between a career in engineering and health care."
* "Her artistic ability may develop through engineering/design."
* "…[I]t would have good job opportunities but her career is up to her. If she isn't happy with what she's doing she won't be good at it."
* "I … supported my daughter's interest from the perspective that women need to remove themselves from gender bias and support each other."
* "I want her to do what interests her…"
* "Her career is her choice. I would like her to consider as many options as possible"
* "I'm trying to encourage my daughter to get exposure to different job fields so she can find out what she likes. I don't want her to be constrained by gender."
Positive mentoring and role model experiences. "Partners in Engineering was such a rewarding experience because you were able to see young girls first learn about science and engineering and then allow them to experience it first hand on their own. It's such a great feeling to see how you are actually a part of shaping their lives and helping them to be successful in the future," (mentor, AY01). Indeed, the main reason PIE applicants generally give for wanting to enroll in the program is to "make a difference in the life of a younger girl," and every year at least one or two cite that they hope to play out the role of a mentor that they themselves benefited from knowing as a middle school or high school student.
Mentoring experiences are integral to the program design, both through the classroom lesson structure, which incorporates small group and team-based work, and the extra-curricular mentoring activities, which are largely social but usually include some directed activity that is often engineering-related. These mentoring events are consistently well attended and have become particularly important for fostering relationships since the in-school component of the program has been moved to the mixed technology classes. When possible, stronger relationships are fostered each year by assigning each PIE mentor to a subset of 8 th grade participants, to encourage closer and more frequent contact. They often exchange phone numbers, email addresses, and IM screen names. Over the years several mentors have become involved with the 8 th graders on a more personal level, and have continued to maintain contact well after the program has ended. Because of the small-town environment and the proximity of the middle school to Clarkson University, it is not unusual for mentors to report meeting their 8 th grade students in town or at college sporting events (whereby the mentors are typically embarrassed by being addressed as "Miss …"). Mentors have gone into the technology classroom to spend time after their teaching session is over, have taken small groups of girls out for ice cream, and have become involved in middle school sports teams.
Mentors consistently report strong satisfaction with their mentoring experiences. When asked the greatest benefit of the PIE experience, the vast majority of mentors identify working with the middle school girls (6 out of 9 focus group responses, all post-program written responses):
* "The greatest benefit was the ability to have an effect on someone else's life. Hopefully I was able to help another student out and they learned from me being there."
* "As a PIE mentor I was able to positively affect the lives of 23 younger girls. I know they will carry most of the knowledge and experience with them for the rest of their lives."
* "….knowing [the girls] are enjoying this program. I hope it will inspire them to make good decisions about what they wish to do in life."
* "I enjoyed the mentoring activities just because we were able to foster relationships with the girls. These times I feel like we were able to make the most impact. I think in these situations our true colors were able to shine through. I think this made us people in their eyes, as opposed to college kids."
* "It just made me feel so good about myself, the fact that I really was making a difference in these girls' lives, it made me feel like I was doing something important."
* "The greatest benefit was working with the girls and the relationships that we formed with them. I think that they understand that you can be smart and be part of a field that is seen as male dominated. I also think that each of us will keep in contact with many of the girls after the program is over."
* "…I feel like most of the effort we put into this class paled in comparison to how rewarding the relationships are."
In turn, the middle school participants consistently report that they are highly satisfied regarding their experiences with the mentors. Girls have reported in focus group discussions that they consider the female Clarkson mentors to be "friends" with whom they can talk about PIE-related and personal topics. Students value the hands-on teaching style, technical knowledge, opportunities to work together with their friends and the mentors, and the relationships they formed with the mentors. Students typically identify working with the mentors, and especially attending the mentoring activities, as their favorite aspect of the program. Several middle school students have reported that they would have liked to attend more mentoring activities and/or would have liked the program to last longer through the year.
Responses from parents generally mirror their daughters' high satisfaction levels, and parents consistently provide positive feedback, both formally and informally, regarding the program's mentoring aspects. One parent (AY06) writes: "[My daughter] had an amazing experience with the PIE program… [Her] grades improved a lot this marking period and we feel that PIE actually helped her to achieve better grades…"
Leadership opportunities, self-esteem, self-efficacy. By its very nature, the PIE program forces each of the mentors to take on a leadership role. This is particularly valuable for PIE mentors who had not previously held a leadership position at Clarkson (e.g., 4 in AY02). Mentors have provided variable responses regarding the program's impact on their self-esteem and selfconfidence and have generally reported having a high level of self-esteem at the start of the program. Self-efficacy, which is a measure of a person's confidence in her ability to take action, is closely related to self confidence. Mentors have reported that they are more comfortable speaking in front of a group and performing in an active role as part of a team as a result of their mentoring experience.
Middle school girls are given the opportunity to perform in leadership roles through the collaborative group project work in the classroom, as well as at various presentations to teachers, parents, and school board members. Focus group discussions indicate that the PIE program provides leadership opportunities that seem to be otherwise lacking in participants' technology classes. One participant observed, "… if you actually look at the tech room, the guys are… in control. They're the first ones at the machines…" As with the mentors, middle school participants reported high levels of self-esteem at the start of the program and did not report appreciable gains in self-esteem. Gains in self-efficacy can be closely tied to their strong feelings of being capable of studying engineering: "[Girls doing technology or engineering] is a surprise to them. It's a reality check… we are capable of everything," (focus group comment).
Program satisfaction and miscellaneous self-reported benefits. Written survey responses and focus group discussions consistently indicate overall satisfaction with the program by all stakeholder groups, including college student mentors, 8 th grade girls, and parents. Mentor comments provide additional support:
* "The team/group work was a great experience. There were a lot of team challenges, ups and downs. It was very realistic because it was not just for a grade like other group projects at Clarkson. What we did or did not do affected the classroom and others."
* "Learning things for myself; more about engineering, time management skills, interpersonal relations and being able to communicate in front of a group…"
* "It just made me feel so good about myself, the fact that I really was making a difference in these girls' lives, it made me feel like I was doing something important… for me it was more about how I felt afterwards. It just makes you feel so good about yourself and that would make me do it again and again."
* "I absolutely loved this class. I wish I could take it over and over again for the rest of my time here. It might be the… most worthwhile thing I have done thus far in my life."
Conclusions and Recommendations
Overall, the PIE program has provided learning and leadership opportunities for 30 college student mentors and 116 8 th grade girls over the past six years. Qualitative assessment data indicate that the program continues to meet our original objectives. A particular strength of the program lies in the opportunities for mentoring and role model relationships, the interactions between participants during extra curricular events, and – specifically for the 8 th grade participants – the breadth of contact with and exposure to talented, focused young women pursuing a technical education. The program has been successful in exposing young women to the holistic nature of engineering problem solving and the variety of opportunities that exist for women who choose to pursue engineering studies and/or careers. The program has received positive local publicity, and is appreciated by the middle school faculty, staff, and administrators. Relationships that have been fostered between Clarkson University and the local public school system will help to ensure that the Partners in Engineering Program continues in the years to come.
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27. Froschl, M., et al., Science, Gender and Afterschool: A Research-Action Agenda. 2003, Educational Equity Concepts and Academy for Educational Development, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, HRD-0114741.
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30. Peterson, L. and E. Fennema, Effective teaching, student engagement in classroom activities, and sexrelated differences in learning mathematics. American Educational Research Journal, 1985. 22: p. 309-335. | <urn:uuid:0d0d3615-f3e4-4b83-945f-4964dbb5ad96> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.clarkson.edu/sites/default/files/2018-10/pie-asee06.pdf | 2019-10-17T18:20:15Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00541.warc.gz | 871,493,639 | 9,950 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.975896 | eng_Latn | 0.998504 | [
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HUNDON AND THURLOW PRIMARY FEDERATION
Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy
Table of Contents
1. Ethos statement
2. Introduction
3. Statutory framework
4. Key roles and responsibilities
5. Training
6. Recognising concerns – signs and indicators of abuse
7. Specific safeguarding issues
8. Curriculum
9. Online safety
10. Peer on peer abuse
11. Procedures
12. Information sharing, record keeping and confidentiality
13. Managing allegations made against members of staff or volunteers
14. Whistleblowing
15. Useful contacts and links
16. Appendix A – further information on specific safeguarding issues
17. Appendix B – recording form for safeguarding concerns
18. Appendix C – body map
School Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy Framework
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone's responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and their families has a role to play. In order to fulfil this responsibility effectively, all professionals should make sure their approach is childcentred. This means that they should consider, at all times, what is in the best interests of the child.
(Keeping Children Safe in Education)
1. Ethos statement
We recognise the moral and statutory responsibility placed on all staff to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children. We aim to provide a safe and welcoming environment, underpinned by a culture of openness where both children and adults feel secure, are able to raise concerns and believe they are being listened to, and that appropriate action will be taken to keep them safe.
2. Introduction
The governing body 1 recognises the need to ensure that it complies with its duties under legislation and this policy has regard to statutory guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE), Working Together to Safeguard Children and locally agreed interagency procedures put in place by Suffolk Safeguarding Children Board.
This policy will be reviewed annually, as a minimum, and will be made available publicly via the school website or on request.
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined as: protecting children from maltreatment; preventing impairment of children's health or development; ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.
This policy is for all staff, parents, governors, volunteers and the wider school community. It forms part of the child protection and safeguarding arrangements for our school and is one of a suite of policies and procedures which encompass the safeguarding responsibilities of the school. In particular, this policy should be read in conjunction with the school's Code of Conduct, Safer Recruitment Policy, Online Safety Policy (including Acceptable Use of ICT and Mobile Devices) and Anti-Bullying Policy.
The aims of this policy are to:
[x] Provide staff with a framework to promote and safeguard the wellbeing of children and
young people and ensure that they understand and meet their statutory responsibilities;
[x] Ensure consistent good practice across the school.
1 In maintained schools the governing body is responsible for ensuring their functions are exercised with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in accordance with section 175 of the Education Act 2002, for pupil referral units it is the management committee, in independent schools, including academies and free schools this duty sits with the proprietor. References to the governing body throughout this policy framework includes management committees.
2
The governing body expects that all staff will know and understand this child protection and safeguarding policy and their responsibility to implement it. Staff must, as a minimum, have read and understand Part One of KCSiE. Governors will ensure that they have read and understand Parts One and Two of KCSiE.
The governing body will ensure that arrangements are in place for all staff members to receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection training which is regularly updated.
Compliance with the policy will be monitored by the Headteacher, designated safeguarding lead (DSL) and named safeguarding governor/proprietor.
3. Statutory framework
Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 in the case of maintained schools and pupil referral units 2 , Section 157 of the Education Act and the Education (Independent Schools) Regulations 2014 for independent schools (including academies and free schools) place a statutory duty on governing bodies and proprietors to have policies and procedures in place that safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people who are pupils of the school which must have regard to any guidance given by the Secretary of State.
A Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) must be established for every local authority area 3 . The LSCB has a range of roles and statutory functions including developing local safeguarding policy and procedures and scrutinising local arrangements. In Suffolk, all professionals including staff in schools should work in accordance with the multi-agency procedures developed by the Suffolk SCB (SSCB) which can be found on their website at: http://suffolkscb.org.uk/.
4. Key roles and responsibilities
Governing Body
The governing body has a legal responsibility to make sure that there are appropriate policies and procedures in place in order for appropriate action to be taken in a timely manner to safeguard and promote children and young people's welfare, and to monitor that the school complies with them. The governing body should also ensure that the policy is made available to parents and carers by publishing this on the school website or in writing if requested.
The governing body will ensure that the school contributes to multi-agency working in line with statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children and that the school's safeguarding arrangements take into account the procedures and practice of the local authority.
2 Section 175, Education Act 2002 – for management committees of pupil referral units, this is by virtue of regulation 3 and paragraph 19A of Schedule 1 to the Education (Pupil Referral Units) (Application of Enactments) (England) Regulations 2007
3 Please note that in accordance with Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018, Suffolk Safeguarding Children Board will be working towards transition to the new Safeguarding Partner Arrangements, which should be in place by July 2019. This policy will need to be revised to reflect the new arrangements.
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It is the responsibility of the governing body to ensure that staff and volunteers are properly vetted to make sure they are safe to work with the pupils who attend our school and that the school has procedures for appropriately managing allegations of abuse made against members of staff (including the headteacher and volunteer helpers).
The governing body will ensure that there is a named governor for safeguarding, a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) who has lead responsibility for safeguarding and child protection, and a designated teacher to promote the educational achievement of children who are looked after or previously looked after, and will ensure that these people have the appropriate training.
The governing body will inform Suffolk County Council annually about the discharge of their safeguarding duties by completing the safeguarding self-assessment audit.
Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL)
The DSL should take lead responsibility for safeguarding and child protection (including online safety). This should be explicit in the role-holder's job description. (The broad areas of responsibility and activities related to the role of the DSL are set out in Annex B of KCSiE).
The DSL will have the appropriate status and authority to carry out the duties of the post.
The DSL and any alternate DSLs should liaise with the local authority and work with other agencies in line with Working Together to Safeguard Children.
During term time, the DSL and/or an alternate should always be available during school hours for staff to discuss any safeguarding concerns. The DSL will make arrangements for adequate and appropriate cover arrangements for any out of hours/out of term time activities.
The DSL will undergo training to provide them with the knowledge and skills to carry out the role. This training will be updated every two years.
Headteacher
The headteacher will ensure that the policies and procedures adopted by the governing body are fully implemented and that sufficient resources and time are allocated to enable staff members to discharge their safeguarding responsibilities.
All staff
All staff have a responsibility to provide a safe environment in which children can learn.
All staff must read and ensure they understand Part One of KCSiE.
All staff must ensure they are familiar with the systems within school which support safeguarding, including the safeguarding and child protection policy, the code of conduct/staff behaviour policy, the safeguarding response to children who go missing from education, and the role of the DSL (including the identity of the DSL and any deputies).
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All staff should be aware of the types of abuse and neglect so that they are able to identify cases of children who may be in need of help or protection.
All staff should know what to do if a child tells them he/she is being abused or neglected.
All staff should be aware of the process for making referrals to children's social care and for statutory assessments under the Children Act 1989 that may follow a referral, especially section 17 (children in need) and section 47 (a child suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm) along with the role they might be expected to play in such assessments.
All staff should be aware of the early help process and understand their role within it. This includes providing support as soon as a problem emerges, liaising with the DSL, and sharing information with other professionals in order to support early identification and assessment, focussing on providing interventions to avoid escalation of worries and needs. In some cases, staff may be asked to act as the lead professional in undertaking an early help assessment.
Any child may benefit from early help, but all school and college staff should be particularly alert to the potential need for early help for a child who:
[x] is disabled and has specific additional needs
[x] has special educational needs (whether or not they have a statutory education, health and care plan
[x] is a young carer
[x] is showing signs of being drawn in to anti-social or criminal behaviour, including gang involvement and association with organised crime groups
[x] is frequently missing/goes missing from care or from home
[x] is misusing drugs or alcohol themselves
[x] is at risk of modern slavery, trafficking or exploitation
[x] is in a family circumstance presenting challenges for the child, such as substance abuse, adult mental health problems or domestic abuse
[x] has returned home to their family from care
[x] is showing early signs of abuse and/or neglect
[x] is at risk of being radicalised or exploited
[x] is a privately fostered child
Knowing what to look out for is vital to the early identification of abuse and neglect. If staff are unsure, they should always speak to the DSL (or deputy). If in exceptional circumstances the DSL (or deputy) is not available, this should not delay appropriate action being taken. Staff should consider speaking to a member of the senior leadership team and/or take advice from children's social care. In these circumstances, any action taken should be shared with the DSL as soon as is practically possible.
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5. Training
The governing body will ensure that all staff receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection training which is regularly updated and in line with advice from SSCB. In addition, all staff members will receive regular safeguarding and child protection updates (for example, via email, e-bulletins, staff meetings) as required, but at least annually, to provide them with relevant skills and knowledge to safeguard children effectively.
All new staff members will undergo safeguarding and child protection training at induction. This will include training on the school's safeguarding and child protection policy, the code of conduct/staff behaviour policy and the role of the designated safeguarding lead. Copies of the school's policies, procedures and Part One of KCSiE will be provided to new staff at induction.
The Headteacher will ensure that an accurate record of safeguarding training undertaken by all staff is maintained and updated regularly.
6. Recognising concerns - signs and indicators of abuse.
All staff should be aware that abuse, neglect and safeguarding issues are rarely standalone events that can be covered by one definition or label. In most cases, multiple issues will overlap with one another.
Abuse is defined as a form of maltreatment of a child. Somebody may abuse or neglect a child by inflicting harm or by failing to act to prevent harm. Children may be abused in a family or in an institutional or community setting by those known to them or, more rarely, by others. Abuse can take place wholly online, or technology may be used to facilitate offline abuse. They may be abused by an adult or adults or another child or children.
The following indicators listed under the categories of abuse are not an exhaustive list:
Physical abuse: a form of abuse which may involve hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating or otherwise causing physical harm to a child. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent or carer fabricates the symptoms of, or deliberately induces, illness in a child.
Emotional abuse: the persistent emotional maltreatment of a child such as to cause severe and adverse effects on the child's emotional development. It may involve conveying to a child that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued only insofar as they meet the needs of another person. It may include not giving the child opportunities to express their views, deliberately silencing them or 'making fun' of what they say or how they communicate. It may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children. These may include interactions that are beyond a child's developmental capability as well as overprotection and limitation of exploration and learning, or preventing the child participating in normal social interaction. It may involve
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seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another. It may involve serious bullying (including cyberbullying), causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger, or the exploitation or corruption of children. Some level of emotional abuse is involved in all types of maltreatment of a child, although it may occur alone.
Sexual abuse: involves forcing or enticing a child or young person to take part in sexual activities, not necessarily involving a high level of violence, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including assault by penetration (for example rape or oral sex) or non-penetrative acts such as masturbation, kissing, rubbing and touching outside of clothing. They may also include non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at, or in the production of, sexual images, watching sexual activities, encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways, or grooming a child in preparation for abuse (including via the internet). Sexual abuse is not solely perpetrated by adult males. Women can also commit acts of sexual abuse, as can other children. The sexual abuse of children by other children is a specific safeguarding issue in education (See section 7: Specific safeguarding issues and Appendix A)
Neglect: the persistent failure to meet a child's basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child's health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to: provide adequate food, clothing and shelter (including exclusion from home or abandonment); protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger; ensure adequate supervision (including the use of inadequate care-givers); or ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment. It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child's basic emotional needs.
(Source Keeping Children Safe in Education)
7. Specific safeguarding issues
All staff should have an awareness of safeguarding issues that can put children at risk of harm. Behaviours linked to issues such as of drug taking, alcohol abuse, deliberately missing education and sexting (also known as youth produced sexual imagery) put children in danger.
All staff should be aware that safeguarding issues can manifest themselves via peer on peer abuse. This is most likely to include, but may not be limited to:
[x] bullying (including cyberbullying)
[x] physical abuse such as hitting, kicking, shaking, biting, hair pulling, or otherwise causing physical harm
[x] sexual violence and sexual harassment
[x] sexting (also known as youth produced sexual imagery); and
[x] initiation/hazing type violence and rituals
All staff should be clear about the school's policy and procedures with regards to peer on peer abuse.
Safeguarding incidents and/or behaviours can be associated with factors outside the school and/or can occur between children outside the school. All staff, especially the DSL (or deputy), should be considering the context within which such incidents and/or behaviours occur. This is known as contextual safeguarding. Assessments of children should consider
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whether wider environmental factors are present in a child's life that are a threat to their safety and/or welfare. It is important that staff provide as much information as possible as part of the referral process. Additional information regarding contextual safeguarding can be found here: Contextual Safeguarding
Further information about specific forms of abuse and safeguarding issues can be found in Appendix A. All staff should familiarise themselves with this.
8. Curriculum
The governing body will ensure that children and young people are taught about safeguarding, including online safety, through teaching and learning opportunities as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. This is in order to help children stay safe, recognise when they do not feel safe and identify who they might or can talk to.
This may include covering relevant issues through Relationships Education and Relationships and Sex Education (also known as Sex and Relationship Education) and through Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PHSE).
The governing body will also ensure there is a comprehensive curriculum response to esafety issues, enabling children and young people and their parents to learn about the risks of new technologies, communication and social media and how to use these responsibly.
The school will ensure that there are appropriate filters and monitoring systems in place to safeguard children and young people from potentially harmful and inappropriate online material.
9. Online safety
The use of technology has become a significant component of many safeguarding issues, for example, technology often provides the platform that facilitates child sexual exploitation, radicalisation and sexual predation.
There are three categories of risk:
[x] Content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful material, for example, pornography, fake news, racist or radical and extremist views;
[x] Contact: being exposed to harmful online interaction with other users, for example, commercial advertising as well as adults posing as children or young adults; and
[x] Conduct: personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm, for example, making, sending and receiving explicit images, or online bullying.
The governing body has had due regard to the additional information and support set out in KCSiE and will ensure that the school has a whole school approach to online safety and has a clear policy on use of communications technology in school.
School staff can access resources, information and support as set out in Annex C of KCSiE.
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10. Peer on peer abuse
In most instances, the conduct of pupils towards each other will be covered by the behaviour policy. However, some allegations may be of such a serious nature that they may raise safeguarding concerns. The school is clear that abuse is abuse and should never be tolerated or passed off as "banter", "just having a laugh" or "part of growing up".
Peer on peer abuse can manifest itself in many ways and may include sexual violence and sexual harassment, physical abuse such as hitting, kicking, shaking, biting, hair pulling, or otherwise causing physical harm, sexting (also known as youth produced sexual imagery), initiation/hazing type violence and rituals.
Any incidents of serious peer on peer abuse will be managed according to school procedures which detail measures to minimise the risk of peer on peer abuse, how allegations of peer abuse will be recorded, investigated and dealt with, and processes for how victims, perpetrators and any other child affected by peer on peer abuse will be supported. (Schools should ensure they include a cross-reference to their procedure in the appendix detailing school specific linked policies and procedures).
11. Procedures
If staff notice any indicators of abuse/neglect or signs that a child or young person may be experiencing a safeguarding issue they should record their concerns on a school recording form for safeguarding concerns and pass it to the DSL without delay. A suggested recording form is included at Appendix B
What to do if you are concerned.
If a child makes an allegation or disclosure of abuse against an adult or other child or young person, it is important that you:
[x] Stay calm and listen carefully;
[x] Accept what is being said;
[x] Allow the child/young person to talk freely – do not interrupt or put words in the child/young person's mouth;
[x] Only ask questions when necessary to clarify, do not investigate or ask leading questions;
[x] Reassure the child, but don't make promises which it might not be possible to keep;
[x] Do not promise confidentiality;
[x] Emphasise that it was the right thing to tell someone;
[x] Reassure them that what has happened is not their fault;
[x] Do not criticise the perpetrator;
[x] Explain what has to be done next and who has to be told;
[x] Make a written record, which should be signed and include the time, date and your position in school;
[x] Do not include your opinion without stating it is your opinion;
[x]
Pass the information to the DSL or alternate without delay
[x] Consider seeking support for yourself and discuss this with the DSL as dealing with a disclosure can be distressing.
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When a record of a safeguarding concern is passed to the DSL, the DSL will record the time and date the record of concern was received. The DSL will assess the concern and, taking into account any other safeguarding information known about the child/young person, consider whether it suggests that the threshold of significant harm, or risk of significant harm, has been reached. If the DSL is unsure whether the threshold has been met they will contact the MASH Professional Consultation Line for advice (0345 606 1499). Where appropriate, the DSL will complete and submit the SSCB multi agency referral form (MARF) (available on the SSCB website) 4 .
Where the DSL believes that a child or young person may be at imminent and significant harm risk of harm they should call Customer First immediately and then complete the SSCB MARF within 24 hours to confirm the referral. In these circumstances, it is important that any consultation should not delay a referral to Customer First.
Where a safeguarding concern does not meet the threshold for completion of a MARF, the DSL should record how this decision has been reached and should consider whether additional needs of the child have been identified that might be met by a coordinated offer of early help.
School staff might be required to contribute to multi-agency plans to provide additional support to children. This might include attendance at child protection conferences or core group meetings. The school is committed to providing as much relevant up to date information about the child as possible, including submitting reports for child protection conference in advance of the meeting in accordance with SSCB procedures and timescales.
Where reasonably possible, the school is committed to obtaining more than one emergency contact number for each pupil.
School staff must ensure that they are aware of the procedure to follow when a child goes missing from education. (Schools to cross-reference their in-school procedure) Further information can be found in Appendix A.
12. Information sharing, record keeping and confidentiality
Information sharing is vital in identifying and tacking all forms of abuse.
As part of meeting a child's needs, the school understands that it is critical to recognise the importance of information sharing between professionals and local agencies and will contribute to multi-agency working in line with Working Together to Safeguard Children. Where there are concerns about the safety of a child, the sharing of information in a timely and effective manner between organisations can reduce the risk of harm. Whilst the Data Protection Act 1998 places duties on organisations and individuals to process personal information fairly and lawfully, it is not a barrier to sharing information where the failure to do so would result in a child or vulnerable adult being placed at risk of harm. Similarly, human rights concerns, such as respecting the right to a private and family life would not prevent sharing where there are real safeguarding concerns.
4 N.B. The exception to this process will be in those cases of known FGM where there is a mandatory requirement for the teacher to report directly to the police, although the DSL should also be made aware.
Staff will have regard to the Government guidance: Information sharing: advice for practitioners providing safeguarding services.
Well-kept records are essential to good child protection practice. All concerns, discussions and decisions made and the reasons for those decisions should be recorded in writing. If in doubt about recording requirements, staff should discuss with the DSL.
The school will have regard to SCC Guidance for schools on maintaining and transferring pupil safeguarding/child protection records.
The school recognises that confidentiality should be maintained in respect of all matters relating to child protection. Information on individual child protection cases may be shared by the DSL or alternate DSL with other relevant members of staff. This will be on a 'need to know' basis and where it is in the child's best interests to do so.
A member of staff must never guarantee confidentiality to anyone about a safeguarding concern (including parents / carers or pupils), or promise a child to keep a secret which might compromise the child's safety or wellbeing.
The school will always undertake to share its intention to refer a child to Social Care with their parents /carers unless to do so could put the child at greater risk of harm, or impede a criminal investigation. If in doubt, staff will consult with the MASH Professional Consultation Line on this point.
13. Managing allegations made against members of staff or volunteers
The school will follow the SSCB Arrangements for Managing Allegations of Abuse Against People Who Work With Children or Those Who Are in A Position of Trust if an allegation is made against an adult in a position of trust.
An allegation is any information which indicates that a member of staff /volunteer may have:
[x] behaved in a way that has harmed a child, or may have harmed a child;
[x] possibly committed a criminal offence against or related to a child; or
[x] behaved towards a child or children in a way that indicates he/she may pose a risk of harm to children.
This applies to any child the member of staff/volunteer has contact with in their personal, professional or community life. It also applies regardless of whether the alleged abuse took place in our school.
If any member of staff has concerns that a colleague or volunteer might pose a risk to children, it is their duty to report these to the headteacher. Where the concerns or allegations are about the headteacher, these should be referred to the Chair of Governors.
The headteacher/Chair of Governors should report the concern to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) within one working day.
The corporate director for Health, Wellbeing and Children's Services, has identified dedicated staff to undertake the role of LADO. LADOs can be contacted via email on firstname.lastname@example.org or by using the LADO central telephone number: 0300 123 2044 for allegations against all staff and volunteers.
14. Whistleblowing
The governing body recognises that children cannot be expected to raise concerns in an environment where staff fail to do so.
Whistleblowing is 'making a disclosure in the public interest' and occurs when a worker (or member of the wider school community) raises a concern about danger or illegality that affects others, for example, pupils in the school or members of the public.
All staff should be aware of their duty to raise concerns, where they exist, about the management of child protection, which may include the attitude or actions/inactions of colleagues, poor or unsafe practice and potential failures in the school's safeguarding arrangements.
The governing body would wish for everyone in the school community to feel able to report any child protection/safeguarding concerns through existing procedures within school, including the whistleblowing procedure adopted by governors/proprietor where necessary (a model Whistleblowing policy is available from Schools' Choice where schools buy into that service). However, for members of staff who do not feel able to raise such concerns internally, there is a NSPCC whistleblowing helpline. Staff can call 0800 028 0285 (line available from 8.00am to 8.00pm, Monday to Friday) or email: email@example.com
15. Useful Contacts:
Multi-agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) Professional Helpline: 0345 606 1499
Customer First (Professional Referral Line) for use in emergencies only: 0345 606 6167
Customer First: 0808 800 4005
Police (emergency only): 999
Suffolk Police main switchboard: 01473 613500
Suffolk Police Cybercrime Unit: 101
Suffolk Local Safeguarding Children Board www.suffolkscb.org.uk
Suffolk County Council: www.suffolk.gov.uk/community-and-safety/staying-safe-online/e- safer-suffolk/
16. Appendix A
Further information on specific safeguarding issues (source: Annex A, KCSiE)
Children and the court system
Children are sometimes required to give evidence in criminal courts, either for crimes committed against them or for crimes they have witnessed. There are two age appropriate guides to support children 5-11 year olds and 12-17 year olds.
They explain each step of the process and support and special measures that are available. There are diagrams illustrating the courtroom structure and the use of video links is explained.
Making child arrangements via the family courts following separation can be stressful and entrench conflict in families. This can be stressful for children. The Ministry of Justice has launched and online child arrangements information tool with clear and concise information on the dispute resolution service. This may be useful for some parents and carers.
Children missing from education
All staff should be aware that children going missing, particularly repeatedly, can act as a vital warning sign of a range of safeguarding possibilities. This may include abuse and neglect, which may include sexual abuse or exploitation and child criminal exploitation. It may indicate mental health problems, risk of substance abuse, risk of travelling to conflict zone, risk of female genital mutilation or risk of forced marriage. Early intervention is necessary to identify the existence of any underlying safeguarding risk and to help prevent the risks of a child going missing in future. Staff should be aware of their school or college's unauthorised absence and children missing from education procedures.
Children with family members in prison
Approximately 200,000 children have a parent sent to prison each year. These children are at risk of poor outcomes including poverty, stigma, isolation and poor mental health. NICCO provides information designed to support professionals working with offenders and their children, to help mitigate negative consequences for those children.
Child sexual exploitation
Child sexual exploitation is a form of sexual abuse. It occurs when an individual or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of 18 into sexual activity (a) in exchange for something the victim needs or wants, and/or (b) for the financial advantage or increased status of the perpetrator or facilitator. He victim may have been sexually exploited even if the sexual activity appears consensual. Child sexual exploitation does not always involve physical contact: it can also occur through the use of technology. Like all forms of child sex abuse, child sexual exploitation:
[x] can affect any child or young person (male or female) under the age of 18 years, including 16 and 17 year olds who can legally consent to have sex
[x] can still be abuse even if the sexual activity appears consensual
[x] can include both contact (penetrative and non-penetrative acts) and non-contact sexual activity
[x] can take place in person or via technology, or a combination of both
[x] can involve force and/or enticement-based methods of compliance and may, or may not, be accompanied by violence or threats of violence
[x] may occur without the child or young person's immediate knowledge (e.g. through others copying videos or images they have created and posted on social media)
[x] can be perpetrated by individuals or groups, males or females, and children or adults. The abuse can be a one-off occurrence or a series of incidents over time, and range from opportunistic to complex organised abuse; and
[x] is typified by some form of power imbalance in favour of those perpetrating the abuse. Whilst age may the most obvious, this power imbalance can also be due to a range of other factors including gender, sexual identity, cognitive ability, physical strength, status, and access to economic or other resources.
Some of the following signs may be indicators of child sexual exploitation:
[x] children who appear with unexplained gifts or new possessions
[x] children who associate with other young people involved in exploitation
[x] children who have older boyfriends or girlfriends
[x] children who suffer from sexually transmitted infections or become pregnant
[x] children who suffer from changes in emotional well-being
[x]children who misuse drugs and alcohol
[x] children who go missing for periods of time or regularly come home late; and
[x] children who regularly miss school or education or do not take part in education.
Child criminal exploitation: county lines
Criminal exploitation of children is a geographically widespread form of harm that is a typical feature of county lines criminal activity: drug networks or gangs groom and exploit children and young people to carry drugs and money from urban areas to suburban and rural areas, market and seaside towns. Key to identifying potential involvement in county lines are missing episode, when the victim may have been trafficked or the purpose of transporting drugs and a referral to the National Referral Mechanism 5 should be considered. Like other forms of abuse and exploitation, county lines exploitation:
[x] can affect any child or young person (male or female) under the age of 18 years
[x] can affect any vulnerable adult over the age of 18 years
[x] can still be exploitation even if the activity appears consensual
[x] can involve force and/or enticement-based methods of compliance and is often accompanied by violence or threats of violence
[x] can be perpetrated by individuals or groups, males or females, and young people or adults; and
[x] is typified by some form of power imbalance in favour of those perpetrating the exploitation. Whilst age may the most obvious, this power imbalance can also be due to a range of other factors including gender, cognitive ability, physical strength, status, and access to economic or other resources.
Domestic abuse
The cross-government definition of domestic violence and abuse is:
5 National crime agency human-trafficking
Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to:
[x] psychological
[x] physical
[x] sexual
[x] financial; and
[x] emotional
Exposure to domestic abuse and/or violence can have a serious, long lasting emotional and psychological impact on children. In some cases, a child may blame themselves for the abuse or may have had to leave the family home as a result. Domestic abuse affecting young people can also occur within their personal relationships, as well as in the context of their home life.
Advice on identifying children who are affected by domestic abuse and how they can be helped is available at:
NSPCC-UK domestic-abuse signs symptoms effects
Refuge what is domestic violence/effects of domestic violence on children
Safelives: young people and domestic abuse
Homelessness
Being homeless or at risk of becoming homeless presents a real risk to a child's welfare. The designated safeguarding lead (and any deputies) should be aware of contact details and referral routes in to the Local Housing Authority so they can raise/progress concerns at the earliest opportunity. Indicators that a family may be at risk of homelessness include household debt, rent arrears, domestic abuse and anti-social behaviour, as well as the family being asked to leave a property. Whilst referrals and/or discussion with the Local Housing Authority should be progressed as a appropriate, this does not, and should not, replace a referral into children's social care where a child has been harmed or is at risk of harm.
The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 places a new legal duty on English councils so that everyone who is homeless or at risk of homelessness will have access to meaningful help including an assessment of their needs and circumstances, the development of a personalised housing plan, and work to help them retain their accommodation or find a new place to live. The following factsheets usefully summarise the new duties. Homeless Reduction Act Factsheets. The new duties shift focus to early intervention and encourage those at risk to seek support as soon as possible, before they are facing a homelessness crisis.
In most cases school and college staff will be considering homelessness in the context of children who live with their families, and intervention will be on that basis. However, it should also be recognised in some cases 16 and 17 year olds could be living independently from their family home, and will require a different level of intervention and support.
Children's services will be the lead agency for these young people and the designated safeguarding lead (or a deputy) should ensure appropriate referrals are made based on the child's circumstances. The department and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have just published joint statutory guidance on the provision of accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds who may be homeless and/or require accommodation: here
So-called 'honour-based' violence
So-called honour-based violence (HBV) encompasses incidents or crimes which have been committed to protect or defend the honour of the family and/or the community, including female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriage, and practices such as breast ironing, Abuse committed in the context of preserving "honour" often involves a wider network of family or community pressure and can include multiple perpetrators. It is important to be aware of this dynamic and additional risk factors when deciding what form of safeguarding action to take. All forms of HBV are abuse (regardless of the motivation) and should be handled and escalated as such. Professionals in all agencies, and individuals and groups in relevant communities, need to be alert to the possibility of a child being at risk of HBV, or already having suffered HBV.
Actions
If staff have a concern regarding a child that might be at risk of HBV or who has suffered from HBV, they should speak to the designated safeguarding lead (or deputy). As appropriate, they will activate local safeguarding procedures, using existing national and local protocols for multiagency liaison with police and children's social care. Where FGM has taken place, since 31 October 2015 there has been a mandatory reporting duty placed on teachers 6 that requires a different approach (see following section).
FGM
FGM comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs. It is illegal in the UK and a form of child abuse with long-lasting harmful consequences.
FGM mandatory reporting duty for teachers
Section 5B of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (as inserted by section 74 of the Serious Crime Act 2016) places a statutory duty upon teachers along with regulated health and social care professionals in England and Wales, to report to the police where they discover (either through disclosure by the victim or visual evidence) that FGM appears to have been carried out on a girl under 18. Those failing to report such cases will face disciplinary sanctions. It will be rare for teachers to see visual evidence and they should not be examining pupils, but the same definition of what is meant by "to discover hat an act of FGM appears to have been carried out" is used for all professionals to whom this mandatory reporting duty applies. Information on when and how to make a report can be found at: Mandatory reporting of female genital mutilation procedural information.
6 Under Section 5B(11)(a) of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, "teacher" means, in relation to England, a person within section 141A(1) of the Education Act 2002 (persons employed or engaged to carry out teaching work at schools and other institutions in England).
Teachers must personally report to the police cases where they discover that an act of FGM appears to have been carried out. 7 Unless the teacher has good reason not to, they should still consider and discuss any such case with the school or college's designated safeguarding lead (or deputy) and involve children's social care as appropriate. The duty does not apply in relation to at risk or suspected cases (i.e. where the teacher does not discover that an act of FGM appears to have been carried out, either through disclosure by the victim or visual evidence) or in cases where the woman is 18 or over. The following is a useful summary of the FGM mandatory reporting duty: FGM Fact Sheet.
Forced marriage
Forcing a person into marriage is a crime in England and Wales. A forced marriage is one entered into without the full and free consent one or both parties and where violence, threats or any other form of coercion is used to cause a person to enter into a marriage. Threats can be physical or emotional and psychological. A lack of full and free consent can be where a person does not consent or where they cannot consent (if they have learning disabilities, for example.) Nevertheless, some communities use religion and culture as a way to coerce a person into marriage, Schools and colleges can play an important role in safeguarding children from forces marriage.
The Forced Marriage Unit has published statutory guidance and Multi-agency guidelines, with pages 35-36 of which focus on the role of schools and colleges. School and college staff can contact the Forced Marriage Unit if they need advice or information: Contact: 020 7008 0151 or email firstname.lastname@example.org.
Preventing radicalisation
Children are vulnerable to extremist ideology and radicalisation. Similar to protecting children from other forms of harm and abuse, protecting children from this risk should be a part of a school's or college's safeguarding approach.
Extremism 8 is the vocal or active opposition to our fundamental values, including the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. This also includes calling for the death of members of the armed forces.
Radicalisation 9 refers to the process by which a person comes to support terrorism and extremist ideologies associated with terrorist groups.
There is no single way of identifying whether a child is likely to be susceptible to an extremist ideology. Background factors combined with specific influences such as family and friends may contribute to a child's vulnerability. Similarly, radicalisation can occur through many different methods (such as social media) and settings (such as the internet).
However, it is possible to protect vulnerable people from ideology and intervene to prevent those at risk of radicalisation being radicalised. As with other safeguarding risks, staff should be alert to changes in children's behaviour which could indicate that they may be in need of help or protection. Staff should use their judgement in identifying children who may
7 Section 5B(6) of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 states teachers need not report a case to the police if they have reason to believe that another teacher has already reported the case.
8 As defined in the Government's Counter Extremism Strategy
9 As defined in the Revised Prevent Duty Guidance for England and Wales
be at risk of radicalisation and act proportionately which may include the designated safeguarding lead (or deputy) making a referral to the Channel programme.
The Prevent duty
All schools and colleges are subject to a duty under section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (the CTSA 2015), in the exercise of their functions, to have "due regard 10 to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism". 11 This duty is known as the Prevent duty.
The Prevent duty should be seen as part of schools' and colleges' wider safeguarding obligations. Designated safeguarding leads and other senior leaders should familiarise themselves with the Revised Prevent duty guidance: for England and Wales, especially paragraphs 57-76 which are specifically concerns with schools (and also covers childcare). The guidance is set out in terms of four general themes: Risk assessment, working in partnership, staff training, and IT policies.
Additional support
The department has published advice for schools on the Prevent duty. The advice is intended to complement the Prevent guidance and signposts other sources of advice and support.
There is additional guidance: Prevent duty guidance: for further education institutions in England and Wales that applies to colleges.
Educate Against Hate, a website launched by Her Majesty's Government has been developed to support and equip school and college leaders, teachers, and parents with information, tools and resources (including on the promotion of fundamental British values) to help recognise and address extremism and radicalisation in young people. The platform provides information on and access to training resources for teachers, staff and school and college leaders, some of which are free such as Prevent e-learning, via the Prevent Training catalogue.
Channel
Channel is a programme which focuses on providing support at an early stage to people who are identified as being vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism. It provides a mechanism for schools to make referrals if they are concerned that an individual might be vulnerable to radicalisation. An individual's engagement with the programme is entirely voluntary at all stages. Guidance on Channel is available at: Channel Guidance, and a Channel awareness e-learning programme is available for staff at: Channel General Awareness.
The school or college's Designated Safeguarding Lead (and any deputies) should be aware of local procedures for making a Channel referral. As a Channel partner, the school or college may be asked to attend a Channel panel to discuss the individual referred to
10 According to the Prevent duty guidance 'having due regard' means that the authorities should place an appropriate amount of weight on the need to prevent people being drawn into terrorism when they consider all the other factors relevant to how they carry out their usual functions.
11 "Terrorism" for these purposes has the same meaning as for the Terrorism Act 2000 (section 1(1) to (4) of that Act).
determine whether they are vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism and consider the appropriate support required.
Peer on peer abuse
Children can abuse other children. This is generally referred to as peer on peer abuse and can take make many forms. This can include (but is not limited to) bullying (including cyberbullying); sexual violence and sexual harassment; physical abuse such as hitting, kicking, shaking, biting, hair pulling, or otherwise causing physical harm; sexting and initiating/hazing type violence and rituals.
Sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges
Context
Sexual violence and sexual harassment can occur between two children of any age and sex. It can also occur through a group of children sexually assaulting or sexually harassing a single child or group of children.
Children who are victims of sexual violence and sexual harassment will likely find the experience stressful and distressing. This will, in all likelihood, adversely affect their educational attainment. Sexual violence and sexual harassment exist on a continuum and may overlap, they can occur online and offline (both physical and verbal) and are never acceptable. It is important that all victims are taken seriously and offered appropriate support. Staff should be aware that some groups are potentially more at risk. Evidence shows girls, children with SEND and LGBT children are at greater risk.
Staff should be aware of the importance of:
[x] making clear that sexual violence and sexual harassment is not acceptable, will never be tolerated and is not an inevitable part of growing up;
[x] not tolerating or dismissing sexual violence or sexual harassment as "banter", "part of growing up", "just having a laugh" or "boys being boys"; and
[x] challenging behaviours (potentially criminal in nature), such as grabbing bottoms, breasts and genitalia, flicking bras and lifting up skirts. Dismissing or tolerating such behaviours risk normalising them.
What is sexual violence and sexual harassment?
Sexual violence
It is important that school and college staff are aware of sexual violence and the fact children can, and sometimes do, abuse their peers in this way. When referring to sexual violence we are referring to sexual offences un the Sexual Offences Act 2003 12 as described below:
Rape: A person (A) commits an offence of rape if: he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis, B does not consent to the penetration and A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
12 Legislation.gov.uk
Assault by Penetration: A person (A) commits an offence if: s/he intentionally penetrates the vagina or anus of another person (B) with a part of her/his body or anything else, the penetration is sexual, B does not consent to the penetration and A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
Sexual Assault: A person (A) commits an offence of sexual assault if: s/he intentionally touches another person (B), the touching is sexual, B does not consent to the touching and A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
What is consent? 13 Consent is about having the freedom and capacity to choose. Consent to sexual activity may be given to one sort of sexual activity but not another, e.g. to vaginal but not anal sex or penetration with conditions, such as wearing a condom. Consent can be withdrawn at any time during sexual activity and each time activity occurs. Someone consents to vaginal, anal or oral penetration only if s/he agrees by choice to that penetration and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice. 14
Sexual harassment
When referring to sexual harassment we mean 'unwanted conduct of a sexual nature' that can occur online and offline. When we reference sexual harassment, we do so in the context of child on child sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is likely to: violate a child's dignity, and/or make them feel intimidated, degraded or humiliated and/or create a hostile, offensive or sexualised environment.
Whilst not intended to be an exhaustive list, sexual harassment can include:
[x] sexual comments, such as: telling sexual stories, making lewd comments, making sexual remarks about clothes and appearance and calling someone sexualised names;
[x] sexual "jokes" or taunting;
[x] physical behaviour, such as: deliberately brushing against someone, interfering with someone's clothes (schools and colleges should be considering when any of this crosses a line into sexual violence – it is important to talk to and consider the experience of the victim) and displaying pictures, photos or drawings of a sexual nature; and
[x] online sexual harassment. This may be standalone, or part of a wider pattern of sexual harassment and/or sexual violence. 15 It may include:
[x]
non-consensual sharing of sexual images and videos;
[x] sexualised online bullying;
[x] unwanted sexual comments and messages, including, on social media; and
[x] sexual exploitation; coercion and threats
The response to a report of sexual violence or sexual harassment
The initial response to a report from a child is important. It is essential that all victims are reassured that they are being taken seriously and that they will be supported and kept safe. A victim should never be given the impression that they are creating a problem by reporting
13 It is important school and college staff (and especially designated safeguarding leads and their deputies) understand consent. This will be especially important if a child is reporting they have been raped, More information here
14 PSHE Teaching about consent from the PSHE association provides advice and lesson plans to teach consent at Key Stage 3 and 4.
15 Project deSHAME from Childnet provides useful research, advice and resources regarding online sexual harassment.
sexual violence or sexual harassment. Nor should a victim ever be made to feel ashamed for making a report.
If staff have a concern about a child or a child makes a report to them, they should follow the referral process as set out from paragraph 23 in Part 1 of KCSiE. As is always the case, if staff are in any doubt as to what to do they should speak to the designated safeguarding lead (or a deputy).
Additional advice and support
| | Abuse or | Link to Guidance/Advice |
|---|---|---|
| | Safeguarding | |
| | issue | |
| Abuse | | What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused |
| | | Domestic abuse: Various Information/Guidance |
| | | Faith based abuse: National Action Plan |
| | | Relationship abuse: disrespect nobody |
| Bullying | | Preventing bullying including cyberbullying |
| Children and the courts | | Advice for 5-11 year old witnesses in criminal courts |
| | | Advice for 12-17 year old witnesses in criminal courts |
| Children missing from education, home or care | | Children missing education |
| | | Children missing from home or care |
| | | Children and adults missing strategy |
| Children with family members in prison | | National Information Centre on Children of Offenders |
| Child Exploitation | | County Lines: criminal exploitation of children and vulnerable adults |
| | | Child sexual exploitation: guide for practitioners |
| | | Trafficking: safeguarding children |
| Drugs | | Drugs: advice for schools |
| | | Drugs strategy 2017 |
| | | Information and advice on drugs |
| | | ADEPIS platform sharing information and resources for schools: covering drug (& alcohol) prevention |
| “Honour Based Violence” (so called) | | Female genital mutilation: information and resources |
| | | Female genital mutilation: multi agency statutory guidance |
| | | Forced marriage: information and practice guidelines |
| Health and Well- being | | Fabricated or induced illness: safeguarding children |
| | | Rise Above: Free PSHE resources on health, wellbeing and resilience |
| | | Medical conditions: supporting pupils at school |
| | | Mental health and behaviour |
| Homelessness | | Homelessness: How local authorities should exercise their functions |
| Online | | Sexting: responding to incidents and safeguarding children |
| Private fostering | | Private fostering: local authorities |
| Radicalisation | | Prevent duty guidance |
| | | Prevent duty advice for schools |
| | | Educate Against Hate Website |
| | | Gangs and youth violence: for schools and colleges |
| | | Ending violence against women and girls 2016-2020 strategy |
| | | Violence against women and girls: national statement of expectations for victims |
| | | Sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges |
17. Appendix B
Record of concern about a child/young person's safety and welfare
Part 1 (for use by any staff – must be handwritten and legible)
Pupil's name:
Date of birth:
Class/Form:
Date & time of incident:
Date & time (of writing):
Name (print):
Job title:
Signature:
Record the following factually: Nature of concern, e.g. disclosure, change in behaviour, demeanour, appearance, injury, witnesses etc. (please include as much detail in this section as possible. Remember – the quality of your information will inform the level of intervention initiated. Attach additional sheets if necessary.
What is the pupil's perspective?
Professional opinion, where relevant (how and why might this have happened?)
Any other relevant information. Previous concerns etc. (distinguish between fact and opinion)
Note actions, including names of anyone to whom your information was passed and when
Check to make sure your report is clear to someone else reading it.
Please pass this form to your DSL without delay
Record of concern about a child/young person's safety and welfare Part 2 (for use by DSL)
Information received by DSL:
Date:
Time completed: From whom:
Any advice sought, if applicable
Date:
Time completed: From: name/organisation:
Advice received:
Action taken with reasons recorded (e.g. MARF completed, monitoring advice given to appropriate staff, CAF etc)
Date:
Time completed: By whom:
Outcome
Date:
Time completed: By whom:
Parent/carer informed?
Y Who spoken to: Date:
Time:
By whom:
N Detail reason:
Is any additional detail held, if so where?
Prior safeguarding history
No. of previous records of concern:
Has the child been subject of CAF/Early Help assessment?
Currently on CP Plan (CPP) / Child in Need Plan (CiN)
Previously on CP Plan (CPP) / Child in Need Plan (CiN)
Is child known to other agencies? Y / N
Name of DSL:
Signature:
18. Appendix C
BODYMAP
(This must be completed at time of observation)
Name of Pupil:
Date of Birth:
Name of Staff:
Job title:
Date and time of observation:
Name of pupil:
Date and time of observation:
Name of pupil:
Date and time of
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Year 9 GEOGRAPHY REVISION CHECKLIST.
Summer Examinations
As you begin your revision, complete this honestly to help you see where your priorities should lie for your revision. The target is eventually to get all your ticks in the left hand column.
| I CAN: | ☺ |
|---|---|
| Identify the countries of the continent of Europe on a map | |
| Identify the main cities of the continent of Europe on a map | |
| Identify the main oceans and seas on a map of Europe | |
| Identify the main mountain ranges on a map of Europe | |
| Describe the historical growth of the population of the world | |
| Know the meanings of key population terms: Birth Rate, Death Rate, Natural Increase, Life Expectancy, Infant Mortality. | |
| Know the meanings of key population terms: Population pyramid, population distribution, population density | |
| Explain how the population changes – using terms such as birth rate and death rate | |
| Explain the impact that a large young population may have on a country. | |
| Explain the impact that a large elderly population may have on a country. | |
| Give reasons to explain why birth rates are different across the world | |
| Give reasons to explain why death rates are different across the world | |
| Explain what a population pyramid shows | |
| Draw and explain the shape of a population pyramid for a LEDC | |
| Draw and explain the shape of a population pyramid for a MEDC | |
| Use evidence from a population pyramid to answer questions about the population of an area/country | |
| Calculate the population density of an area (when given population and area statistics) | |
| Explain (in detail) why some areas in the world are sparsely populated. | |
| Explain (in detail) why some areas in the world are densely populated. | |
| Explain what migration is. | |
| Explain the difference between an immigrant and an emigrant. | |
| Give several push and pull factors which lead to migration. | |
Recall at least three positive impacts migrants can have on the area into which
| Recall at least three negative impacts migrants can have on the area into which they have moved |
|---|
| Use the choropleth shading technique to display information on a map. |
| Interpret a choropleth map. |
| Distinguish between constructive and destructive waves and consider their impact upon coastal environments. |
| Describe the erosional processes of abrasion, attrition, hydraulic action and solution and their impact upon the coast. |
| Describe and explain the transportational process of longshore drift. |
| Outline the conditions under which coastal deposition may occur. |
| Describe and explain the formation of coastal features such as headlands, bays, wave-cut platforms, caves, arches, stacks and stumps. |
| Describe ways in which humans interact with the coast. |
| Suggest methods of coastal management. |
| Evaluate the effectiveness of coastal management techniques. |
| Explain the difference between weather and climate. |
| Explain how the following elements are measured: temperature, precipitation, wind speed, wind direction, air pressure, cloud cover. You need to know the instrument and unit of measurement for each. |
| Describe and explain the best place to measure: Rainfall, wind speed, wind direction, temperature. |
| Describe the characteristics of a Stevenson Screen: colour, structure, height, contents. |
| Explain the characteristics of a Stevenson Screen. |
| Interpret the key synoptic symbols – wind speed/direction, temperature, cloud cover, precipitation. |
| Describe the characteristics of cumulus, cirrus, stratus and cumulonimbus clouds. |
| To recall the steps involved in the creation of “rain”. |
| To be able to draw a diagram and give a written explanation for the formation of frontal rainfall. |
| To be able to draw a diagram and give a written explanation for the formation of relief rainfall. |
| To be able to draw a diagram and give a written explanation for the formation |
Chgs/cst/revision Geography
| of convectional rainfall. |
|---|
| Construct and interpret a climate graph. |
| Explain the factors that influence climate – latitude, distance from the coast, prevailing wind, ocean currents, altitude, shelter, urbanisation. | | <urn:uuid:51b4e1db-a0f9-43b1-b4ad-18bb0d697fe6> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.cambridgehouse.org.uk/docs/revision_checklists/summer_2019/Year%209%20Geography%20Summer2.pdf | 2019-10-17T19:13:41Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00539.warc.gz | 842,176,215 | 931 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997491 | eng_Latn | 0.995513 | [
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LPSD 38 English Learners (ELL) Update
Spring 2013
Stephanie Johnson, ELL Coordinator
Colorín Colorado
(www.ColorinColorado.org) is an outstanding resource for basic information on the ELL population including practical teaching and assessment suggestions as well as summaries of recent research. The site contains extensive information in both English and Spanish. Literacy tip sheets are also available in nine additional languages.
Language learning involves Cognitive, Linguistic, Psychological and Emotional processes. Which tends to be ignored the most? Answer on pg 2
Upcoming Events
CoTESOL Spring Conference on Collaboration for Success Apr 20
May 20 th Summer Bridge Books distributed
Summer Bookmobile June and July
ELL Summer School at LPES 6/10-6/27 and 7/15-7/31 Mon-Thurs 8am-12pm
Our numbers keep growing…. LPSD38 English Language Learners At-A-Glance
Here in LPSD38 we have over 40 different languages other than English represented by the families of our 300+ ELL students. LPSD ELLs range in English Language Development from NEP (Non-English Proficient) to very high LEP (Limited English Proficient), and come from a variety of backgrounds (adopted from overseas, foreignborn, immigrant or military families as well as refugees).
| School | Non English Proficient | Limited English Proficient | Tested Proficient – on Monitor | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PRHS | 3 | 21 | 9 | 33 |
| LPHS | 2 | 14 | 7 | 23 |
| LPMS | 2 | 15 | 13 | 30 |
| BCES | 12 | 30 | 4 | 46 |
| PLES | 8 | 32 | 2 | 42 |
| LPES | 3 | 22 | 6 | 31 |
| KES | 4 | 6 | 2 | 12 |
| PWES | 1 | 6 | 3 | 10 |
| MA | 5 | 40 | 10 | 55 |
| PRESCHOOL | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested | 32 |
| TOTAL | 40 | 186 | 56 | 314 |
The Home Factor - Did you know?
- Learning to read in the home language promotes reading achievement in the second language.
- The longer ELLs receive instruction in a mix of their first language and English, the better their achievement in English.
- Many publishing companies offer textbook resources in a variety of languages.
- Parental education and level of English use in the home helps with English language acquisition.
- LPSD offers English classes to interested ELL parents every Tuesday and Thursday evenings throughout the school year.
- LPSD has an ELL Family Liaison (Teresa Kulow), for nonEnglish speaking parents, who is an advocate and community resource.
Answer: Cognitive, Psychological and Emotional
Sending Letters Home?
Sending school letters to NonEnglish speaking parents? They must be translated into their language. Please contact the District ELL office at 785-4204 if you need assistance translating letters.
Did you Know?
LPDS38 provides a unique summer-school opportunity for our NEP and LEP students each summer? To keep ELLs from suffering the full effects of "summer set-back" they engage in fun activities catered to their specific language needs.
LPSD 38 ELL Update Spring 2013
Tips for Teachers of ELLS
- Incorporate visual representation of concepts
- Have predictable and consistent classroom routines, post schedules
- Play charades to teach concepts
- Use graphic organizers
- Redundancy of key information
- Give extra time for practice
- Identify, highlight and clarify difficult words and passages
- Teachers and/or classmates can summarize and paraphrase text knowledge
- Provide plenty of access to teachers and peers
- Adjust instruction – such as rate of speech, minimize complex words, expectations
- At first, keep language requirements low and then gradually build
Source: Goldenberg, Claude. "Teaching English Language Learners: What the Research Does and Does Not Say." American Educator. Summer (2008): 8-44. Print.
Assessment & Reflection with ELLs—and All Students
An excerpt from The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide by Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski on general principles to help assess ELLs (and all students) in equitable, effective, and meaningful ways.
Assess knowledge and language separately: implement modifications such as simplifying test questions or allowing the use of bilingual dictionaries.
Assess students according to their current proficiency level: know their current levels of English proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
Involve students in assessment: when students are asked to evaluate their own progress, they feel more ownership of the learning process and are better able to identify specific learning goals
Student Reflection: consider using a short (five to seven minutes or so) reflection activity, usually a "think-write-pair-share," at the end of class two or three times a week. Depending on the English level, teachers may want to provide sentence starters that students can use as they answer the questions (What are two things you learned today?). They can also assess themselves (What did you do that helped you the most today to learn English?) as well as the class/teacher (What was your least and/or favorite class activity today, and why was it your least and/or favorite?)
Establish relevance: ask students to write a few sentences explaining how they can specifically apply what they learned to their lives.
Demonstrate higher-order thinking: model and then have student answer higher-order questions such as: 1) Creating: What should I do next? 2) Evaluating: How well did I do? 3) Analyzing: Do I see any patterns in what I did? 4) Understanding: What was important about it? And 5) Remembering: What did I do? | <urn:uuid:f64483fe-ce3c-4ece-ab67-244524893659> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.lewispalmer.org/cms/lib/CO01900635/Centricity/Domain/1473/ELL%20Update%20Spring%202013.pdf | 2019-10-17T18:23:51Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00542.warc.gz | 969,643,371 | 1,283 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.994553 | eng_Latn | 0.994903 | [
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5th Grade English Language Arts Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (ELACCGPS)
READING FOUNDATIONAL (RF)
Print Concepts
Kindergarten and 1 st grade only
Phonological Awareness
Kindergarten and 1 st grade only
Phonics and Word Recognition
ELACC5RF3: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Use combined knowledge of all letter-sound correspondences, syllabication patterns, and morphology (e.g., roots and affixes) to read accurately unfamiliar multi-syllabic words in context and out of context.
Fluency
ELACC5RF4: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
a. Read on-level text with purpose and understanding.
b. Read on-level prose and poetry orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.
c. Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
WRITING (W)
Text Types and Purposes
ELACC5W1: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons.
a. Introduce a topic or text clearly, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure in which ideas are logically grouped to support the writer's purpose.
b. Provide logically ordered reasons that are supported by facts and details.
c. Link opinion and reasons using words, phrases, and clauses (e.g., consequently, specifically).
d. Provide a concluding statement or section related to the opinion presented.
ELACC5W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
a. Introduce a topic clearly, provide a general observation and focus, and group related information logically; include formatting (e.g., headings), illustrations, and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
b. Develop the topic with facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples related to the topic.
c. Link ideas within and across categories of information using words, phrases, and clauses (e.g., in contrast, especially
).
d. Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
e. Provide a concluding statement or section related to the information or explanation presented.
ELACC5W3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences:
a. Orient the reader by establishing a situation and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally.
b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.
c. Use a variety oftransitional words, phrases, and clauses to manage the sequence of events.
d. Use concrete words and phrases and sensory details to convey experiences and events precisely.
e. Provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated experiences or events.
Production and Distribution of Writing
ELACC5W4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in Standards 1–3 above.)
ELACC5W5: With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1–3 up to and including grade 5.)
ELACC5W6: With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of two pages in a single sitting.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
ELACC5W7: Conduct short research projects that use several sources to build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic.
ELACC5W8: Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished work, and provide a list of sources.
ELACC5W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
a. Apply grade 5 Reading standards to literature (e.g., "Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or a drama, drawing on specific details in the text [e.g., how characters interact]").
b. Apply grade 5 Reading standards to informational texts (e.g., Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text, identifying which reasons and evidence supports which point[s]).
Range of Writing
ELACC5W10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of disciplinespecific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
SPEAKING AND LISTENING (SL)
Comprehension and Collaboration
ELACC5SL1: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.
a. Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly draw on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion.
b. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions and carry out assigned roles.
c. Pose and respond to specific questions by making comments that contribute to the discussion and elaborate on the remarks of others.
d. Review the key ideas expressed and draw conclusions in light of information and knowledge gained from the discussions.
ELACC5SL2: Summarize a written text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
ELACC5SL3: Summarize the points a speaker makes and explain how each claim is supported by reasons and evidence.
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
ELACC5SL4: Report on a topic or text or present an opinion, sequencing ideas logically and using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.
ELACC5SL5: Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.
ELACC5SL6: Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, using formal English when appropriate to task and situation. (See grade 5 Language standards 1 and 3 for specific expectations.)
LANGUAGE (L)
Conventions of Standard English
ELACC5L1: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
a. Explain the function of conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections in general and their function in particular sentences.
b. Form and use the perfect (e.g., I had walked; I have walked; I will have walked) verb aspects.
c. Use verb tense and aspect to convey various times, sequences, states, and conditions.
d. Recognize and correct inappropriate shifts in verb tense and aspect.*
e. Use correlative conjunctions (e.g., either/or, neither/nor).
ELACC5L2: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
a. Use punctuation to separate items in a series.*
b. Use a comma to separate an introductory element from the rest of the sentence.
c. Use a comma to set off the words yes and no (e.g., Yes, thank you), to set off a tag question from the rest of the sentence (e.g., It's true, isn't it?), and to indicate direct address (e.g., Is that you, Steve?).
d. Use underlining, quotation marks, or italics to indicate titles of works.
e. Spell grade-appropriate words correctly, consulting references as needed.
Knowledge of Language
ELACC5L3: Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.
a. Expand, combine, and reduce sentences for meaning, reader/listener interest, and style.*
b. Compare and contrast the varieties of English (e.g., dialects, registers) used in stories, dramas, or poems.
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
ELACC5L4: Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 5 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
a. Use context (e.g., cause/effect relationships and comparisons in text) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.
b. Use common, grade-appropriate Greek and Latin affixes and roots as clues to the meaning of a word (e.g., photograph, photosynthesis).
c. Consult reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation and determine or clarify the precise meaning of key words and phrases.
ELACC5L5: Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
a. Interpret figurative language, including similes and metaphors, in context.
b. Recognize and explain the meaning of common idioms, adages, and proverbs.
c. Use the relationship between particular words (e.g., synonyms, antonyms, homographs) to better understand each of the words.
ELACC5L6: Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific vocabulary, including words and phrases that signal contrast, addition, and other logical relationships (e.g., however, although, nevertheless, similarly, moreover, in addition).
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Making the Invisible Visible
Valentina
My name is Valentina. I was born and grew up in China with my three sisters, my American father and Argentine mother. Living in a country where the culture is totally different from what your parents are used to, where you look like a foreigner wherever you go even if you speak the language, where you are just different because of where you were born and which family you were born into, gives you a different perspective on life. I used to wonder what it would be like to live in a country where I looked like the people who surrounded me, where the traditions I had at home would be the same as my friends', and where I would "feel" like I really belonged. I later figured out that there was no real answer to that.
Growing up in a household where we celebrated the holidays of three different cultures made it easy for me to adapt and appreciate other people's traditions. I realized that I didn't have to belong to one specific part of the world, but I could instead adapt to multiple cultures. I have realized that there is beauty in traditions and cultures that may seem different and weird to some, but are symbols of life and continuity to others. Life is diverse. One should appreciate being unique and having traditions and a language that may or may not be the same as others. I feel lucky to be connected to the three cultures and lifestyles that I grew up around.
Having this background, I developed an interest in people (species) who have become endangered. According to Dictionary.com, an Endangered Species is defined as: "A species at risk of extinction because of human activity, changes in climate, changes in predator-prey ratios, etc…" Endangered people are often indigenous tribes whose people and ethnic traditions are in danger of disappearing. To know that cultures may and have been lost forever is dispiriting. Here, I want to share some brief snapshots of indigenous peoples across continents and show the importance of preserving these cultures.
* * * * *
The Natural History Museum in London claims to have fossil evidence of human existence in East Africa between 1.9 million and 2.4 million years ago. 1 There have been records of explorers starting as early as the second century BC, when Zhang Qian traveled from China to Central Asia. 2 It seems fair to say that explorers were the first people to come in contact with culturally different populations as distinct cultures formed within tribes and populations in different geological areas. As specified by geography.about.com, the Age of Exploration was characterized by the Europeans that went in search for land and people through the 15 th century to the 17 th century. 3 During that time the Spanish invaded and colonized South America. This is why my mother who is from Argentina speaks Spanish. Even though the Spanish came and took over most of the continent, there were still some cultures that survived on their own. In a continent bordering 400 million people, there are still
1 "How long have we been here?" Natural History Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
<http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/human-origins/modern-human-evolution/when/index.html>.
3 "Begin Exploring the Age of Exploration with This Handy Overview." About.com Geography. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. <http://geography.about.com/od/historyofge
2 Boulnois, Luce (2005). Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants. Hong Kong: Odyssey Books. p. 66. ISBN 962-217-721-2.
approximately 40,000,000 people in South America and the Caribbean that belong to roughly 600 indigenous groups. 4
It has gotten to the point where the number of remaining indigenous peoples has dropped down to five percent of the total world population. 5 Some examples of these endangered peoples are the Alaskan Lakotas, the Lancandon of Mexico, the Kuna Indians of Panama, the Tuareg of Mali, the Tibetans, the Wiegers of China, the Ainu of Japan and the Tokelauan of New Zealand. Cultural and lifestyle differences have created linguistic, political and economic barriers between the above-mentioned tribes and modern man. Today the five percent of indigenous people make up fifteen percent of the world's poor. 6 The degree of different points of view the modern day person and indigenous people have is causing a separation that has made it hard to find a healthy bridge between.
There are indigenous groups that are becoming too small that choose to branch out and assimilate into other groups. The Asan people of Siberia were assimilated in the 18 th and 19 th century by the Evenks who spoke the Asan language. The language of Yeniseian, which was spoken by the Asan, now only has 200 speakers left. Why would losing a language be that harmful to the world? Many people believe that if a language is lost, then a culture is lost. The cultures where languages and ideas and thoughts are unique are what give the world interesting sides to it. People speak languages for pride, identity and love for the area they are from. Having a widely known language like English is causing other languages, and even English vernaculars, to become extinct. Tom Colls explains in his article The Death Of Languages? "If we are not cautious about the way English is progressing it may eventually kill most other languages." 7 Kids are being threatened to not speak a language, either to fit in to their environment, or to increase chances of having a wider range of job choices. But what if people want to stay in their own city or region where they have to speak that language? A language is kept if people are proud of it.
Words are artistic units that are different in each language, dialect and vernacular. It is important to be able to keep those and have an identity. Colls also states "by the year 2100, 90% of the world's languages would have ceased to exist." 8 There is a reason why people are different, why languages and cultures have a twist on their perspective to a situation and idea. "What we lose is essentially an enormous cultural heritage, the way of expressing the relationship with nature, with the world, between themselves in the framework of their families, their kin people. It's also the way they express their humor, their love, and their life. It is a testimony of human communities which is extremely precious, because it expresses what other communities than ours in the modern industrialized world are able to express," says linguist Claude Hagege. 9 An extreme example is the Awa people in Brazil. The tribe only has approximately 350 people left who speak Awapit, which is now classified as
4 "Indigenous Peoples in Latin America - a general overview." Indigenous peoples in Latin America.
N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. <http://www.iwgia.org/regions/latin-america/indigenous-peoples-in- latin-america>.
5 Doll, Sharon, and Mary Anne Saul. "Cultural Survival | Partnering with Indigenous Peoples to Defend their Lands, Languages, and Cultures." Cultural Survival | Partnering with Indigenous Peoples to Defend their Lands, Languages, and Cultures. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
<http://www.culturalsurvival.org/>.
7 Colls, Tom. "The Death of Language." BBC News. BBC, 19 Oct. 2009. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
6 Doll, Saul, Cultural Survival Indigenous Peoples General Info.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8311000/8311069.stm>
9 Colls, What is lost?
8 Colls, First Paragraph
a severely endangered language by UNESCO. 10 The Awas' home in the Amazon is being destroyed for timber, and in many cases many Awa people are losing their lives in the process. 11 If the Awa disappear, their language will go with them. Pete Catches, a medicine man from the Lakota tribe in Alaska, confirms this dilemma. "People who lose their language lose part of themselves, for not just words are lost; so are the stories, songs and ceremonies that once gave young people a shared sense of who they were." 12
Endangered people often feel invisible, misunderstood and stuck. They are masters of their land but no one wants to see and acknowledge that anymore. A Majoruna woman of the Yavari Rivers in South America tells the story of how her people have seen scientists go into the village and speak to elders in order to learn as much as they can about the herbs and natural medicines. The scientists would then take this knowledge and plant samples back to their laboratories. They apply for a patent, and then they "own" this knowledge. The companies the scientists worked for would then sell products made from the knowledge acquired from the indigenous people. The companies would get rich but the indigenous people usually received no benefits from their contribution – which they probably didn't know they made. 13 There is a lack of defense for the knowledge and land of the indigenous people.
These are the kind of rights and freedoms that many indigenous people seek— to be recognized as who they are—distinct groups with their own unique cultures. Indigenous peoples want to enjoy and pass onto their children their histories, languages, traditions, modes of internal governance and spiritual practices while being able to live a dignified life. 14 The Majoruna woman also shares that she has eight children and refuses to send them to school because Spanish is the only spoken language. 15 Not only is language banned, but their freedom to pray. For more than nineteen generations, the Sun Dance has been one of the most sacred rites of the Lakota. It involves fasting for four days, and praying for other people and the earth. However, the U.S. government banned it for most of the twentieth century. Although the Sun Dance is legal once again, this is an example of how the Constitution is not equally applied to America's Indigenous people. 16
Every year, half a million acres of forest go up in smoke in the Peruvian Amazon alone. To the Peruvian government this means success by earning money from the use of the forest. To the Indians it is said to be "a disaster that is impoverishing our people," by Evaristo Nugkuag, the president of COICA, the Coordinating Organization for Indigenous Groups of the Amazon Basin. People are just trying to live on their land safely and have the same rights as anyone else.
Indigenous people sometimes find it hard to be proud of the race they were born into because they know it is a hard cycle to get out of. In the 23 provinces of Argentina, the Additional Survey on Indigenous Populations in 2001 concluded that there were still 18 existent indigenous groups alive. Strangely, however, when the
10 Haboud, Marleen; Adelaarurl, Willem (2008). "Awapit" In: Moseley, Christopher, ed (2010). Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, 3rd edn, Paris. UNESCO Publishing (online version). Retrieved 23 April 2012
"Earth's most threatened tribe."
11
- Survival International. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
<http://www.survivalinternational.org/awa>.
13 Davidson, page 74 - 75 14
12 Davidson, page 43
Davidson, page 16 - 17
16 Davidson, Art. Endangered peoples. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1993. Print.
15 Davidson, page 74
survey was done once more a decade later, it surprisingly stated that there were more than 31 indigenous groups still around! 17 How did this happen? This possibly shows that there has been a noticeable increase in tolerance and awareness of indigenous peoples, and that these people are now not as worried about racial discrimination and therefore were less afraid to speak out about who they actually are.
Patricia Locke, a Lakota Indian, says "I am a dark-skinned, white haired Indian grandmother, and sometimes I begin to feel that I am invisible, people see through me at airports, on the street, and at the meat market. When I mention this eerier feeling to Indian friends, they tell me it happen to them, too. I'm afraid to ask Indian children about it. I know this invisibility must hurt them. What is it that so clouds people's vision that they cannot see us?" 18 All around the world people are eager to project the fate of sea turtles and spotted owls, but people don't realize that their own species are vanishing too. It is the drive of globalization, where if you do not speak English or a common language then you are trapped in the circle of your community; many people see this as a negative. But the world needs cultural differences to flourish; we can achieve this through exchanging innovative ideas because of the unique perspective people would have, by increasing adaptability and having a variety of viewpoints. Your box of knowledge grows with human diversity. We now need to strengthen the link between the Indigenous peoples and the modern day twenty first century person. Appreciation and respect is an important aspect that needs to exist as a basic requirement.
17 "Indigenous peoples in Argentina." Argentina. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
<http://www.iwgia.org/regions/latin-america/argentina>.
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Rock Star
Adrian Chamberlain
Reading level: 3.0 978-1-55469-235-4 pb 978-1-55469-236-1 lib AR Quiz # 136629
Book Summary
Duncan's life changes dramatically when he joins Primal Thunk, a rock band at his high school. Viewed as a nerd and certainly not very popular or experienced, Duncan doesn't know how to handle challenges of the new situations he faces complete with girls, parties and alcohol. He mistreats his old friends, and his "new" friends aren't his friends at all. But Duncan does meet Houston, a reclusive musician that teaches him how to play a new instrument, while enlightening Duncan to who he is as a person. The new, improved Duncan emerges with plans to set the world on fire.
Prereading Idea
High school bands represent every teenager's dream of fame and success, but how many of them really make the big time? Ask students to research famous bands and find one or more of them who started as a high school band. When the students locate one, have them answer the following questions: How many of the original members from high school were still in the band when it went big time? Did the band members write their own songs and music? How did the band get their big break? Have students present their findings to the class.
Connecting to the World—Writing and Research Ideas
* • Duncan makes several references to the school lunchroom. At the beginning of chapter 2, he talks about the cliques in his school who all sit together, and later, he refers to the noise level and lighting. Ask students to observe the lunchroom at their school and to write down a list of words and phrases that describe what they see, hear, feel, smell and touch. Then ask students to find a partner and write a poem with the words and phrases they have written down. Students can share their poems with the class and then display them on the walls in the lunchroom.
* • Duncan learns and grows as a result of his friendship with Houston, the reclusive organist from the Rhythm Kings. Ask students to select a partner with whom to work and to investigate other reclusive musicians. Students should find out why the musicians left the music world, what they currently do with their time, and possible future musical plans—if any. Students can present their findings to the class in a creative format using interactive online tools.
Connecting to the Text—Elements of the Novel
Setting
Setting is the time and place of action in a story. Ask students to think about the setting of Rock Star and to brainstorm a list of facts about the setting. After the list is complete, ask students to identify which aspects of the setting are crucial to the story. For example, is it crucial that the story occurs in a high school with teenage characters? For each item on the list, ask students to determine if that element of setting is crucial and to explain why. As students share their responses, ask the class to corroborate their reasoning. Then have students create a visual collage of the crucial elements of the setting. Post the collages in the classroom.
Conflict
Conflict is what makes the story interesting and entertaining to read. In Rock Star, Duncan deals with both internal and external conflicts and his reaction to the conflicts are what moves the story forward. Ask students to make a list of both his internal and external conflicts and to indicate how Duncan resolved each of them. Working in small groups, have students write a skit depicting one of the conflicts Duncan faces. Students may incorporate drama, exaggeration, humor, sarcasm or other elements to highlight the conflicts. Have students perform their skits for the class.
Characters
A character can be classified as static, one who does not change much, or dynamic, one who changes as a result of the story's events. List the major characters in Rock Star and ask students to identify them as either static or dynamic. Students need to compare the character in the beginning of the story to the same character at the end of the story and ask themselves, "Has the character changed and, if so, how did they change?" Divide students into groups and assign each group a character. Have students visually portray this character as dynamic or static utilizing a series of cartoon panels to emphasize how the character changes or remains the same. Display the cartoons around the room.
Connecting to the Students—Discussion Questions
1. Why is it that students who have similar likes and dislikes hang out together and form cliques? Why is it so uncommon for a student to cross the boundary from one clique to another?
2. Duncan's dad says Duncan has an overactive imagination. Would you agree or disagree with Duncan's father? Support your answer with evidence from the book.
3. Even though he feels okay about himself, sometimes Duncan wonders if people think he is a freak. How do other characters in the book perceive Duncan?
4. In chapter 2, Duncan describes his clothes, and, as readers, you know his interests. How would you characterize Duncan? Would he be someone you would want for a friend? Why or why not?
5. Why does Duncan want to dislike his father's girlfriend, Terry? What does she do to win him over?
6. When Duncan is with the guys from Primal Thunk, why does he ignore Jason and his mom? How does it make Duncan feel? What does Duncan do to make it up to Jason?
7. Duncan hates to be judged or criticized, so why is he so quick to criticize and judge others?
8. Duncan handles himself at the party in all the wrong ways. What consequences does he suffer as a result of his actions?
Author Biography
Adrian Chamberlain is an award-winning column writer for the Victoria Times Colonist, and he has also written for the Winnipeg Free Press. He plays keyboards for a rhythm and blues band, The Soul Shakers. This is Adrian's first novel for the Orca Soundings series. | <urn:uuid:01e9bc84-77c2-4180-b7e2-6d633affde79> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | http://www.orcabook.com/Assets/PDFs/Guides/rockstar.pdf | 2019-10-17T18:12:41Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00551.warc.gz | 299,508,217 | 1,226 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999409 | eng_Latn | 0.999501 | [
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South Carolina
South Carolina is located in the southeastern portion of the United States. It is bordered by North Carolina, Georgia, and the Atlantic Ocean. It is located within only one climate region, the humid subtropical region.
* Our state is divided by a fall line.
* The part of the state north of the fall line is sometimes called the "Upcountry".
* The part of the state south of the fall line is sometimes called the "Lowcountry".
* There are six regions – Blue Ridge, Piedmont, Sandhills, Inner Coastal Plain, Outer Coastal Plain, and Coastal Zone.
Blue Ridge Region *the smallest region in South Carolina (p. 44-45)
Physical Features "landforms" - mountains and forest (rural)
```
Water Systems - streams, rivers, and lakes Natural Resources – water (hydroelectricity) and trees *used to have logging, but now much of the land is protected Major Cities – Clemson, Walhalla, Sassafras Mountain, Lake Jocassee Climate – cooler, the coldest region, gets the most snow Economy (Jobs and Tourism) – camping, hiking, fishing, white water rafting
```
Piedmont Region *Where We Live - ANDERSON (p. 46-47)
Physical Features "landforms" – rolling hills, many shallow valleys, foothills (at the base of the mountains)
monadnock-flat hill made of rock example: Table Rock
Water Systems – lakes (example: Lake Hartwell), swift-flowing rivers, streams, and waterfalls
Natural Resources – trees (to build homes and furniture) and water (helps make electricity)
Major Cities – Anderson, Greenville, Spartanburg
Climate – mild (not too hot or cold)
Economy (Jobs and Tourism) – textile (mills and factories that make cloth), parks, peaches (cash crop), and farming
Sandhills Region (p. 50-53)
The old coastline used to be where the Sandhills region is now.
Physical Features: small hills, flat land with sandy soil, the fall line is where the river forms rapids
Water Systems: rapid-moving rivers that are rocky and shallow
Natural Resources: water (hydroelectricity)
Major Cities and Sites: *Columbia-our state capital is located here, Aiken, Camden, Lexington
Climate: hot
Economy (Jobs and Tourism): state government jobs are here, factories such as textile "cloth" industry
Inner Coastal Region (p. 54-55)
Physical Features: plains – flat grassy lands, some rolling hills, more than ½ of the region is covered in forests, contains a floodplain (an area bordering a river that is made of soil deposited during floods)
*has the BEST soil in the state
Water Systems: rivers
Natural Resources: center of the state's cotton production, wheat, soybeans
Major Cities: Congaree National Park, Darlington (racetrack), Florence, Sumter
Climate: hot
Economy (Jobs and Tourism): farming
Outer Coastal Region (p. 60-61)
Physical Features: flat, swamp lands (wet, soggy land)
Water Systems: rivers, streams, swamps, canals to connect river systems
Natural Resources: pine trees and cypress trees
Major Cities and Sites: Conway
Climate: hot, humid, and muggy
Economy (Jobs and Tourism): shipping goods by canals and railroads
Coastal Zone (p. 62-63)
Physical Features: sandy beaches, barrier islands
Water Systems: Atlantic Ocean, marshes (swampy), rivers
Natural Resources: seafood
Major Cities and Sites: Charleston (oldest city), Myrtle Beach "The Grand Strand", Hilton Head Island
Climate: hot and humid
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HSML Summer Pre-Pre-Algebra Course Preparedness Test
High School Math Live wants parents to be well informed. We want your student to be placed in the appropriate course so that they will be successful and challenged while learning the beauty of mathematics. The questions we have below will be a good indicator to whether your student is ready for Pre-Pre-Algebra.
Please have your student complete the test and then scan their work and answers, making sure that the answers are in the same order as the problems on the document. The scan should be emailed as a single PDF document to Mrs. Wolff at firstname.lastname@example.org .
Mrs. Wolff will contact you with results of the test. If the results do not demonstrate a strong readiness for Pre-Pre-Algebra, it does not mean you won't be allowed to take the course, but we want you to know if the class is going to be a significant stretch for your student. Prior to classes starting, if you have registered and decide not to take the course based on the results of this test, you will receive a full refund of the $125 first payment.
Please view our website, www.highschoolmathlive.com, to read other details including what makes a successful HSML summer student and online learner.
For these questions, no calculator should be used.
Part 1. Simplify the following.
1. 7.5 2.15 +
2. 13.2 5.36 −
3. 246 38 −
Part 2. Rounding
1. Round 4145 to the nearest hundred.
2. Round 1.563 to the nearest whole number.
3. Round 81.48 to the nearest tenth.
Part 3. Order these set of numbers in order from least to greatest.
421.41 501 632 508 421.647
Part 4. Fractions/Decimals
1. What mixed fraction is equal to 14.25?
2. What is the improper fraction for 38 3 ?
3. What is the decimal that is equal to 7100 4?
4. What is the decimal that is equal to 2 5 ?
5. What is the least common denominator for 3 4 and 2 3 ?
Part 5. Miscellaneous Problems
1. If you can paint 4 walls in a house per day, how long will it take you to paint 16 walls?
2. Laura received 400 emails in a week. Her sister, Kathy, received 231 emails that same week. How many more emails did Laura receive than Kathy?
3. I was paid $32.10, $12.25 and $8.02 for some work on a website development. What was my total pay for this work?
4. I want to redecorate my bedroom. Earlier, I bought 9 feet of a border. I have used 12 2 feet already. How much do I have left over to redecorate my room?
5. If I purchased a used video game for $4.48 and gave the cashier $10, how much change did I receive?
6. I will be making 12 4 inch cloth strips to go along one edge of a quilt. My quilt edge measures 81 inches. How many strips will I use if they are placed end to end along the edge?
Part 6. Geometry
1. What is the area of this rectangle?
3 feet
10 feet
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INTRODUCTORY: FPG-9 BUILD AND FLY
DESCRIPTION OF SESSION
In this session, participants will build and test their own gliders.
CATEGORY
[x] Exploring, Aviation
[x] Exploring, Engineering & Technology
[x] US DOE, Transportation
[x] US DOE, STEM
OBJECTIVES
[x] Build a model FPG-9 plane. (FPG stands for "Foam Plate Glider" and the 9 is from the 9-inch plate used to make it.)
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
[x] Test the precision of flight and landing of their model planes.
SUPPLIES
[x] Penny (one per participant)
[x] 9-inch plastic foam plate (one per participant)
[x] Ink pen (one per participant)
[x] Three to five pairs of scissors
[x] FPG-9 Pattern activity sheet (one per participant)
[x] Scotch tape
[x] Computer with internet access
[x] Bag for trash
ADVISOR NOTE: Text in italics should be read aloud to participants. As you engage your post in activities each week, please include comments, discussions, and feedback to the group relating to Character, Leadership, and Ethics. These are important attributes that make a difference in the success of youth in the workplace and in life.
It is strongly recommended that the Advisor practice constructing this glider before attempting to lead participants in building it. This activity should be conducted in a safe place with lots of room for testing the gliders but no risk of moving aircraft nearby.
ACTIVITIES
FPG-9 Construction
Activity 1
Pass out the FPG-9 Pattern activity sheet to participants, as well as the plates, pennies, and ink pens.
Photos courtesy of Jack Reynolds, volunteer at the National Model Aviation Museum
Provide these instructions to participants:
Note: These instructions describe construction from a regular foam plate found at any grocery store.
1. Cut out the FPG-9 pattern from the activity sheet. Do not cut along the dotted line on the paper pattern. Cut only along the bolded lines.
2. Place the paper pattern in the center of the foam plate, ensuring that the tail of the pattern stays inside of the curved portion of the plate bottom. (The tail must remain on the plate's flat bottom.) It's fine if the tab on the front of the pattern is on the curved portion. The ends of the wings should spill over the curved edge of the plate.
3. Trace around the pattern with an ink pen. Don't forget to mark the scissor slits A and B. When tracing slits A and B, make only one line. These lines will create the elevons and rudder.
4. Cut out the foam template by following the pen lines.
5.
Now cut along the dotted line to separate the tail from the wing of the FPG-9.
6. The wing and the tail each have slots drawn on them. When cutting out slots 1 and 2, make them only as wide as the thickness of the foam plate. If the slots are cut too wide, the pieces of the plane will not fit together snugly.
7. To attach the tail to the wing, slide Slot 1 into Slot 2. Use two small (2-inch) pieces of tape to secure the bottom of the tail to the bottom of the wing. Ensure the tail is perpendicular to the wing before adding the tape.
8. In order for the plane to fly successfully, a penny must be attached to the top of the wing right behind the square tab. Fold the tab back over the penny and tape it down to secure the coin.
9. Bend the elevons on the wing upward. This will provide for a flatter glide. To make the plane turn, adjust the rudder on the vertical fin.
10. Your FPG-9 is complete and ready to fly. Gently toss the plane directly in front of you. Once it flies reasonably straight ahead and glides well, try throwing it hard with the nose of the glider pointed 30 degrees above the horizon. The FPG-9 should perform a big loop and have enough speed for a glide of 20 to 25 feet after the loop.
Explain to participants that the FPG-9 uses elevons to control both pitch and roll. In a conventional airplane, elevators control pitch and ailerons control roll. Have participants use the elevons and rudder to try to make their glider turn to the left and turn to the right. Ask: What happens if you remove the penny? What happens if you remove the tail?
If time permits, organize races, competitions, and target practice. Have the participants try to steer using the elevons.
Activity 2
If a computer with internet access is available, consider having participants play the foam plate glider game at https://www.childrensmuseum.org/legacy-games/flight-adventures. The website includes explanations about the aerodynamics of flight.
Online Flight Adventure
ADVISOR NOTE
Some sample questions are below. They are designed to help the participants apply what they have learned to their own interests. You are welcome to use these questions or develop your own questions that relate to your post or specific focus area.
REFLECTION
[x] What similarities and differences do you notice about this FPG-9 and a real plane?
[x] What is one new thing you learned during today's discussion?
[x] Why do you thing the penny is so important to the flight of the glider?
ADVISOR AND OFFICER REVIEW
[x] Identify what was successful about the meeting.
After the meeting, address the following:
[x] Identify what needed improvement.
[x] Schedule an officer and Advisor planning meeting to prepare for the next post meeting or activity.
Content for this session provided by Youth Aviation Adventure (http://www.youthaviationadventure.org/yaa/).
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RESOURCES
FPG-9 Pattern
Activity 1
This pattern was created by Jack Reynolds, a volunteer at the National Model Aviation Museum. | <urn:uuid:85f66444-05e1-4ec3-875c-fa5d67fd14a1> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.exploring.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Intro_FPG-9_final.pdf | 2019-10-17T19:05:41Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00552.warc.gz | 907,380,115 | 1,405 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.98906 | eng_Latn | 0.9978 | [
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TEAK/TA
Teaching
Workshop
Session 1: Introduction and Classroom Management
Dr. Elizabeth DeBartolo, Mechanical Engineering Dr. Margaret Bailey, Mechanical Engineering Sarah Cass, RIT Teaching and Learning Center
Introductions…
* Take 1 minute to write down:
* Write down your name
* A topic you'd like to practice teaching
* A list of things you know about teaching and a list of things you'd like to learn about teaching
* Meet the class…in groups
* Name, year, why are you here, etc.
* Teaching topic
Instructors (syllabus)
* Dr. Elizabeth DeBartolo
* Dr. Risa Robinson
* Other guest lectures as appropriate
Session Activities…
* Introduction to TEAK and this teaching workshop, basic classroom management
* Objectives:
* Be aware of the objectives of TEAK and this workshop
* Know your audience
* Learn some techniques for setting the stage in your classroom
What is The TEAK Project?
* Provide opportunities for KGCOE students to enhance their understanding of engineering by teaching others
* Provide opportunities for KGCOE students to improve their communication skills and confidence
* Create a series of portable kits and webbased activities to introduce middle school students to engineering.
Why this workshop?
* Provide participants basic teaching skills
* Apply in middle school classrooms (TEAK)
* Apply in RIT classes/labs (TA)
* Apply in outreach events
* Apply in your career
* Practice teaching exercise(s) and get feedback from an audience of your peers
* Record and watch video of yourself teaching
Expectations
* Everyone participates – small groups and full class
* Ask questions
* Be respectful
* Be constructive
Workshop Outline (syllabus)
Setting the Stage
* Planning the event
* Room setup
* Warm-up Activity
* Introduce Yourself
Setting the Stage
* Setting the classroom environment
* Attitude
* Presence
* Voice
* Tone
* Setting expectations/classroom behavior
* Parking Lot
* Traffic Light
Warm-ups
* How did we start this morning?
* What did it achieve? (hopefully…)
* Why bother?
* Some ideas…
For more ideas:
http://www.residentassisstant.com/games/icebreakers
Activity: Applying Techniques to Your Lessons
Directions:
* List some expectations you have for your class and ideas for conveying them?
* How can you get your class warmed up and ready to learn?
Know Your Audience
Who is your audience?
* Take 30 seconds to write down your potential audience(s).
* Based on the title of your chosen topic/field, are there any words in there that your audience won't recognize? How about…
* …a middle-school student?
* …a high school student?
* …a 1 st or 2 nd year RIT student?
* Have we used any terms in this session that you don't understand?
How much time do you have?
* Not time in class…time when you've got your group's attention!
* Varies by age and interest in the subject.
* Not too long for any group!
* Discuss more in a later session…
Activity: Applying Techniques to Your Lessons
Directions:
* Come up with a list of words you shouldn't assume your audience already knows. (2 min)
* Get input from a neighbor once you've done your own assessment.
* Share with group.
Support for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation's Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program under Award No. DUE-0737462. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. | <urn:uuid:c32f923b-64ba-4be8-bd04-028990d7d717> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | http://edge.rit.edu/edge/TEAK/public/Workshop%20Handout%20Session%201.pdf | 2019-10-17T18:42:13Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00546.warc.gz | 60,235,996 | 780 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.937222 | eng_Latn | 0.995084 | [
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Eastern Europe School Group
This is a sample of a school trip to Eastern Europe including visits to Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Germany. The itinerary is for informational purposes, to give you an idea of what can be included in a school group tour in Eastern Europe, such as this one. We will customize your group's program to fit your group's needs and interests. Group size, dates and pricing on request. Meals as indicated, B=breakfast, L=lunch, D=dinner
10 days/9 nights
ITINERARY
Day 1: Depart home city - Vienna
Today the group meets up at your home city's airport and together on an overnight flight bound for Vienna, Austria.
Day 2: Vienna
Arrival at Vienna airport. Your coach will bring you to the beautiful city Vienna of which the historic center has been added to UNESCO's World Cultural Heritage list. Upon arrival you will have a guided sightseeing tour by coach to see the highlights of Vienna such as the Austria's national Opera House with its elegant arcades and the Neo Gothic City Hall Building with its attractive gardens, the Hofburg and the Neue Burg, the "Spanisch Reitschule" where the Spanish riding takes place and the National Library.
Check in at your hotel and remainder of the day free to rest or to spend down town. Welcome dinner at a local restaurant and overnight Vienna.
Meals: (D)
Day 3: Vienna
After breakfast you will visit the Schönbrunn Palace. The site of Schönbrunn was covered by a vast forest, a favored hunting ground of the Habsburgs. Schönbrunn was built for the Emperor who wanted to have a summer residence that would surpass in splendor all other royal residences. These grandiose plans were never realized. The daughter of Karel VI, Maria, modified the palace to its present form. Schönbrunn is an architectural success, particularly when it is viewed in the setting of its famous park. You will see for example the apartments of the Emperor, the ceremonial rooms and the guest apartments. After this tour you will have some time to stroll around in the park. The park is remarkable creation of Baroque art and Antiquity. Arbours, veritable cradles of greenery, and vast formal beds of flowers serve as settings for charming groups of allegorical statues and gracious fountains.
Rest of the afternoon is at leisure to enjoy the Austrian "Gemütlichkeit" and unique atmosphere, the beautiful shops and picturesque streets.
Dinner and overnight in Vienna.
Meals: B, D
Day 4: Budapest
Check out and drive to Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Budapest is also known as the Paris of Eastern Europe, with the Danube being the main street dividing historic Buda from commercial Pest. Both parts of the city are connected
with 8 bridges. A beautiful city where East meets West. The city, founded by the Romans is an attractive city, with a big city park, riverboats, hot thermal baths, impressive building, fine shopping, museums and a lively nightlife.
Check into your hotel and have some time to freshen up. In the afternoon you will have a guided city tour to see the main sights of this impressive city. During this tour you will see sights like the Chain Bridge that connect Buda with Pest, the Parliament Building, the State Opera House and Margaret Island with its Water Tower, Bringo Castle and St. Margaret Ruins. Visit the Castle Hill in the "Buda" part of the city: the Matthias Church and the Fisherman's Bastion. Rest of the afternoon is free to explore the city. You can explore the Jewish quarter, the famous shopping streets or visit the St. Stephens Basilica.
Dinner and overnight in Budapest.
Meals: B, D
Day 5: Szentendre - Krakow
In the morning you will visit the charming village Szentendre, situated on the right bank of the Danube. Szentendre already existed in the time of the Romans and possesses a rich history. As part of their defensive lines they laid along the Danube, an army camp emerged many centuries later in a village called Szentendre. Its sloping narrow cobbled streets are lined with brightly-colored houses. In Szentendre you'll experience a cultural and artistically feeling. No wander that lots of artists come to find inspiration and work here so let this unique aura enchant you too!
Continue your tour to Krakow, in Poland. After check in into your hotel your local guide will show you Kazimierz, the Jews area in Krakow. Kazimierz was once a separate city. Until the 20th century it was a safe area for the Jews from all over Europe and became an important city for the Diaspora. During World War II the district was largely eradicated. Among other things, that is why the film Schindler's List was recorded partly in this district. Now the district is vibrant and comparisons to districts such as London's Soho, Paris ' Latin Quarter, and New York's Village are quickly made!
Dinner and overnight in Krakow.
Meals: B, D
Day 6: Krakow - Auschwitz - Prague
The day starts with some time to explore the Market square. The surroundings of the square have remained unchanged for almost 700 years and hear the silver trumpet of the bugler from St. Mary's Tower. See the famous wooden altar. See the Town Hall, the Cloth Hall and the Burgher's Houses. You may also like to see the Wawel Cathedral with the extraordinary Wit Stowosz altar and the Coronation Chapel and the Royal Chambers.
Before noon you drive to Prague with en route a visit to the Nazi concentration Camp Auschwitz with a local guide. Visit the cell where Maximillian Kolbe (a Polish priest) was martyred and the Martyrdom Museum recalling the horrors of the Holocaust.
In the late afternoon you will arrive in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Prague is like a history lesson come true. You'll have the feeling that history had stopped somewhere back in the 18th century when you walk among the long stone palace. Visit the Prague Castle. This castle was founded in the 9th century, then rebuild and extended many times. When you enter the castle you will see sights like the St. Vitus Cathedral and the Golden Lane, a 16th century tradesman's quarter of tiny houses built into the castle walls. The novelist Franz Kafka lived and wrote in the tiny house at No. 22
Dinner and overnight in Prague.
Meals: B, D
Day 7: Prague
In the morning you will visit, together with a local guide, the oldest ghetto in Europe the Jewish Quarter. It was cleaned up and redesigned in the late 19C. See the Old-New Synagogue and the Old Jewish Cemetery, where the dead are buried on 12 levels because of the lack of space. Also see the old town hall with its Gothic horloge, the St. Nicholas Church. In the afternoon you will visit the Castle of Karlstein founded by the builder of "Golden Prague" Emperor Charles IV. The medieval castle is situated high on the rocks and was meant to be a safe place to keep the crown jewels and holy reliquaries.
Return to Prague for dinner and overnight.
Meals: B, D
After breakfast you will depart to Dresden. Dresden is attractively located on the Elbe River. This city was almost completely destroyed during the last month of World War II, but nearly every building has been restored in the meantime. Dresden is a pearl on the River! A local guide will show you the city. Pass Semper Opera House, built between 1871 and 1878. The Opera house owes its forms to the Italian Renaissance. Tiered facade and each wall furnished with twin niches and statues. And also stop at the Cathedral, an enormous basilica edifice, influenced by Italian baroque. Lunch on your own in Dresden and some time at leisure before you will travel to Berlin.
Dinner and overnight in Berlin.
Meals: B, D
Day 9: Berlin
After breakfast a local guide will pick you up at the hotel for a tour of Berlin. Drive along the wellknown Kurfürstendam, Berlin's most famous avenue. This is where you find many of the best shops and department stores and a great deal of people-watching! Pass the Gedachtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm memorial Church tower), symbol of the futile destructiveness of WW II and continue to drive through the vast Tiergarden, a park situated in the central part of the City and which will eventually contain the new museums which will consolidate the collections of the museums in the former East and West Berlin. Pass the remarkable new Houses of Parliament with a lot of glass, masterpiece of architecture. There will be a short stop at Dahlem, where several museums are housed. One of the most interesting will be the Gemaldegalerie, which has a wonderful collection of old masters. The most interesting is the painting called "The Man with the Gold Helmet', which was long thought to be painted by Rembrandt, but has been shown to be by one of his pupils.
You will also tour former East Berlin. You will see the marked difference. In eastern half of the city, you will find that under the Communist regime, the architecture is generally either a very drab, institutional style or splendid restorations and recreations of old structures. It is the latter that will draw our attention. The famous avenue is Unter Den Linden, with its revival at the moment of the lively period in 1930/1933. You will pass the two most recognized structures in Berlin, the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, which was in East Berlin until the wall came down. Also pass Berliner Dom, Deutsche Staatsoper and Platz der Akademie.
The tour will be followed by visiting one of the outstanding sights of Berlin: Charlottenburg Palace, built by Frederick, King of Prussia, for his wife Queen Charlotte. We will tour this great baroque palace with its gilt interior and the Weisse Saal, which was His Highness' dining room.
Dinner and overnight in Berlin.
Meals: B, D
Day 10: Depart Berlin - home city
After breakfast transfer to the airport for your flight back to your home city. The group tour ends on arrival to your home city's airport.
Meals: B
Details
Group Size: as set by the school
2019 Dates & Pricing: per group request
Trip Code:
INCLUDED
* Airfare home city - Vienna, return Berlin - home city
* All taxes
* Tour escort throughout the group program
* All transportation by private, deluxe motorcoach, with professional driver
* Eight nights of accommodation in Europe, 3 star hotels, as outlined in itinerary
* Meals as specified in itinerary, per day
* Local guide for city tours in Vienna, Budapest, Dresden and Berlin
* Local guide for walking tour through the Jewish area of Kazimierz, Jewish Quarter in Prague
* Guided visit to Auschwitz
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
* Entrance to Schönnbrunn Palace, Matthias Church, Fisherman's Bastion, Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Prague Castle, Karlstein Castle and Charlottenburg Palace
* Free of charge, school chaperones (number based on the total number of students and the school's required teacher/student ratio)
* Comprehensive Travel Insurance for students
* School information session
* Documents package
* Group back pack
NOT INCLUDED
* Meals not specified in the itinerary
* Gratuities to drivers and guides
* Items of a personal nature
TOUR NOTES
Disclaimer: We do our utmost to ensure that information posted on our website is correct at the time of publication, however trip details are subject to change without notice by the suppliers and operators involved. We update the information as soon as possible when changes are advised to us, however, we cannot assume responsibility for such changes made by the suppliers and operators.
ROUTE MAP
Winnipeg
164 Marion Street Winnipeg, MB, Canada R2H 0T4
Phone: 204.949.0199
Fax: 204.949.0188
Toll Free: 800.661.3830
Edmonton
(formerly Butte Travel Service)
11733 95th St. NW
Edmonton, AB, Canada
T5G 1M1
Phone: 780.477.3561
Fax: 780.477.9871
Toll Free: 800.661.8906 | <urn:uuid:18c89d92-feb2-493c-b550-24fbd898c6eb> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://greatcanadiantravel.com/index.php?rel_pdf_api=18688 | 2019-10-17T17:33:25Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00548.warc.gz | 523,979,108 | 2,613 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.989982 | eng_Latn | 0.998296 | [
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Lesson 3: Analyzing a Verbal Description
Classwork
Read the example problems below and discuss a problem-solving strategy with a partner or small group.
Example 1 Gregory plans to purchase a video game player. He has $500 in his savings account and plans to save $20 per week from his allowance until he has enough money to buy the player. He needs to figure out how long it will take. What type of function should he use to model this problem? Justify your answer mathematically.
Example 2
One of the highlights in a car show event is a car driving up a ramp and flying over approximately five cars placed end-to- end. The ramp is 8 ft. at its highest point, and there is an upward speed of 88 ft/sec before it leaves the top of the ramp. What type of function can best model the height, ℎ , in feet, of the car 𝑡𝑡 seconds after leaving the end of the ramp? Justify your answer mathematically.
Example 3 Margie got $1,000 from her grandmother to start her college fund. She is opening a new savings account and finds out that her bank offers a 2% annual interest rate, compounded monthly. What type of function would best represent the amount of money in Margie’s account? Justify your answer mathematically.
commoncore.org
© 2014 Common Core, Inc. Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
M5
ALGEBRA I
Exercises 1. City workers recorded the number of squirrels in a park over a period of time. At the first count, there were 15 pairs of male and female squirrels ( 30 squirrels total). After 6 months, the city workers recorded a total of 60 squirrels, and after a year, there were 120 .
a. What type of function can best model the population of squirrels recorded over a period of time, assuming the same growth rate and that no squirrel dies?
b. Write a function that represents the population of squirrels recorded over 𝑥𝑥 number of years. Explain how you determined your function.
2. A rectangular photograph measuring 8 in. by 10 in. is surrounded by a frame with a uniform width, 𝑥𝑥 a. What type of function can best represent the area of the picture and the frame in terms of 𝑥𝑥 (the unknown frame’s width)? Explain mathematically how you know.
.
b. Write an equation in standard form representing the area of the picture and the frame. Explain how you arrive at your equation.
commoncore.org
© 2014 Common Core, Inc. Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
M5
ALGEBRA I
50 ft/sec
3. A ball is tossed up in the air at an initial rate of from off the ground.
a. What type of function models the height ( , in feet) of the ball after seconds?
ℎ
𝑡𝑡
b. Explain what is happening to the height of the ball as it travels over a period of time (in seconds).
𝑡𝑡
c. What function models the height, (in feet), of the ball over a period of time (in seconds)?
ℎ
𝑡𝑡
4. A population of insects is known to triple in size every month. At the beginning of a scientific research project, there were 200 insects. a. What type of function models the population of the insects after 𝑡𝑡 years?
b.
Write a function that models the population growth of the insects after 𝑡𝑡 years.
5 ft.
commoncore.org
© 2014 Common Core, Inc. Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Lesson Summary
The following methods can be used to recognize a function type from a word problem:
1. If a problem requires repeated addition or subtraction of a constant value, then it is represented by a linear function.
2. If a problem involves free-falling motion of an object or an area, then it is represented by a quadratic function.
3. If a problem is about population growth or compound interest, then it is represented by an exponential function.
Problem Set
1. The costs to purchase school spirit posters are as follows: two posters for $5, four posters for $9, six posters for $13, eight posters for $17, and so on. a. What type of function would best represent the cost of the total number of posters purchased?
b. What function represents the cost of the total number of posters purchased? How did you know? Justify your reasoning. c. If you have $40 to spend, write an inequality to find the maximum number of posters you could buy.
a. What type of function models the total number of memberships in this situation? b. If the trend continues, what function represents the total number of memberships in 𝑛𝑛 years? How did you know? Justify your reasoning.
2. NYC Sports Gym had 425 members in 2011. Based on statistics, the total number of memberships increases by 2% annually.
3. Derek hits a baseball thrown by the pitcher with an initial upward speed of 60 ft/sec from a height of 3 ft . a. What type of function models the height of the baseball versus time since it was hit? b. What is the function that models the height, ℎ (in feet), the baseball travels over a period of time in 𝑡𝑡 seconds? How did you know? Justify your reasoning.
commoncore.org
© 2014 Common Core, Inc. Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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Section 3.5 Universal Screening
WHAT is universal screening?
Universal Screening is a general outcome measure used to identify underperforming students and to determine the rate of increase for the district, school, classroom, and student in reading and math. A Universal Screening will not identify why students are underperforming; rather it will identify which students are not at the expected performance criteria for a given grade level in reading and mathematics.
According to Jenkins (2007), the key feature in a screening measure is the accuracy in classifying a student as "at risk" or "not at risk". Additionally, a strong screener will address the issue of False Negatives, (students not identified as at risk who truly are at risk) and False Positives (students identified as at risk who are not). A system can risk wasting intervention resources if attention is not given to false positives and false negatives.
At the secondary level, schools should ensure screening tools are chosen that meet the criteria below. Understanding an adolescent's approach to this type of screening process will be important. While this assessment is not a grade, it is important to support students' understanding that their performance on this screener will identify classes that will be a part of their course of study during their high school years.
For a screening measure to be useful, it should satisfy three criteria (Jenkins, 2003):
It needs to identify students who require further assessment.
It needs to be practical.
It needs to generate positive outcomes (accurately identifies students without consuming resources that could be put to better use).
Purpose of a Universal Screener from NASDSE (2005):
Identify individuals in need of further assessment and possible movement to Tier 2 interventions
Provide feedback about class performance to help school leadership identify when a teacher might require support
If implemented on a regular basis across grade levels, it will identify false negatives; students who slip through the screening at one level but are then identified at later points in the year.
Georgia DOE Criteria for evaluating possible universal screeners:
Easily Administered
Research Based
Highly correlated to skills being assessed
Benchmark or predictor of future performance
Reliability and Validity
Sensitive to small increments of change
Expected identified rates of increase
Data analysis and reporting component
School administrators routinely review assessment data. The use of Georgia's summative assessments (EOCT, CRCT, and GHSGT) can be a part of the universal screening process. However, the use of additional screeners will be needed to ensure appropriate identification of individuals needing support. For example, the 8 th grade CRCT should be reviewed by high schools and their feeder middle schools collaboratively. This process will help create an initial list of students potentially needing additional screening assessments immediately upon entering 9 th grade. The 9 th grade teachers and administrators should use a reading and/or mathematics screening tool designed to identify missing essential learning skills needed for success at the high school level.
WHEN do I administer a universal screening?
Universal screenings should be administered three times a year (fall, winter, spring) in reading and math. Data from universal screenings needs to be maintained in a system database that is used for decision making in instruction. Fuchs and Fuchs'(2007) recommendation is that schools use schoolwide screening in combination with at least five weeks of weekly progress monitoring in response to general education to identify underperforming students who require preventive intervention. The Department recommends the use of a universal screening process three times per year. The rationale is that a one-time universal screening at the beginning of the year can over-identify students who require preventative interventions.
The structure for administering a universal screener can vary by school and system. Approaches to implementing the universal screening process could include:
Elementary Level
Teachers administer reading and math assessments, analyze results, and make collaborative decisions based on their schools problem solving model.
Computer assisted assessment tools could allow for a classroom to complete an assessment at the same time
SWAT – school wide assessment team could be used. Non classroom teachers and administrators are trained in the assessment, visit a classroom, and quickly assess all individuals in a timely fashion. SWAT could also be in the media center and classrooms visit on a rotational schedule.
Secondary Level
Computer assisted assessment tools.
SWAT – school wide assessment team could be used. Non classroom teachers and administrators are trained in the assessment, visit a classroom, and quickly assess all individuals in a timely fashion. SWAT could be in the media center and classrooms visit on a rotational schedule (ex. All 9 th grade English classes are scheduled in the SWAT rotation).
Mini assessments for students enrolling new to the school. While paperwork is completed by parents, students could complete a quick paper and pencil assessment.
At the secondary level, data from universal screenings should be shared with all content area teachers. For example, math, science, and social studies teachers should know immediately which students in their classes struggle with reading and comprehension. Since these classes have an increasing amount of reading embedded in the work, teachers need to be able to support student mastery and application of content. The conversations across content areas will allow ELA/reading teachers to identify reading instructional strategies for use in other content areas.
HOW do I interpret the results of a universal screening?
Schools and systems should set universal screening performance criteria to determine which students should be targeted for additional "detective work". This performance criteria should be connected to the Georgia Performance Standards for reading and math at a given grade level. All teachers should be involved in developing performance criteria to ensure a common understanding of expectations.
Systems and schools should have a data team/problem solving team that is responsible for analyzing the data from universal screenings relative to the skills to ascertain whether the data indicates curriculum, instruction or student issues. The team will use data during the year to monitor growth in terms of the
rate of increase shown at the district, school, classroom, or student level. The data team is responsible for targeting the areas of needed improvement and working to address the specific issues related to those areas. Additionally, the data team will identify additional "detective work" assessments needed to determine the root cause of the identified underperformance. The results from these additional "detective work" assessments will be used to identify specific instructional and/or behavioral interventions needed for individual/groups of students.
Local school norms are how a specific school performs on the universal screening data. Initially the school may need to develop local norms by looking at the school norms on the state assessments. Schools should look at their local norms in relation to the district and state norms and then determine a rate of increase. | <urn:uuid:4c8bd7d1-7e13-4d3d-8bc4-0c4e75097eb9> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | http://archives.gadoe.org/DMGetDocument.aspx/Chapter%203%20Section%203.5%20Universal%20Screening.pdf?p=6CC6799F8C1371F6EDF74BB0301BB77A70CD26E673D256403E6ACD6470143E82&%3BType=D | 2019-10-17T19:11:03Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00557.warc.gz | 17,179,051 | 1,352 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997595 | eng_Latn | 0.997581 | [
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Fresh Maize!
F. Edward Williams
"Want a maize?"
"Get one maize. It's only 500 kwacha (10 cents USD)"
"Get two, one for you and one for me."
All this said by the woman at the stall in the market, as I walk by.
It happens that I know the woman and stop to greet her, "Mwapoleni Mukwai." (Hello) "Muli shani mukwai?" ("How are you?").
"OK, I'll have one." I take the offered cob of maize and laughingly turn down her repeated request to buy two, "one for me", reminding her that she and her husband own the farm where the maize is grown.
During the dry season, maize is irrigated in order to grow. There is no rain at all for eight months, from May to November. So maize and other crops are planted near a river or other stream of water. Water diverted then gives a soaking. Other places women and children carry water in pails and pour it over the vegetation to provide life-sustaining moisture. Beginning in December, it rains a bit nearly every day and all things, maize included, can grow profusely. Men, women, and children plant wherever there is a tract or bit of land. On land that is ceaselessly cultivated, fertilizer contributes suitable results.
"I saw MR Siwakwi, Saturday on the road to Chipundo. He said he was going to the farm. I was going to a friend's farm, myself." "They just planted maize two weeks ago and with the rain good now, it is growing very nicely."
"Yes, he was here then." "We have to take you to our farm sometime."
"Good, because I would like to see your farm."
Ground maize, roller meal, is used to make nshima, a boiled doughy concoction of ground maize deemed necessary for every complete meal. Hand molded small portions are put to use as a consumable-eating utensil. Bread, pastries, and breakfast meal, all also use ground maize as a base.
Umunkoyo, a viscous local beverage, uses maize as a base and combines with pounded "umunkoya roots", all boiled in water, and then cooled. At the market people, served from a common gourd, with a shared cup, pay 200 kwacha (4 cents USD) to drink. Local beers, as well as national brand beers, use maize as a base when combined with hops.
Naturally, maize as a major crop is planted wherever space allows, and nearly every woman, man, and child "knows how to grow maize." Sometimes this, "I know how to grow maize," attitude obstructs people from learning improved methods with greater yields. The price of maize affects the basis and growth of the local economy.
A typical daily walk through the market, with dialogue and interchange between colleagues and fellow community members including neighbors, illustrates much of the attraction to the market. Not many people have electricity, or televisions and radios for easy access to news, local information, or entertainment. They get the low-down through conversations and from notices posted at the market and on trees in town.
When someone has crops, not immediately needed, a trip into the town market and selling brings always-welcome money to the family. Of course, some people sell at the market every day; it is their livelihood. There are shops at the market, as well.
Bartering for a satisfactory price is a fundamental element of favorable browsing local markets. There perhaps is no "correct" price. The seller and buyer mutually agree on an exchange of ndalama (money) and goods. The buyer and other vendors may disapprove or recognize an easy mark if one makes no attempt of negotiating the first demanded price. This seems so indispensable that often vendors suggest a lower price even as they state the initial demanded price.
"Do you have beans?"
"They are 1,500 kwacha (25 cents USD)." "I can give them to you for 1,200 kwacha."
```
"That is a high price, can you please lower the price?" "How much do you have?" "I can pay 1,000 kwacha (20 cents USD)." "Ciisuma, Thank you, that is a good price." "Mbasela, Something for free?" "OK, here is a small tomato." "Thank you."
```
At the open market sellers almost always give a 'bonus' or something for free after buying is finished and asking for it is OK.
Open stalls at the market crudely constructed of simple local materials, reeds and slabs, endure for about one year. At times rough tables are sufficient and umbrellas give shade and protection to sellers from the sun. Many temporary, one day, sellers use the open ground or reed mats to display their wares.
There is no refrigeration at the open market and little refrigeration in the shops. Some homes have refrigeration and freezers. People with freezers make 'ice blocks', frozen kool-aide, to sell for 100 kwacha (2 cents USD). Kept in a plastic pail the ice-blocks melt after 3 hours, some people will buy for the cool sweet drink remaining.
Displayed on open tabletops, reed mats on the ground, or in baskets, dry fish is a big seller at the market. Flies, thick as dust, swarm around the fish. On occasion there is dried wild game, or bush meat. Most of this is sold privately, because it may be poached from game management areas.
Dirt, dust, and flies are abundant. Many sellers flutter hands or leaves to disturb the flies. Items dropped to the ground are dusted off and returned for sale. Maize husks and other are dropped in the paths. When rain comes, there is a mad dash for shelter and to protect and secure items from water and mud. Rain, muck, and spoiled food on the ground create a strong unpleasant odor of decay.
Barefoot children meander around the market through dust, mud, and trash and even an occasional adult is without shoes. During each day the ground is raked and swept, dust tolerated, and then husks together with trash immediately begin to return.
Food must be carefully washed at home when prepared for eating. Boiling and 'overcooking' food at home offers sanitation not available at the market. Restaurants typically serve food cooked 'well done'.
"What is this? It looks like small little bees."
"This is icibengele, ('flying white ants')." "The wings are gone and they are roasted in a frying pan." "These icibengele are good." "They are crunchy."
```
"Ni shinga? (How much?)" "1,500 kwacha." "I don't have 1,500 kwacha. I can give you 1,000 kwacha." "OK, that is good." "Natotela sana (Thank you very much)."
```
Mushroom, icibengele, caterpillars, oranges, and other local native food heaps at the market, when they are in season. Occasionally people dry the local food and store it for selling out of season at a higher price.
Some vendors occupy strongly constructed permanent structures of brick and concrete. Displaying manufactured goods and food produced in factories for sale, these shops operate with dependable schedules of open and closed hours. A person asks for and how many of each item exhibited at the front and behind the counter as desired. A helper procures one's request from the store room area in back of the counter. The "principal cashier" remains 'on watch' behind the counter at all times.
Basic consistent pricing from day to day and from shop to shop is welcome, but stocking of these shops tends to be irregular. A few shops offer "discount' pricing and/or RRP, the "Right Retail Price". One factor for pricing is the cost to transport the consumer goods to the shops. Merchandise comes from major cities that are seven or more hours motor vehicle travel away, 700 or more kilometers, over a good asphalt highway. Fluctuating prices of fuel directly affect the price of goods in the shops. Some items of course, even come from a neighboring country. | <urn:uuid:06374c8f-56bc-4868-84a3-4f9e5cbf43c7> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.lynchburg.edu/wp-content/uploads/volume-3-2008/Williams-Fresh-Maize.pdf | 2019-10-17T19:16:22Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00555.warc.gz | 994,925,709 | 1,701 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999386 | eng_Latn | 0.999417 | [
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Objectives
Students will:
* Explore the relationship of text and image.
* Demonstrate understanding of word relationships and nuances in word meaning.
Overview
Inspired by the Text Sculptures from contemporary artist, Doug Aitken, students will experiment with the relationship of text and images. Using the concept of juxtaposition, students will explore new and different meanings of words and images.
Introduction
Have students write down a variety of words on slips of paper and put them in a hat/container. Invite students to come to the front of the class and randomly draw a slip of paper from one container and then an art postcard from another. Based on the relationship of the word and the artwork in the postcard, the students will create a story about the artwork.
Introduce students to the concept of juxtaposition. Present artworks that portray juxtaposition such as Meret Oppenheim's "Object" from 1936 or the work of street artist Banksy. Then present the juxtaposition of words and images in the Text Sculptures by Doug Aitken. Discuss as a class and/ or in small groups the meaning of each artwork based on the word and images used by Doug Aitken.
For example, in Doug Aitken's Text Sculpture Home, the word HOME is composed of an image showing an astronaut on the moon. This juxtaposition creates a conflict in that the moon is not really our home personally or as a human race. However, it brings into question the possibility of habitation on the moon or other planets such as Mars. It also creates a juxtaposition of scale in that we view our home planet as a vast place in which to live, while in comparison to the size of the galaxy and universe, we are infinitesimally small. These artworks are amazing prompts for students to engage in meaningful learning about bigger ideas and issues around the world.
Learning Activity
Invite students to select a postcard from the Springville Museum of Art educational postcard set. Have students write down a list of word that juxtapose with the image and thus expands the meaning of the artwork. Encourage students to
Language Arts and Visual Art
Juxtaposition of Text and Image
Lesson by: Jeff Cornwall
Materials
* Springville Museum of Art's educational postcard set
* Scissors
* Tracing paper or Copy paper
* Glue
* Heavier paper, cut to postcard size
* Tape
Images from the Museum
* Brian Kershisnik, Flight Practice with Instructor, 2000
* SMA Postcard set of 50 images
Utah Core Standards
Language Arts Standards
Demonstrate understanding of word relationships and nuances in word meanings.
Language Standard 5
a. Distinguish the literal and nonliteral meanings of words and phrases in context (e.g., take steps).
Reading: Literature Standard 4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.
Reading: Informational Text Standard 7
Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photo graphs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).
Visual Arts
Standard 3.V.R.1: Contemplate about the processes an artist uses to create a work of art, and determine messages communi cated by an image.
Standard 3.V.CR.5: Elaborate visual information by adding details in an artwork to enhance emerging meaning.
Standard 3.V.CR.2: Create a personally satisfying artwork using a variety of artistic processes and materials.
Springville
Museum
of
Art
Language Arts and Visual Art
Juxtaposition of Text and Image choose words that don't necessarily describe or directly relate to the artwork. The students could even pull some of the words out of the hat from the introductory activity to help them generate ideas. From the list of words, students will choose the word that inspires an interesting story or meaning.
There are a variety of ways for students to combine their word and image from the postcard:
First, words and letters can be either handwritten or cut out from a paper with printed letters.
The final artwork can be done in a couple of ways:
1). Students can glue their word directly onto the postcard.
2). Students can tape their word onto the postcard and cut their word out of the postcard. The letters/words can then be glued onto a piece of heavier paper the size of a postcard. (Tracing paper may be good for this process with the handwritten words and letters as it would allow students to see the image through the paper. )
Lesson by: Jeff Cornwall
Assessment
Invite students to come to the front of the class and present their artwork. Have them explain how the meaning of the artwork changed with addition of the word that they selected.
Essential Questions
* What is Juxtaposition?
* How does the meaning of words change based on context?
* What new meanings are made by combining two things?
Vocabulary Words
Juxtaposition- bringing together radically disparate elements to create new meanings.
Text Art– Art made using words sometimes alone or with images.
Doug Aitken, Home and Star | <urn:uuid:a17fd222-8a90-4d59-bc94-107f645efee2> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | http://www.smofa.org/uploads/files/452/LA-Juxtaposition-of-Text-and-Art.pdf | 2019-10-17T18:22:12Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00553.warc.gz | 323,573,838 | 1,067 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997963 | eng_Latn | 0.997878 | [
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Aquinas College Sustainability Facts
Did you know…?
Waste:
* Plastic zipper storage bags and packing peanuts are trash.
* You can dispose of deodorant containers and other personal care and beauty items in Terracycle.
* Styrofoam can be recycled in the special collection area. Styrofoam is actually a brand name. "Polystyrene" is the material accepted in this special collection category. Polystyrene can often be recognized by the tiny beads that make up the product and leave quite a mess when opening a package. Even food soiled polystyrene (such as polystyrene to-go containers and coffee cups) is acceptable.
* All electronic waste can be recycled in special collections. This includes anything with a battery or a cord, including the battery and the cord.
* Goodwill accepts items in poor condition, such as rags, broken lamps, and one shoe. If they cannot resell your item in their stores, they will recycle it at their massive recycling center.
* Tin and aluminum are common items accepted in recycling, including tin cans, beverage cans and aluminum foil. You do not need to remove the paper labels from the cans. Even empty aluminum aerosol cans can be recycled in the blue bins.
* Many different types of plastic exist and each type is assigned a number. For example number one is stamped on Polyethylene Terephthalate (PETE) plastic, which is a common plastic for water bottles and salad dressing bottles. The plastics are sorted by number at the recycling plant and sold to manufacturers as a raw material. Plastics stamped with a number between one and seven are recyclable, except styrofoam (#6).
* The recycling center only takes certain types of paper. This includes magazines, newspapers, office paper, junk mail, notebook paper, envelopes, cardboard, and paperboard.
* Everyone knows food soiled paper (such as pizza boxes) are compostable. But lots of other types of paper are compostable, whether food soiled or not. All low grade paper is compostable, including wax paper, food wrappers (i.e. Jimmy Johns), napkins, paper straw wrappers, paper sugar packets, and tissue paper.
* You can recycle several types of office supplies with Terracycle, including writing utensils and plastic tape dispensers. Examples include pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, disposable tape dispensers, and plastic tape cores.
* Plastic bags stamped with a number 2 or 4 are recyclable in the blue bins. This typically includes grocery bags, but some bread bags, plastic packaging, apple bags, etc… might be recyclable. Just look for the number!
* Bio-based plastics are made from plants rather than petroleum. Therefore, they will decompose in one year or less in a compost facility. These items will also have a recycling symbol with a number 7, which is the "other" plastic category. Ignore the recycling symbol and look for the word
"compostable" or "PLA." Bio-based plastics must be composted.
* Most plastic products can be manufactured from biobased plastic or petroleum/crude oil plastic. The green straws and cold beverage cups that you find on campus are made from biobased plastics and therefore are compostable. Most straws from off campus restaurants like Subway and McDonalds are not biobased plastic, so they are not compostable. Although the straws are a petroleum plastic, if they do not have a 1-7 number printed on them, they are not recyclable. Therefore, most off campus straws are trash.
Transportation:
* The Rapid only costs 25￠ with an Aquinas ID. That is a savings of $1.25 per ride! This represents a substantial commitment from Aquinas, as the college pays the difference as a subsidy.
* AQbikes has been providing a transportation alternative to students since 2013. You can rent a bike for $3.
* Carpool to and from campus to cut gas emissions and cost. Preferred parking is even available at the Library and Campus Safety.
* Visit ridetherapid.org to find the quickest bus route to your destination. Download the myStop app to your iPhone to see when the next bus will arrive!
Food:
* Wege Dining Hall purchases all of its fryer oil, ham products, cereal, dairy, salad dressings, fresh herbs, and turkey products from local sources, as well as many types of produce. All salad greens served in Wege, the Corner, and the Moose are organic.
* If you have a green thumb, email Jessica Eimer for an opportunity to volunteer in our
community garden. Community garden produce is available to all of campus to enjoy.
* All food waste can be composted, even coffee grounds, bones, and meat.
* Instead of throwing plastic zipper storage bags (such as Ziploc) away after one use, hand wash and reuse.
Energy:
* Turning off surge protectors and unplugging unused appliances is an easy way to save energy
* Wash clothes in cold water and hang to dry to save approximately $1.00( 7.2 kWh) per load.
* Manipulate room temperatures by opening or closing windows and blinds rather than relying on air conditioning to do so.
* The Green Revolving Fund is a new initiative to save energy and use the funds from those energy savings to reinvest in creating a sustainable community. For more information, visit the Sustainability Initiative page on the Aquinas website. | <urn:uuid:95007632-4315-4720-a118-821e00055989> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.aquinas.edu/sites/default/files/SustainabilityFacts.pdf?new_theme=1stephen | 2019-10-17T18:48:17Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00557.warc.gz | 807,875,204 | 1,123 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998954 | eng_Latn | 0.998999 | [
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Running head: BEHAVIORAL SUPPORTS
Behavioral Supports for Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
May 6, 2013
Lynchburg College
Brandi Booker
Behavioral supports have become a very important part of helping individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In the past, aversive procedures have been used to correct behaviors and over time have proven not to reduce behaviors (Arc, 2010). Research continues to grow in the area of behavioral supports and it is important that these supports are used in all settings (Arc, 2010). Behavioral supports are more than just improving a behavior; they are about respect and improving relationships (Matson, Neal, & Kozlowski, 2012).
Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities can have many different types of behavior problems. Behaviors often differ depending on the severity of the disability. In order for these individuals to lead a healthy and productive life, it is important for supportive interventions to be in place (Arc, 2010). There are many different types of supports used with individuals depending on the behaviors being exhibited (Matson et al., 2012).
The purpose of this paper is to provide research based behavioral supports that can be used with certain behaviors with individuals of intellectual and developmental disabilities. The major topics that will be addressed are self-injurious, aggressive, and off-task behavioral supports. This paper will conclude with a discussion of these three behaviors and their supports and the implications for educators.
Self-Injurious Behaviors
Self-injurious behaviors are often a problem with some individuals with intellectual disability (Matson & Turygin, 2012). There are different definitions of self-injurious behaviors, but over all they cover behaviors that cause harm to the individual. Matson and Turygin (2012) defined it as behavior that causes physical harm and is often repetitive in nature. Sometimes these behaviors are called challenging behaviors, which are also considered behaviors that are
frequent and cause harm to one's body (Evers & Pilling, 2012). Self-injurious or challenging behaviors may include head banging, excessive scratching, picking or poking at skin, hair pulling, or other behaviors that an individual does to oneself.
Many times these behaviors are seen in individuals with significant intellectual disabilities. Conterio & Lader (1998) suggested that only 1 % of the population exhibits "habitual self-injurious behaviors" (p. 1). Self-injurious behaviors can be seen in individuals with developmental disabilities as well (Matson, et al., 2010). These behaviors normally have high frequency, intensity, and duration (Evers & Pilling, 2012). Many factors can cause selfinjurious behaviors.
Most research on self-injurious behavior focuses on functional assessments rather than interventions. General PBS is mentioned in some research as a way to improve these behaviors. Evers and Pilling (2012) presented a method of evaluating and planning to help assess and provide interventions for self-injurious behaviors. First there should be a pre-assessment, to help to figure out the cause or antecedent of the behavior. Part of the pre-assessment is also figuring out risk, best interest, and quality of life (Evers & Pilling, 2012). Once a pre-assessment is complete, the individual would then go through a functional assessment, which could lead to referral to other services or lead to a planning meeting (Evers & Pilling, 2012). Meetings are held to agree on interventions, then behavior plans are created. Evers and Pilling (2012) suggested that training in programs such as behavioral support in the area of Intellectual Disabilities, are very important to help serve individuals with self-injurious behaviors.
Along with the importance of assessment, it is also important to ensure teachers have appropriate training. Jasper and Morris (2011) conducted research on nonsuicidal self-injurious behavior (NSSIB) and the training the teachers had received to help their students. Surveys were sent to 1,800 public schools and 390 special educators responded. They were asked questions regarding the number of students they had with self-injurious behaviors. Jasper and Morris (2011) used the NSSIB Special Educator Survey and a questionnaire to understand the experience. Teachers received training in either undergraduate, graduate, or workshops. Teachers who have had training reported to be more confident in identifying those with self-injurious behaviors (Jasper & Morris, 2011). Teachers were also asked what interventions were used with their students. The teachers reported that most commonly students were referred to other professionals. Other interventions mentioned by teachers were discussing reasons of behavior with students and replacing the behavior (Jasper & Morris, 2011). This study concludes it is important to have trained teachers working with individuals with self-injurious behavior.
Assessment and training are mentioned in many different studies as being very important to help come up with interventions. Carr and Durand (1985) looked at functional communication training as an intervention for disruptive behavior, which included self-injurious behaviors. Functional communication training is teaching students, phrases to ask or say to help decrease a behavior that has a social function (Carr & Durand, 1985). First, Carr and Durand (1985) conducted functional assessments to figure out the cause of the students' behavior. Once behavior causes were determined, they conducted a second experiment in which they implemented functional communication training. Students were either given a difficult task with 100 % adult attention or an easy task with 33% adult attention. During the difficult task if the student had an incorrect response the person would tell the child and then follow a guideline that involved different steps depending on the response of the child. During the easy task students were asked if they had any questions every 30 seconds, then followed a guideline based on student response. Throughout the training students were taught the responses that the examiners
responded to (Carr & Durand, 1985). The study showed that by teaching students relevant responses helps to decrease behaviors to low levels (Carr & Durand, 1985). Often individuals who have self-injurious behaviors also have communication needs. By using functional communication training, teachers can teach their students responses that are appropriate and decrease the behavior.
To summarize, self-injurious behaviors can present in many different ways. Research studies tend to present more on ways to understand the behaviors instead of ways to treat or decrease the behavior. Evers and Pilling (2012) presented information on the importance of functional assessment and understanding the behavior. By understanding the behavior, teachers can then look at different interventions that help the specific function. Jasper and Morris (2011) conducted a study on training of teachers and expressed the importance of training for professionals working with these individuals. Carr and Durand (1985) presented functional assessment as well as an intervention based on the specific needs of the students. They presented information on functional communication training and how it helps decrease behaviors.
Aggression
Anger and aggression can be seen in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Definitions of anger vary depending on the study. Singh et al. (2011) defined anger as "emotional arousal" (p. 2691), which could be seen through health symptoms such as heart rate, feeling hot, and facial expressions and features. Crocker (2006) discussed how aggressive behaviors can really limit social interactions and causes problems in that area. Crocker (2006) described aggressive behavior as behavior that is verbal or an action toward other people, places, or themselves.
BEHAVIORAL SUPPORTS
Aggressive behavior can occur with many different disabilities. Crocker (2006) suggested that in individuals with ID the rates increase for those in institutional settings. Matson (2009) presented information on autism and aggressive behavior. In his review of treatments, he discussed treatments that took place in a variety of locations. Matson (2009) also looked at studies that covered a variety of frequency, duration, and intensity. The frequency, duration, and intensity of aggression often depend on the individual and the disabilities, along with antecedents and consequences. The nature of the behavior can also vary depending on all the criteria mentioned above.
Aggressive behavior is common among individuals with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities such as autism. Crocker (2006) conducted a study on adults on the types and severity of their aggression. The individuals' aggression was measured using the Modified Overt Aggression Scale over a 12 month period (Crocker, 2006). They concluded that the most common behavior was yelling out. Crocker (2006) also concluded that behaviors are more common in residential settings with adults.
There are many different interventions that can help people with aggressive behavior. The most common is using functional assessment. Hagopian, Bruzek, Bowman, and Jennett (2007) conducted a study with two children with autism that have aggressive behaviors such as hitting and kicking. Hagopian et al. (2007) used many different interventions to help improve behavior, by conducting this, first it helped to lead to other interventions to help improve behavior. Thompson, Fisher, Piazza, and Kuhn (1998) also used functional analysis to help decided on other interventions with a child with intellectual disabilities.
Thompson et al. (1998) also conducted a study using functional assessment to assess the degree of aggression in a student intellectual disability. They used functional assessment to find the operant condition of the behaviors to better address the students need. After conducting the functional assessment and analysis they were able to apply interventions to improve the aggressive behavior exhibited by the student.
Hagopian, Wilson, and Wilder (2001) conducted a study on a 6 year old boy with autism who had mild intellectual disability. Two different functional analyses were used to determine the purpose and cause of behavior. Hagopian et al. (2001) used this information to then find an intervention and implement it. All of these studies used functional analysis and assessment to determine the antecedents of behavior. This information was then used to develop interventions to improve aggressive behavior in students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Another behavior support that is used with aggression is reinforcement. Reinforcement can be used in many different ways. There is, for example, noncontingent reinforcement, social reinforcement, and reinforcing appropriate mands. Hagopian et al. (2007) used reinforcing appropriate mands along with noncontingent reinforcement. By using these two types of reinforcement after a functional analysis, they were able to see whether or not reinforcement worked for the two students.
Vollmer, Borrero, Lalli, and Daniel (1999) conducted a study using reinforcements for appropriate mands. This study was different because it looked at how reinforcement played a role in the behavior itself. Vollmer et al. (1999) presented how reinforcement can continue to increase a behavior unless the reinforcement is used in a manner to help decrease the behavior. Hagopian et al. (2001) also conducted a study in which negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement maintained the problem behavior. By combining noncontingent reinforcement with another intervention the study shows how noncontingent reinforcement can help decrease aggressive behavior (Hagopian et al., 2001).
Aggressive behavior can be found in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The behavior can be found in a variety of sittings and manifest in a variety of ways. It is important to understand supports that can help understand and decrease the problem behavior. Using functional analysis and assessment teachers and care givers can better understand the aggressive behavior. Functional analysis and assessment, help to produce an understanding that leads to good intervention. It is also important to look at reinforcement. Reinforcement can be used to decrease a problem behavior, but it can also increase a behavior.
Off-Task Behavior
Individuals with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities can have many problem behaviors. Some individuals have very severe behaviors while others have problem behaviors such as off-task behaviors that are normally academic related. Off-task behaviors are often related to academics as well as problems with attention (May & Howe, 2013). Off-task behaviors can also include being engaged in task whether its school work, or some other task (Palmen & Didden, 2012). Many different problems can cause off-task behavior. Just as with aggression and self-injurious behavior, it is important to understand all aspects of off-task behavior.
Off-task behaviors are most common in academic settings, but can occur in other settings. Depending on the exact behavior and setting determines the frequency and duration of the behavior. The function of the behavior can influence the intensity and frequency of a behavior (May & Howe, 2013). The more students are engaged in activities they prefer, the less likely they will engage in off-task behaviors (Foster-Johnson, Ferro, & Dunlap, 1994).
Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often either have trouble with off task behavior, or seem off task due to other behaviors. Part of off task behavior is interaction with peers and adults. Gelbar, Anderson, McCarthy, and Buggey (2012) discussed how ASD can influence behavior through interactions. Another factor that can influence off task behavior is impulsivity, which many individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities have trouble (Grey, Healy, Leader, & Hayes, 2008).
Behavior supports are very important in the academic setting to help decrease off-task behaviors. There are many different supports and often times the support depends on the behavior itself. One type of support is using differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) to decrease off-task behavior. May and Howe (2013) conducted a study on a preschool age child with intellectual disability. Assessments were conducted to learn more about the offtask behavior of the child. After assessments, the decision was made to use DRA as a support to improve the behavior. During the study the student was provided with a book and an item related to the book to help involve the child was well as prevent escape from the activity. Data showed that by using a DRA, the student's off-task behavior decreased (May & Howe, 2013).
Often students are off-task because of lack of interest. Behaviors begin to happen because the student is not engaged. Foster-Johnson et al. (1994) presented a study on preferred activities. First assessments were given to figure out what students preferred. Then after assessments a reversal design was used to see if problem behaviors decreased with preferred activities versus non-preferred activities (Foster-Johnson et. al., 1994). The study results showed that by using preferred activities, students' off-task behavior decreases. By giving students preferred activities, it decreases the amount of inappropriate behavior because the students are engaged.
Students with ASD often have behaviors that can affect academics and be related to offtask behaviors. Gelbar et al. (2012) used video self-modeling as their specific intervention for improving social skills, communication, behavior, and task instruction. Students with ASD often struggle in multiple areas and it is important to understand all the areas and understand the connection that often exist between the different areas of need. Gelbar et al. (2012) presented video self-modeling as an evidence-based intervention to help these students succeed.
Part of off-task behavior can stem from wait time that is required in classrooms. Grey et al. (2008) conducted a study with one student who exhibited behavior during wait time. A Time Timer was introduced to the student along with a red card. These two items were used during wait time to help the student understand and see how much time was left (Grey et al., 2008). At first, the red card was used by itself then during phase 2 the time timer was used. The results showed that overall wait time increased for the student, although it increased the most with the Time Timer (Grey et al., 2008).
Off-task behaviors are common in many students with disabilities including intellectual and developmental disabilities. Off-task behaviors can stem from many different academicrelated tasks. Students often have trouble with attention which then affects their behavior in class. Students with ASD have difficulty in many areas which often affect their behavior and they become off task. It is important to conduct assessment to better understand the behavior as well as have many different supports to choose from. Preferred activities, video self-modeling, and time timers are just a few supports available to teachers. By using these different interventions teachers are able to decrease off-task behaviors in the classroom.
Discussion
Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities have many challenges in their lives. One of the many problems can be behavior problems. Individuals often experience one or more of the following behaviors: self-injurious, aggressive, or off- task behaviors. Behavioral supports are very important in helping individuals decrease these behaviors.
This paper presented information on all three behavior areas and interventions that can help to decrease behaviors. One extremely important part of behavioral supports is assessment. Many different research studies presented information on assessment and the role it plays in all these behaviors. It is very important to understand the function of a behavior, before trying to implement an intervention.
Another common theme is making sure the intervention works with the actual cause of the behavior. This goes back to the understanding the function. The different studies (e.g., Carr & Durand, 1985; Evers & Pilling, 2012; Thompson et al., 1998) presented information on how first the function must be understood, and then the intervention can be chosen to suit the behavior. Reinforcement is one way of improving aggressive behavior, yet is also a part of improving off-task behavior through preferred activities. Yet these interventions may not work for all behaviors and all students.
It is also important to understand that often times a replacement behavior or a skill is being taught. Many of these interventions (e.g., video self-monitoring and communication training) are about teaching students ways to handle their own behavior. Interventions are often put in place to replace the behavior with a better alternative or a way to handle the behavior.
Behavioral interventions have changed drastically over time. They have gone from interventions such as shocking someone to video self-modeling. Interventions now are much more than just a simple support. First there must be some form of assessment to understand the behavior, then supports are implemented that best fit the student and behavior. Behavior supports are now about empowering the individual in the most appropriate manner.
Implications
Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are a part of the educational setting. These individuals are seen all throughout our schools whether it is in a self-contained setting or a full inclusion setting. It is important for teachers to understand self-injurious, aggressive, and off-task behavior as well as supports that work best for these behaviors.
Teachers are often around these individuals for the majority of the day. Monitoring is a very important part of improving these behaviors (Arc, 2010). Teachers are often the person in charge of monitoring the behavior and intervention. Because of this, teachers need to have a clear understanding of how the intervention can affect the students' behavior as well as a clear understanding of the function of the behavior.
As research continues to grow in the areas of self-injurious, aggressive, and off-task behaviors, it is important for teachers to stay informed. Times have changed and will continue to change. Teachers often play a key role in these individuals' lives and they must be aware of supports for these behaviors.
References
Arc. (2010, August 23). Position statement behavioral supports. Retrieved from www.thearc.org
Carr, E. G., & Durand, V. (1985). Reducing behavior problems through functional communication training. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 18(2), 111-26.
Conterio, K., & Lader, W. (1998). Self-injurious behaviors. Retrieved from http://www.mhai.org/Self_Injury.pdf
Crocker, A. E. (2006). Prevalence and types of aggressive behaviour among adults with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 50(9), 652-661.
Evers, C., & Pilling, N. (2012). Improving outcomes for people with severe challenging behaviour. Learning Disability Practice, 15(9), 30-36.
Foster-Johnson, L., Ferro, J., & Dunlap, G. (1994). Preferred curricular activities and reduced problem behaviors in students with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27(3), 493-504.
Gelbar, N., Anderson, C., McCarthy S., & Buggey, T. (2012). Video self-modeling as an intervention strategy for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Psychology in the Schools, 49(1), 15-22.
Grey, I., Healy, O., Leader, G., & Hayes, D (2008). Using a Time Timer™ to increase appropriate waiting behavior in a child with developmental disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 30, 359-366. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2008.07.001
Hagopian, L. P., Bruzek, J. L., Bowman, L. G., & Jennett, H. K. (2007). Assessment and treatment of problem behavior occasioned by interruption of free-operant behavior. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40(1), 89–103.
Hagopian, L. P., Wilson, D. M., & Wilder, D. A. (2001). Assessment and treatment of problem behavior maintained by escape from attention and access to tangible items. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 34, 229–232.
Jasper, A. D., & Morris, C. (2012). Special educators and nonsuicidal self-injurious behavior: Self-injury training, exposure, and self-efficacy. Teacher Education and Special Education, 35(1), 64-76.
Matson, J. (2009). Aggression and tantrums in children with autism: A review of behavioral treatments and maintaining variables. Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 2(3), 169-187. doi:10.1080/19315860902725875
Matson, J.L., Kozlowski, A.M., Worley, J.A., Shoemaker, M.E., Sipes, M., & Horotvitz, M. (2010). What is the evidence for environmental causes of challenging behaviors in persons with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders?. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32, 693-698. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2010.11.012
Matson, J. M., Neal, D., & Kozlowski, A.M. (2012). Treatments for the challenging behaviours of adults with intellectual disabilities. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 57(10), 587-592.
Matson, J.L., & Turygin, N.C. (2011). How do researchers define self-injurious behavior?. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33, 1021-1026. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2012.01.009
May, M. E., & Howe, A. P. (2013). Evaluating competing reinforcement contingencies on off- task behavior in a preschooler with intellectual disability: A data-based case study. Education & Treatment of Children (West Virginia University Press), 36(1), 97-109.
Palmen, A., & Didden, R. (2012). Task engagement in young adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders: Generalization effects of behavioral skills training. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6, (1), 377-1388. doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2012.05.010
Singh, N.N., Lancioni, G.E., Winton, A.S., Singh, J.,Singh, A.N., & Singh, A.D. (2011). Peers with intellectual disabilities as a mindfulness-based anger and aggression management therapist. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32, 2690-2696. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.06.003
Thompson, R. H., Fisher, W. W., Piazza, C. C., & Kuhn, D. E. (1998). The evaluation and treatment of aggression maintained by attention and automatic reinforcement. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 31, 103–116.
Vollmer, T. R., Borrero, J. C., Lalli, J., & Daniel, D. (1999). Evaluating self-control and impulsivity in children with severe behavior disorders. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 32, 451–466. | <urn:uuid:4a9b0f4d-a7f7-471e-9fdb-d61d62429aab> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.lynchburg.edu/wp-content/uploads/volume-8-2013/BookerB-Behavioral-Supports-Intellectual-Developmental-Disorders.pdf | 2019-10-17T19:20:50Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986675598.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191017172920-20191017200420-00555.warc.gz | 994,980,244 | 5,149 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.91292 | eng_Latn | 0.99548 | [
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GUIDE FOR CREATING A PRESCHOOL PARENT HANDBOOK
by Sharon Sarles 2017
Note: Full handbooks are provided as examples via internet links at the very end of document.
COVER:
Use your logo.
Put your center's name and contact info.
Use pix of kids who have graduated and whose parents have signed a release. Be careful of the privacy of your students.
Make it look fun.
Use color for the cover.
Most centers make a photocopied packet. If you photocopy this page at $.50, it will be worth it. By contrast, a folder with loose pages is another option. For best marketing result, insure congruity in all representative pieces. Get a professional to help you, if at all possible.
When planning, just think of a tentative, possibly even scared and unhappy young mother. She has come into your center –and some others. She will decide which center she is comfortable with when she gets back home. She will choose yours if she thinks you will love her child and not give her much grief. She will decide that based on the conversation she had with your representative, how she was handed the packet, and finally what the packet and website look like.
Do you doubt she is worried and unhappy? Of course she is. Why is she changing care/school for her children. Maybe she did not like that last one. Maybe she moved. Maybe she is starting work. Whatever the reason, this means a big change for her and her child and she is worried.
I remember when I was a young mother. There was no internet for me to peek into the centers with. I drove by the centers. How often I was abruptly handed a packet. I figured if they had no time for me, the one who paid, they would have no time for my child. If they only cared about my money and the forms being filled out, and not about explaining their teaching philosophy, then maybe that is all they really cared about.
So put real marketing and sales type thought, and real caring/loving actions into how your interface with that first time young mother. Besides, the mothers who are not so young, and not so worried, are even more discriminating – meaning they are shopping, with knowledge and power. They will read your packet.
FORMS
Very often the forms come first:
The page that says, "Yes, I have read this book."
You will have many forms, including school application and doctor's forms. These may or may not be in the packet. Ideally, you would have tear out forms, so that one doesn't get forgotten in the hand-off. Alternatively, you might have a checklist in the back of the orientation manual.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Always appreciated, because you know that some parent one day will be very rushed and need to find out what your policy is on….. something.
I have placed topics in what I thought was logical order, but you may wish to place them in alphabetical order. Alternatively, make an index.
MISSION STATEMENT
Work out a mission statement with your board. Remember to think about how it sounds to those outside. For instance, If you say "We aim to follow the Great Commission." That sounds great to people who know what it means, but it doesn't say anything positive to those who need to hear the Gospel. Especially if you are working on evangelistic mission, put your statement in terms those outside can understand.
Example: Providing quality care and education, supporting the child and his/her family, demonstrating God's great love.
Similarly, if you are working on a charitable mission, be sensitive of how you may be coming across to your recipients. Neither demean nor encourage dependency.
Example: Demonstrating God's love, providing the X Neighborhood with family support, quality preschool education, and superb childcare.
Example:
Our mission is to partner with preschool families, introduce God's plan for their child, and inspire a love for learning. A developmental approach is used to teach the whole child (spiritual, physical, emotional, social, and cognitive) in preparation for Kindergarten and life.
PURPOSE or VISION
Think through what your purpose really is. Be sure then, that the statement is used regularly. Notice if you have a director and staff whose purpose it is to push some different agenda from what was originally anticipated at founding. This is very common.
Example (SBC):
The Child Development Center is a part of the Preschool Ministry of EDG Baptist Church. It is a planned, Bible based, weekday program for children ages six weeks through five years of age with teachers who model Christ-like behavior while implementing age appropriate activities. We provide a safe and nurturing environment that promotes the physical, social, emotional, mental, and spiritual development of young children, allowing them to grow and develop just as Jesus did.
Example (Lutheran):
We exist to support, encourage, and connect families to Jesus, by providing a foundation of Christ-centered academic learning and equipping them to be His witnesses and make disciples wherever they go.
Example (Presbyterian, Christian Montessori) :
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
The purpose shall be to provide educational experiences, in a safe and accepting Christian environment. The school curriculum shall attempt to introduce children to a Christian way of living, learning, and playing together.
Example (Non-denominational):
XYZ Christian Schools' desire is to in still within the preschoolers, Christ-like qualities, an excitement for learning, and confidence in who they are and God’s plan for his/her life.
Our vision is to have a quality Christian preschool program that meets the individual developmental needs of each
child, and partners with the parents to accomplish these goals.
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
Speak directly to the philosophy on which your school is based. Do you primarily believe play or structure is what is primary? Are you very spiritual/religious or is the church affiliation only incidental? What do you hope children will learn? What is your primary way of conveying that? Is there a culture of how you interact with parents?
Example (SBC):
We believe that a child forms his/her concept of God and Jesus from the people, things, and experiences that construct his/her environment. A love for, and an appreciation of, God, Jesus, and the Bible are communicated through age appropriate activities.
Example (Lutheran):
Philosophy Statement
* Every child is a gift from God.
* Every child needs to know that Jesus loves him or her.
* Every child has the unique potential to learn.
* Jesus is the foundation of everything we teach.
* Every family has a place and a purpose in the Community of Christ.
EXAMPLE (Nondenominational):
CORE VALUES:
1. Partner with families to introduce God's plan and teach Jesus' love for the children encouraging His values
and character in their lives (Jeremiah 29:11 & John 13:34).
2. Partner with families by providing opportunities and resources to increase their knowledge of child development and parenting skills (Genesis 18:19).
3. Provide children with a safe, loving, and nurturing environment where children can experience success and
failure (Isaiah 54:13).
4. Provide opportunities for each child to build self-worth and confidence (Joshua 1:9).
5. Provide opportunities for children to interact with peers and adults outside the family unit Hebrews 10:24-
25).
6. Provide children with developmentally age-appropriate curriculum and emergent activities, which encompass all areas of the child's development (Psalm 78:1-4). WORLD VIEW:
Grace Christian Schools, out of a love for the Lord Jesus Christ, has a desire and commitment to 1) teach a child age-appropriate biblical truths that they can integrate into all knowledge, 2) be able
to
coherently articulate those Godly truths, and 3) measure all knowledge based on those truths (John 17:17-
19). Through a well-developed quality half-day program, a dedicated staff is committed to meeting the particular needs within the community
EXAMPLE (Presbyterian PC (USA), Christian Montessori)
Exploration shall be an integral part of the classroom, encompassing the entire child's learning activities. Children will learn through cooking, art, music, movement, and experimentation in a relaxed, nurturing environment. Realizing that each child comes to school with a unique set of experiences, the curriculum shall deal with children at their individual developmental stage.
GOALS
It is our intention to:
* Provide a loving Christian environment.
* Foster emotional stability.
* Educate and help the child grow in a relaxed, fun environment.
* Respect the individuality of each child and help children reach their full potential.
* Provide social experiences which will stimulate a sense of personal responsibility and an awareness of the rights of others.
* Help the child develop behavior and skills that will lead to successful relationships.
* Provide a wide range of creative experiences.
* Encourage the development of language and conceptual skills.
* Help the child develop habits which lead to effective learning.
* Offer a variety of experiences that will stimulate and satisfy the child's curiosity about the world.
* Help parents achieve increased understanding of children.
CURRICULUM
Explain quickly both to the informed and the uninformed what the children are taught. For instance, at the top of the paragraph say something like "Montessori" or "Abeka" or "teacher developed play based, enriched ..." Then explain what that means. Notice that not all Montessori schools have the same philosophy.
EXAMPLE (SBC):
The curriculum used is the WEE Learn Curriculum published by Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention along with other supplemental materials that are appropriately designed for the developmental stages of each child. All units are based on Biblical principles therefore all of the curriculum taught will be based on what the Bible teaches. This balanced program offers experiences in music, art, motor development, religious concepts, math, science, and language development. The children are taught through a program of planned unit work.
EXAMPLE (PC(USA), Christian Montessori):
CURRICULUM
Our effort is to promote learning through exploration. Age appropriate curriculum has been planned to develop the child's "Joy in Learning" in a stress-free environment of exploration and play. The educational equipment, activities, centers, and group learning circles are designed to stimulate and to develop spiritual, social, living, listening, language, pre-reading, reading, premath and math awareness and skills.
Bible verses and stories will be a daily part of our curriculum.
PRE-SCHOOL
Our pre-school program will use the Montessori curriculum. A balance of Whole Language, Phonics, Math, Science, Social Studies, Health, Movement, and Computers will be taught. All Pre-school children will participate in chapel time daily.
FULL DAY KINDERGARTEN
The Kindergarten will use the Montessori curriculum. A balance of Whole Language, Phonics, Math, Science, Social Studies, Health, Movement, Spanish, and Computers will be taught. All Kindergarten students will participate in chapel.
Alternate Examples: Notice immediately that a different philosophy is regnant at this center. I finally decided to put in the denominational tags, but I imagine that a well informed person might have guessed. Be honest with parents and with yourselves, because doing so will make for fewer problems.
EXAMPLE (Episcopal)
We believe: that children are rich in their capabilities and in their curiosity; strong in their desire to relate to God, other people and the world around them.
We will provide: a safe, nurturing Episcopalian faith-filled environment that encourages active exploration and free choice as well as teacher directed activities. We offer a stimulating curriculum that challenges intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual and physical growth in all children from all walks of life.
We seek: to increase each child's capacity to reason and we actively encourage a spirit of inquiry in a creative learning environment.
ABC Episcopal Day School is a mission of the ABC Episcopal church and is governed by a School Board, the Rector and ultimately the Vestry of the Church
EXAMPLE: (A great deal was said about various curricula but nothing about mission and vision. UMC)
At The Preschool, we believe in nurturing the whole child.
From the very first day of school, we teach preliminary lessons about empathy, sharing, curiosity, and cooperation to equip your children well as they move beyond our doors into the wider world. Over the years, we have designed a time-tested, research-based curriculum that is uniquely ours, and we continue to draw from other disciplines and new research to ensure our curriculum is always improving.
ADDITIONS
Many schools take this opportunity to let parents know about developmental milestones and educational goals. Other schools insert information about their highly qualified staff. Please mention that you have chapel and any policies related to chapel.
EXAMPLE:
CHAPEL/BIBLE STORIES:
We take every opportunity to teach and model Biblical standards and characteristics, as well as to use everyday occurrences to teach God's character and creation. Therefore, each day the children enjoy a special Chapel time. The entire school gathers together to have a "chapel story," sing Christian songs, and learn about God's love.
Our primary focus is to relate Bible stories with the Godly character traits addressed in Chapel. You will find these listed in the Yearly Curriculum document on the school website, with each month's curriculum. Songs, along with hand motions, are selected to emphasize God's love. It is our desire, not to teach specific doctrine, but to teach the children about Jesus and what a special friend He can be to us.
EXAMPLE:
CHAPEL
ABC Day School is proud of being a mission program of the church. We are excited to be a school that integrates the spiritual side of life into our well-rounded Curriculum. Religion is woven into the fabric of each and every day. Children are led to pray in thanksgiving before snack time and lunch. Each child will have an opportunity to discover their own spirituality through the wonderful teachings of our Chaplains. There will be a weekly Chapel Time for all classes ranging from 15-20 minutes depending on the age of the class. The Chaplain is trained to teach the Bible in a developmentally appropriate curriculum called "Godly Play". It is spiritually enriching for all.
NON-DISCRIMINATORY STATEMENT
PUT A NON DISCRIMINATORY STATEMENT ON YOUR BROCHURE, YOUR WEBSITE AND YOUR ORIENTATION MANUAL - It is required by law. '
(The licensing authority will check to see that you have these prominently places. The IRS authorities also require non-discriminatory statements. Please do be prepared challenges. At the same time, please notice that it is not unusual for people with no religion or contrary religions to enroll their children in church affiliated schools – for purposes of education, class, language and culture. You probably want these children. Unfortunately, I do not have any advice about the newest category of supposedly protected status. Please see your denominational lawyers. )
This school has an unequivocal non-discriminatory policy.
ABC Episcopal Day School does not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, race, color, religion, disability or national origin in its enrollment or employment
This school appears to leave the door open to discriminating on the basis of religion.
Admissions policy
XZY Christian Montessori School does not discriminate based upon age, race, ethnicity or physical disability. XZY CMS accepts children between the ages of 3 years and 5 years. All children must be fully toilet-trained. Children who qualify by age for the local public school Kindergarten program will be considered for our Kindergarten program after consultation between teacher and parents.
The admissions procedure at XZY CMS is a two-fold process. It is designed to give parents an opportunity to learn about the school, its philosophy and policies, and to meet our faculty. It also gives us an opportunity to assess each child's situation and determine whether we are able to meet the needs and expectations of the parents. Our goal is to enroll families who will both benefit from and contribute to the school community.
This school also does not mention religion, and further, makes it clear that they will expect conformity to their rules. Notice that people who behave in ways that you may think are inappropriate, and also encourage these behaviors, may indeed affiliate with your church.
GHJ Christian Schools has a non-discriminatory policy. We admit students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national, or ethnic origin in the administration of our educational and scholarship/loan policies, athletics, and any other school-administered programs.
By enrolling in GHJ Christian Schools, parents acknowledge that any of the policies, programs, and rules of conduct, contained in either the Preschool Parent Handbook and/or the Elementary Parent/Student Handbook, may be changed or eliminated at any time. When enrolling, parents also agree to abide by all policies and rules, set forth by GHJ Christian Schools.
POLICIES RELATING TO ENROLLING
REGISTRATION
You must next address what parents have to do to enroll their children.
Here is an example:
All paperwork must be turned in before any child may attend the Program. This applies to children enrolling for the first time as well as for those that re-enroll after a withdrawal. Enrollment packets consist of: Registration Form, Discipline and Guidance Policy form, Parent Handbook Agreement, Emergency Authorization, General Information Sheet, and Medical Information Form (signed and dated by child's physician). The medical form is provided by the Center and should be updated each year. Hearing and vision screening is required by the Texas Department of Health for all four and five year olds prior to the school year. Parents are responsible for ensuring that their child receives these screenings and returns the signed medical forms to the Center.
Very much at the beginning, you must address the question of for what children may be signed up. Who is eligible, for what programs? Sometimes certain days or ages have special provisions. Sometimes there are before and afterschool programs.
Sometimes there is a waiting list and a special procedure. For instance, perhaps siblings can come in before new families.
There may or may not be a policy about into which class children may be placed. Some communities press to have younger children enrolled in classes for older children. Notice, that if one has a strict policy against this, then teachers are asked to have greater academic diversity.
TUITIONS AND FEES
Tuition and supply fees are normally next. You should mention scholarships and any public policy. Some neighborhoods find it very necessary to wide publicize the fact that they do have scholarships in order to encourage poorer, but aspiring parents to apply. Other communities find it best to keep scholarships very q2uiet because people who are not truly needy apply, using deception.
May centers have a discount for tithing church members, and some for members of the clergy or armed forces.
Please specify the proper manner to withdraw from school, so that a place is not saved for someone who is not paying.
IMMUNIZATIONS
Immunizations must be addressed in some fashion. Normally there are physician forms, along with immunization forms. Most states will have requirements. Some municipalities have further requirements for immunization and health tests.
Most states also make immunization waiver forms available. Please DO put the link for that in the manual. The safety of immunization is highly controversial at this time. More and more of the most educated are refusing them for the health, safety and well-being of their children. The government has determined that it is a right of parents to refuse; you must not stand in the way of that. The state agencies do their best to make it difficult. A congregation should not be on the side of being against the rights of freedom of religion.
On the other hand, if you have very many families who do obtain a waiver, then you must redouble your efforts toward having a high degree of cleanliness. One would hope you aim for that in any case. Be aware that having so many small children together is unnatural. Germs spread very quickly. Do your utmost! Beyond that, do not worry unduly. I am told that herd immunity comes at a percentage of far less than 100% inoculated.
POLICIES ABOUT COMING TO SCHOOL
POLICIES ABOUT ATTENDANCE, TARDINESS, AND SICK DAYS
Policies vary, depending upon philosophy and community. In some situations, tardiness disrupts the learning of all. In others, it is extremely important to take children at all hours because parents' work schedule, and the need to support family together time, demands it.
HOLIDAYS, CLOSINGS, BAD WEATHER, EVACUATIONS
It is best if you have a set policy, as well as hand out a calendar every semester. Many centers announce that they will follow the same calendar at the public school. If the public school makes good decisions about closing in bad weather, and also has good communication, the center may wish to simply announce their following that. Do not assume that everyone have the same access to technology.
Do announce the policy for evacuation in the extreme cases. For instance, if there is a tornado or flood, to where would the children be evacuated? (Likely a partner center.)
Assure parents that you will be doing fire drills, etc.
POLICIES ABOUT SAFETY DURING DROP-OFF AND PICK-UP
Of course, you will ensure that every child is signed in and signed out. Be sure that no one is leaving children locked in hot or cold cars while they drop off or pick up a a n enrolled child. Are there different procedures in case of rain?
Be clear that you are very strict about who can pick up children. Many children may have family members who do not have custody. Thus is it imperative that parents communicate very well with the school about who may pick up children as alternates. People not known to the staff should be ready to show ID and have office staff check to see if they are on the parents' forms as authorized.
I recommend you have a strict "no phone" policy both in the parking lot and in the building. The parents' attention should be entirely upon the conversations during these exchanges.
You very likely will need policies relating to parents' visiting and to families using the playground. If you are sharing space with their congregation, they may expect to have social time on the playground, but this will introduce liability and changing rules. Please think through this before there are conflicts. Certainly, stipulate that parents are entirely responsible for children once they sign them out of the center.
Disallow smoking, drugging, and fighting on your property during school hours and drop-off/pick-up time. Your center will be a gang free zone.
Be sure you understand your policies around guns. Think carefully with your board about whether and how you will publish this. Criminals will bring guns where they want to. You will not want to encourage or suggest your center as such a place. You may wish to have security if you could afford it. You will not want to hamper your parents who are law enforcement and on your side. IT is a difficult matter and should not be handled doctrinairely. You will of course, practice preparedness with your staff.
MEALS AND SNACKS and ALLERGIES
You must address this. There are some requirements from the state regulations. Please try to encourage families in healthy eating. Please do not stand in the way of the best measures because of archaic regulations. Try to make a good balance between regulations and reasonably forward nutrition. For instance, the regulations push milk. Whereas more affluent families could rather easily get doctor's notes for lactose intolerance, less affluent families are due the same access to good nutrition. So, do what you must to comply with regulations, but feel free to make reasonable accommodations. In the case cited, for instance, simply allow almond milk to be brought from home. Even offered as an alternative. While milk continues to be available.
Sometimes whole classes must avoid a certain food because one child is so extremely allergic. You might mention this upfront, even though it will be handled on a class room basis only occasionally.
REST TIME
There will be some regulations around this. Please also specify any policies you may have. You may require some bedding from home.
CLOTHING
Policies:
In event of soiled or wet clothes
In event of cold or hot weather
It is probable that even if the center requires parents to bring alternate clothes and extra diapers, the center will need some diapers and some clothing to lend. It is ideal if the center can have a laundry room on site.
What if any toys or other belongs may be brought from home?
Probably you will have a policy that siblings are not permitted, except at certain family events.
PETS ANIMALS
Some centers feel that live animals in the center is vital, others that it is a health risk. Consult your licensing representative. Consider allergies.
WELLNESS, HEALTH, SICKNESS
This section is very important and very likely to be forgotten or mis-construed. Please cover it on many occasions and in many ways. Please note that many parents think that if they give their child an aspirin and the fever is no longer measured that it has gone away. This is not true. The 24 hour rule is 24 hours after the fever has gone (if measured without aspirin/ibuprofen, etc.).
Your statement must comply with your regulatory authorities. For examples, please notice those at the end of this document.
EXAMPLE:
Please note: There are times when a teacher notices that a child is behaving different than they normally do when they are at school. Our teachers get to know the children in their classrooms so well that they can tell when the child does not play or interact with friends in their usual manner. The teacher will continue to watch the child and provide love and care in an effort to comfort the child. However, if the child continues to show behaviors that they are not feeling well, we will contact the parents. The parents will have to pick up the child within 30 minutes of the call.
MEDICATION POLICY
Under what conditions may teachers or school nurse be asked to give medication? Notice that if you allow medications to come into the center, you must not only ensure that they are used correctly, and insure yourselves, but will also have to insure that workers do not steal and sell them. If you do not permit them, then you will be disallowing some families from your services. You will have to enforce your policy, either way.
PARENT COMMUNICATION
Please ensure that parents know they may view classes but not disrupt them. Please encourage some communication at the end of the day and at periodic points during the year.
You will want to help all parents communicate as well as possible. There may be many technological avenues. There may also be parent groups. Please be sensitive to those who are not already monied and not already in the social group of your church. Be sure they know what is going on. An old-fashioned newsletter handed to the parent when he or she picks up the child still works the best.
Parent involvement. Please encourage volunteerism. Lease encourage being active in the child's life. Please protect the classroom from being overtaken by one anxious parent.
Encourage a parent orientation meeting. Encourage other activities for the family, such as "come play with me" day, or "daddy and me day" Grandparent day is typical in the more affluent schools.
Restrict use of the directory to school related use. Be sensitive to the privacy needs particularly of any more affluent families: because they are more affluent they may have security concerns., particularly around kidnapping.
PARTIES
Increasingly centers are publishing policies about parties because Birthday parties have become an issue. Are they permitted? If so, what is not permitted? How are they to be arranged?
PARENT SOLICITATION AND BROCHURES
Find a way to make a fair policy. Don't publish one and then violate it. I doubt this is a big a problem if ignored as it could be if addressed, certainly if addressed poorly.
PARENT VOLUNTEERING
Please do find a way to include parents. Notice that you will have to train anyone who works in your center with children. I had a yearly substitute training day. Some parents may be able to come on a Saturday for a work party. Make it fun.
INCIDENT REPORTING AND BITING POLICY
Explain the procedure that your regulations require, that parents are notified of each and every incident in which a child might have been harmed in any way. Explain that you will not be telling the parents of the bitten who did the biting.
ABUSE AND GRIEVANCES MUST BE ADDRESSED
I dislike the idea of discipline necessarily being addressed within (and especially only within) a discussion of abuse. Nevertheless, you must make it clear to all sides where you stand and what will and will not be acceptable in your center. You may not have parents spanking non-enrolled children in the center. You must assure people from outside that your center doesn't abuse children. Many people believe that spanking is by definition abuse. Many people believe that Christian child rearing is entered on spanking. Thus many people suspect Christians of desiring to harm children. Some crazy people simply want to attack others –some in legal ways as well as violent ways. Thus make your policies very clear.
However, the alternative is that you suggest substitute behaviors, so there is an argument for placing the discipline conversation with the abuse conversation. You may wish to cover ways in which children will learn proper behavior and boundaries on improper behavior.
EXAMPLE:
Following positive approaches to guidance are used to help children behave
constructively:
Redirection
Consistency versus individual approach
Setting Limits Planning ahead
The regulations you work under probably will demand that you publish the number of the state child abuse hotline. In my center I tried to enforce that I was always to be informed. I had independent teachers. I think it is also incumbent upon parents to attempt to ensure that teachers and director know of any complaint because this is the only way to reasonably hope that there will be a change for the better if there is a problem. The abuse hotline must be published, but my opinion is that it might best be advertised that the administration must also be informed – previously if not at the same time.
EXAMPLE:
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCIPLINE
Discipline is based on understanding the individual needs and development of a child. It shall be directed toward teaching the child responsible behavior. Teachers shall seek to redirect inappropriate behavior by channeling the child's aggression and by teaching the child to respect authority and the rights of others. Teachers will show consistency in setting limits. There will be no cruel, harsh, or unusual punishment administered. Children will not be humiliated or subjected to abusive or profane language.
CHILD ABUSE
No one likes to talk about child abuse, but it is a real issue, and it happens to real children. Staff members of child care centers are required by law to report suspected child abuse, neglect, or sexual molestation to the Texas Department of Regulatory and Protective Services and the local police. Failure to report abuse is a Class B Misdemeanor. Aside from legal implications, the failure to make a report would mean neglect on our part to protect children in our care. We will not knowingly fail to protect the children.
For additional information about child abuse please see the Texas Department of Public Safety's website at www.txdprs.state.tx.us or to report suspected child abuse you may call 1-800-252-5400.
GRIEVANCE PROCEDURES
From time to time, parents have concerns that they feel should be addressed. It is our desire to resolve problems in a healthy way. The following are guidelines to be followed so that the issues might be heard adequately and a resolution might be found from a Biblical prospective and handled in a Christ-like manner.
RESOLVING ISSUES BETWEEN THE PARENT AND TEACHER:
* If a parent has a concern that involves his/her child's teacher, make an appointment with the child's teacher so that your concerns may be addressed with her. Express your concerns promptly so that solutions may be found quickly. The parent should not involve the child in this meeting. All parties should avoid use of emotional terms, and language needs to be concrete and issue-specific. Hopefully during this meeting, all the issues will be resolved to the parent's satisfaction. If the problem is not resolved to the parent's satisfaction, then the Minister to Preschool should be notified so that she can help with a solution.
* If the parent does not feel that his/her verbal concerns have been addressed to their satisfaction, he/she should then put their concerns in writing to the teacher and the Minister to Preschool. The Minister to Preschool will have 48 hours to respond to the parent's concern.
* If, after the Minister to Preschool and the parents have met and the issues have still not been resolved to the parent's satisfaction, then the parents should contact the Minister of Administration of XYZ ABC Church. There will then be a joint meeting to see if a resolution can be reached.
EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
Please try to position your help in this ares as an added benefit. Try to work as a team with parents and any professionals to insure that parents do not hear a death knell diagnosis, but rather advice and counsel on how to help a child come to full potential. So try to apply faith, and let that faith be one that helps and not hinders getting to remediation. Neither accommodate nor blame nor allow this family to do without. Notice, however, our society has apportioned the right to diagnose to other people. Nevertheless, you know that you most experienced teachers bring wisdom to the table. Work with them top be sure that communication happens well. Parents are often very nervous, but it is my experience that once things are communicated properly, they are very relieved and thankful.
Encourage parents who can afford it, to use private testing services, since public schools' monetary interests often skew tests results.
EXAMPLE:
EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
Our Preschool is staffed with teachers and assistants at ratios below the state maximum, but not small enough to allow for individual attention for any one student throughout the entire school morning. Our staff is well qualified with teachers either holding degrees or having specialized training in early childhood education. However, there is not a professional special education educator on staff.
The Preschool has a referral system in place for the identification of children who require additional support and/or adult supervision during the school day. The children who may be better served in an alternative environment or benefit from a more specialized environment would be identified through a collaborative, yet confidential process.
Discussing the situation with the teacher, conducting observations within the classroom setting, making interventions in the classroom and talking with the parents are all integral parts of this collaborative process. At the conclusion of the referral process, the Director shall communicate the results and recommendations to the parents. It then becomes the parent's responsibility and expense to act upon the recommendations in a timely manner. If an independent educational consultant or therapist is recommended, that is at the parent's expense.
Number your pages.
Please compare other manuals:
No one manual is perfect for all. Everyone must comply with regulations. I have chosen manuals from schools I believe to be good.
Cross Schools https://www.crossschools.org/preschool/parent-handbook/
Grace Christian Schools
http://www.gracechristianschools.org/wp-content/uploads/Preschool-Parent-Handbook.pdf
Morning Star (accredited, NOT the MorningStar in Fort Mill.) http://www.morningstarchildcare.net/content/pdf/ParentHandbook.pdf
New Hope Christian Academy - New Hope Baptist Church www. hopeonthehill.net/baptistchurch/assets/files/2014_2015_NHC...
Jewish Community Center
http://www.jccoc.org/clientuploads/preschool/2015-16%20school%20year/15-16SY-%20ECLC %20Parent%20Handbook%20Revised%2011-30-14%20Aronoff.pdf
Rosedale Playschool :: Reggio inspired l ... rosedaleplayschool.com/handbook/
http://stmichaelsdayschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SMEDS-Parent-Manual-2015-2016.pdf
St. Thomas More Catholic Church Preschool Handbook; ... 10205 FM 620 N • Austin, … https://www.stmaustin.org
Westlake United Methodist Preschool Parent, Parent Handbook Acknowledgement and
OrientationForm 2017-2018
https://66349195b29b9613b9e0- c9e1e289daefe562c40b114675b2484c.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/ee1f405d44534dfb8ea631d35895da55.pdf
Westlake Presbyterian https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5727a36160b5e9b2e3b5d20d/t/57d1da0d6a4963932719e650/147 3370638343/Parent+Handbook+16-17.pdf
Wise School Parent Handbook (DK-6) Click here to ... Wise School is a co-educational, Jewish independent school educating children from baby and me to preschool, … https://wiseschool.org/parents/ | <urn:uuid:6905e11b-62d1-4ddc-915b-1dc8a4ee9c5f> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://teachachildchangeanation.org/TCCNParentsOrientationManual.pdf | 2020-09-23T05:14:58+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400209999.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20200923050545-20200923080545-00172.warc.gz | 661,482,487 | 7,746 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.96739 | eng_Latn | 0.998591 | [
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CHAPTER EIGHT
THE HAUSA TEXTILE INDUSTRY: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE PRECOLONIAL PERIOD
Marisa Candotti
1. Introduction
Textiles are finished products which represent not only the material resources of an area but also the culture of a people. In Hausaland, cloth had many functions; for centuries it was used for clothing, to transfer wealth, as a medium of exchange, as tribute, as an item in religious and burial rituals and as a symbol of differences in religious, economic, political, ethnic and social status. The symbolic functions of cloth were as important as the practical ones and influenced the demand for textiles.
Different uses required different kinds of cloth, which varied according to size, quality, colour and durability; this led to significant product differentiation and economic specialisation. This helps to explain the development of the textile trade. Cloth-producing areas frequently imported different kinds of cloth from other producing areas. Different techniques of weaving, dyeing and tailoring in various areas contributed to the complex pattern of trading relations within the separate Hausa areas, as well as between them and other areas beyond Hausaland. The manufacture of textiles was not just the prerogative of a few specialised artisans, but involved the whole population scattered throughout the territory. Textiles were produced in both urban and rural areas and, although clothing was a symbol of religious and social identity, the making and trading of cloth in Hausaland was the expression of a culture that tended to integrate different strata of the population regardless of ethnic identity.
This complex pattern of trade and manufacturing developed over many centuries and was closely connected to the flow of events and historical circumstances. Textile production was not characterised by a uniform development but by different phases, reflecting the political
and economic changes that took place in the region. The nineteenth century saw an unprecedented growth in the Hausa textile industry, a growth that was not limited to a few cities, as in the past, but extended to all the Hausa territories; its main causes are still a matter for discussion. Moreover, not much is known about the origins and development of the Hausa textile industry before the nineteenth century. Most of the existing literature has focused on the period just before and after colonisation, at the beginning of the twentieth century, analysing the artistic and technical aspects of cloth; only a few pioneering studies have explored textile trade and manufacturing (cf. Shea 1974, 1975, 1983; Johnson 1973, 1976, 1977, 1978).
The aim of this chapter is to identify the main characteristics of the Hausa textile industry, exploring its origins, development and main distinguishing economic features in the precolonial period. A focus on the history of cotton growing and textile manufacturing allows us to study the evolution of Hausa material culture from the perspective of the interrelationship between rural and urban areas. 1 Finally, this chapter aims to contribute to the debate on the distinctive characteristics of what Adamu (1978) calls the 'Hausa factor', which can be primarily identified as the potential capacity to integrate foreigners into the Hausa network of trade and production and its system of recruiting and organising labour on a pluralistic ethnic basis.
2. Cloth and Muslim traders before the nineteenth century
The origin and spread of clothing and trade
Written sources are almost silent on the manufacturing of cloth in the Hausa-speaking area before the nineteenth century. They testify to the use and spread of clothing among the different peoples in this area and the opportunity for trading in cloth by foreign merchants. However, looking at these aspects helps to identify the origins of a culture that led to the development of the Hausa textile industry. It is clear that the use of clothing accompanied the spread of Islam and the rise of an urban culture mainly influenced by the beginning of a network linked to trans-Saharan trade and the establishment of Muslim merchants
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CHILD PROTECTION POLICY
Last update: November 2016
This policy should be read in conjunction with the school's Safeguarding Policy. It is inevitable that there will be some overlap between these two policies. This policy has been updated to take into account the statutory guidance for schools and colleges, 'Keeping children safe in education' (September 2015). The policy at this school is implemented for all students on roll.
The overall aim of this policy is to safeguard and promote the welfare of the children in our care. Our policy includes the whole school community; all staff, governors, parents and volunteers working in the school. In situations where child abuse is suspected, our paramount responsibility is to the child. It is widely accepted that it is the responsibility of every adult to protect children from abuse. The Children's Act 1989, covers young people under the age of 18. As an organisation with responsibility for children we have both a moral and a legal obligation to ensure a duty of care under the Children's Act 1989 and the Protection of Children's Act 1999. Children may be abused regardless of their age, racial origin, social class, gender, culture, religious belief, disability or sexual identity. They are usually abused by people they know and trust, both from within and outside the family.
This will be achieved by:
- Developing and maintaining awareness in all staff of the need for Child Protection (particular care should be taken with children with disabilities and SEN) and their responsibilities in identifying abuse.
- Ensuring that all staff are aware of referral procedures within the school.
- Ensuring that outside agencies are involved where appropriate.
- Monitoring children who have been identified as 'at risk'.
- Ensuring that key concepts of Child Protection are integrated within the curriculum especially via PSHE.
- Ensuring we practise safe recruitment in checking the suitability of staff and volunteers to work with children. (ref, Safeguarding policy)
- Creating an environment where children feel secure, have their viewpoints valued, are encouraged to talk and are listened to
- Ensuring that children know that there are adults in the school who they can approach if they are worried.
- Ensuring that our anti-bullying policy is regularly updated and communicated to parents and children
- Physical Contact policy is understood by all staff
- Whistle-blowing procedures are understood by pupils and staff (separate policy)
The Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) is Miss Khan, Deputy Headteacher. In her absence, issues should be referred to the Deputy DSL Debbie Gardner, Education Welfare Officer. In the event that both of these staff are absent, issues should be referred to the Headteacher.
Any member of staff with an issue or concern relating to Child Protection should discuss it with the designated teacher as soon as possible. It should be made clear to the child that confidentiality cannot be guaranteed in respect of child protection issues. Allegations of child abuse must always be given the highest priority and referred immediately to the designated teacher.
The DSL will then decide on an appropriate course of action.
In the vast majority of cases, a disclosure or risk of immediate harm will be referred to social services by the DSL. If circumstances are such that this is not possible, for example on a school visit, the member of staff with this information should make the referral themselves. The 2014 guidance is very clear about this as follows:
If there is a risk of immediate serious harm to a child, a referral should be made to children's social care immediately. Anybody can make a referral. If the child's situation does not appear to be improving, the staff member with concerns should press for re-consideration. Concerns should always lead to help for the child at some point.
As soon as possible, the DSL should be informed that the referral has been made.
Roles and Responsibilities
We will follow the procedures set out by Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children's Board and take account of guidance issued by the Department for Education to:
- Ensure we have a member of the Leadership Team who is the Designated Safeguarding Lead who has received appropriate training, which is refreshed every 2 years, and support for this role.
- Ensure that any cases of children missing from education are investigated immediately
- Ensure we have a nominated governor responsible for child protection who reports to the Full Governing Body once a year or if there is a significant issue which needs to be brought to the attention of Governors.
- Ensure every member of staff, volunteer and the designated governor has completes refresher training every 3 years and knows who the designated person responsible for child protection is and their role.
- Ensure that parents have an understanding of the responsibility placed on the school and staff for child protection by setting out its obligations in the school prospectus.
- Ensure all staff and volunteers understand their responsibilities in being alert to the signs of abuse and responsibility for referring any concerns to the designated person responsible for child protection.
- Develop effective links with relevant agencies and co-operate as required with their enquiries regarding child protection matters.
- Keep written records of concerns about children, even where there is no need to refer the matter immediately and ensure all records are kept securely, separate from the main pupil file, and in locked locations.
- Ensure that staff can be released to attend Child Protection case conferences.
- Ensure that record keeping procedures on staff and volunteers are in place.
- Develop and then follow procedures where an allegation is made against a member of staff or volunteer.
- Ensure that referrals are completed in writing and submitted to the Social Care Duty Officer within 24 hours of the initial phone call
- Ensure safe recruitment and selection practices are followed. Identity and qualifications checks should be carried out, together with an enhanced DBS with barring list information check and, for teachers, a check that the teacher is not subject to a prohibition order by using the Employer Access Online service.
Dealing with Disclosures of Abuse
If a child chooses to tell a member of staff about possible abuse (see appendix) there is a number of things that should be done to support the child:
- do not give guarantees that parents or other agencies will not be informed
- inform the child that this information will have to be passed on
- stay calm and be available to listen
- question normally without pressurising
- listen with the utmost care to what the child is saying
- don't put words into the child's mouth but note the main points carefully
- reassure the child and let them know they were right to inform us
- keep a full record – date, time, what the child did, said, etc
- inform the designated teacher, or when absent, the Headteacher, as soon as possible
When the member of staff has informed the designated teacher, she takes on responsibility for dealing with the issue.
Monitoring and Record Keeping
It is essential that accurate records be kept where there are concerns about the welfare of a child. These records should then be kept in secure, confidential files, which are separate from the child's school records. It is important to recognise that current regulations do not authorise or require the disclosure to parents of any written information relating to Child Protection. However, the preferred practice is for parents to be informed of and agree to any referral being made (unless it relates to Sexual Abuse).
Indicators of issues which may indicate that a child is at risk include:
- poor attendance and punctuality
- changed or unusual behaviour
- concerns about appearance and dress
- concerns about health and emotional well being
- discussions with parents about concerns relating to their child
- deterioration in educational progress
- concerns about home conditions or situations
- concerns about pupil on pupil abuse (including serious bullying)
When there is suspicion of significant harm to a child and a referral is made, as much information as possible should be given about the nature of the suspicions, the child and the family. Use of previous records (if available) may prove to be particularly useful in this respect.
Reports may be needed for Child Protection Case conferences or the criminal/civil courts. Consequently records and reports should be:
- factual (no opinions)
- clear
- non-judgemental (no assumptions)
- accurate
- relevant
The Role of the Designated Teacher
- To ensure that all staff know that the Designated Safeguarding Lead is responsible (and in her absence, the Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead) for Child Protection issues.
- To refer promptly all cases of suspected child abuse to the local Social Care department or the police child protection team. If a parent arrives to collect the child before the social worker has arrived then it must be remembered that we have no right to prevent the removal of the child. However, if there are clear signs of physical risk or threat, the Police should be called.
- To organise regular training on Child Protection within the school.
- To facilitate and support the development of a whole school policy on Child Protection.
- To co-ordinate action where child abuse is suspected.
- To attend case conferences or nominate an appropriate member of staff to attend on his/her behalf.
- Maintain records of case conferences and other sensitive information in a secure confidential file and to disseminate information about the child only on a "need to know basis".
- To pass on records and inform the key worker when a child who is on the Child Protection register leaves the school. The custodian of the register must also be informed.
- To raise staff awareness and confidence on child protection procedures and to ensure new staff are aware of these procedures.
- To keep up to date with current practice by participating in training opportunities wherever possible.
- Liaise with other agencies that support the pupil such as social care, Child and Adult Mental Health Service, education welfare service and educational psychology service
KLB Offer of Early Help
Students often require early help and intervention. Examples of the school's offer of early help are included in Appendix 1 of the Safeguarding Policy.
APPENDIX 1
Types of Child Abuse and their Symptoms
Child abuse can be categorised as follows:
1. Physical Abuse
2. Sexual Abuse
3. Emotional Abuse
4. Physical Neglect
5. Grave Concern/at risk — this is not a distinct category but is dealt with separately. A child can be at risk from any combination of the four categories
These different types of abuse require different approaches. A child suffering from physical abuse may be in immediate and serious danger. Action should, therefore, be taken immediately. With other forms of abuse there is a need to ensure that adequate information is gathered. There is also a need to make sure that grounds for suspicion have been adequately investigated and recorded. The need to collate information must be balanced against the need for urgent action. If there are reasonable grounds for suspicion then a decision to monitor the situation should only be taken after consultation. A situation that should cause particular concern is that of a child who fails to thrive without any obvious reason. In such a situation a medical investigation will be required to consider the causes. Each of the five categories will now be explored in more detail.
1) Physical Abuse
This involves physical injury to a child, including deliberate poisoning, where there is definite knowledge or a reasonable suspicion, that the injury was inflicted or knowingly not prevented.
Typical signs of Physical Abuse are:
- bruises and abrasions - especially about the face, head, genitals or other parts of the body where they would not be expected to occur given the age of the child. Some types of bruising are particularly characteristic of non-accidental injury especially when the child's explanation does not match the nature of injury or when it appears frequently.
- slap marks — these may be visible on cheeks or buttocks.
- bruising on both sides of the ear — this is often caused by grabbing a child that is attempting to run away. It is very painful to be held by the ear, as well as humiliating and this is a common injury.
- twin bruises on either side of the mouth or cheeks - can be caused by pinching or grabbing, sometimes to make a child eat or to stop a child from speaking.
- grip marks on arms or trunk - gripping bruises on arm or trunk can be associated with shaking a child. Shaking can cause one of the most serious injuries to a child; i.e. a brain haemorrhage as the brain hits the inside of the skull. X-rays and other tests are required to fully diagnose the effects of shaking. Grip marks can also be indicative of sexual abuse.
- damage to the mouth – e.g. bruised/cut lips or torn skin where the upper lip joins the mouth.
- black eyes – are mostly commonly caused by an object such as a fist coming into contact with the eye socket. NB. A heavy bang on the nose, however, can cause bruising to spread around the eye but a doctor will be able to tell if this has occurred.
- bite marks fractures
- poisoning or other misuse of drugs – e.g. overuse of sedatives.
-
- burns and/or scalds – a round, red burn on tender, non-protruding parts like the mouth, inside arms and on the genitals will almost certainly have been deliberately inflicted. Any burns that appear to be cigarette burns should be cause for concern. Some types of scalds known as 'dipping scalds' are always cause for concern. An experienced person will notice skin splashes caused when a child accidentally knocks over a hot cup of tea. In contrast a child who has been deliberately 'dipped' in a hot bath will not have splash marks.
2) Sexual Abuse
The involvement of dependent, developmentally immature children and adolescents in sexual activities they do not truly comprehend, to which they are unable to give informed consent or that violate the social taboos of family roles. Typical signs of Sexual Abuse are:
- a detailed sexual knowledge inappropriate to the age of the child.
- attempts to inform by making a disclosure about the sexual abuse often begin by the initial sharing of limited information with an adult. It is also very characteristic of such children that they have an excessive pre-occupation with secrecy and try to bind the adults to secrecy or confidentiality.
- behaviour that is excessively affectionate or sexual towards other children or adults.
- a fear of medical examinations.
- a sudden loss of appetite, compulsive eating, anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa.
- a fear of being alone — this applies to friends/family/neighbours/baby-sitters, etc
- excessive masturbation is especially worrying when it takes place in public.
- sexual approaches or assaults - on other children or adults.
- promiscuity
- urinary tract infections (UTI), sexually transmitted disease (STD) are all cause for immediate concern in young children, or in adolescents if his/her partner cannot be identified.
- bruising to the buttocks, lower abdomen, thighs and genital/rectal areas. Bruises may be confined to grip marks where a child has been held so that sexual abuse can take place.
- discomfort or pain particularly in the genital or anal areas.
- the drawing of pornographic or sexually explicit images.
3) Emotional Abuse
The severe adverse effect on the behaviour and emotional development of a child caused by persistent or severe emotional ill treatment or rejection. All abuse involves some emotional ill treatment - this category should be used where it is the main or sole form of abuse.
4) Physical Neglect
The persistent or severe neglect of a child (for example, by exposure to any kind of danger, including cold and starvation) which results in serious impairment of the child's health or development, including non-organic failure to thrive. Persistent stomach aches, feeling unwell, and apparent anorexia can be associated with Physical neglect. However, typical signs of Physical Neglect are:
- Underweight — a child may be frequently hungry or pre-occupied with food or in the habit of stealing food or with the intention of procuring food. There is particular cause for concern where a persistently underweight child gains weight when away from home, for example, when in hospital or on a school trip. Some children also lose weight or fail to gain weight during school holidays when school lunches are not available and this is a cause for concern.
- Inadequately clad - a distinction needs to be made between situations where children are inadequately clad, dirty or smelly because they come from homes where neatness and cleanliness are unimportant and those where the lack of care is preventing the child from thriving.
Physical Neglect is a difficult category because it involves the making of a judgement about the seriousness of the degree of neglect. Much parenting falls short of the ideal but it may be appropriate to invoke child protection procedure in the case of neglect where the child's development is being adversely affected.
5) Grave Concern/at risk
This is not a separate category of child abuse as such but covers a number of situations where a child may be at risk. Children whose situations do not currently fit the above categories but where social and medical assessments indicate that they are at significant risk of abuse. Grave concern may be felt where a child shows symptoms of stress and distress (see below) and any of the following circumstances apply:
- there is a known child abuser in the family;
- the parents are involved with pornographic material to an unusual degree;
- another child in the family is known to have been abused;
- there is an adult in the family with a history of violent behaviour;
- the child is exposed to potential risk or exploitation via the Internet e.g. pornographic material or chat rooms.
The Symptoms of Stress and Distress
When a child is suffering from any one or more of the previous four 'categories of abuse', or if the child is 'at risk', he/she will nearly always suffer from/display signs of stress and distress.
An abused child is likely to show signs of stress and distress as listed below:
- a lack of concentration and a fall-off in school performance;
- moodiness, depression, irritability, listlessness, fearfulness, tiredness, temper tantrums, short concentration span, acting withdrawn or crying at minor occurrences;
- aggressive or hostile behaviour;
- difficulties in relationships with peers;
- self-harming or suicidal behaviour;
- regression to more immature forms of behaviour, e.g. thumb sucking;
- low self-esteem;
- wariness, insecurity, running away or truancy - children who persistently run away from home may be escaping from sexual physical abuse;
- disturbed sleep;
- general personality changes such as unacceptable behaviour or severe attention seeking behaviour;
- a sudden change in school performance.
Parental Signs of Child Abuse
Particular forms of parental behaviour that could raise or reinforce concerns are:
- implausible explanations of injuries;
- injured child kept away from school until injuries have healed without adequate reason;
- unwillingness to seek appropriate medical treatment for injuries;
- a high level of expressed hostility to the child;
- general dislike of child-like behaviour;
- grossly unrealistic assumptions about child development;
- inappropriate labelling of child's behaviour as bad or naughty;
- leaving children unsupervised when they are too young to be left unattended.
Discussed by Governors' Wellbeing committee – 23 November 2016
Approved by Full Governors – 7 December 2016
Next review – November 2017 | <urn:uuid:90098ec5-17a6-4e52-a073-9669b42e0b78> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | http://klbschool.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Child-protection-policy-Nov-2016.pdf | 2017-04-24T01:36:02Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917118950.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031158-00424-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | 212,560,990 | 3,953 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998278 | eng_Latn | 0.998702 | [
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Cartoons for the Classroom Presented by NIEonline.com and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC)
Tooning into the campaign: Politics of change
Get out your newspaper
Cartoon courtesy Pat Oliphant (c) 2007 The Washington Post. Reprinted by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Talking points
2. Oliphant makes a point about "empty rhetoric." Define "rhetoric" (look it up) and explain what the cartoonist means by the phrase.
Gather a collection of political cartoons from your newspaper dealing with campaign issues. Using the Cartoon Evaluation Worksheet (available online at the NIE Website) analyze each cartoon and explain the issues addressed. Find newspaper stories about the issues and reevaluate the issues and the opinions expressed.
1. In a recent Los Angeles Times article, Timothy Noah pointed out: "It's hard to think of a more meaningless political watchword than 'change,' but 'change' is what the presidential candidates are promising." Pat Oliphant's cartoon, published way back in February, 2007, shows that the 2008 campaign buzz word is not new. As the politicians line up to promise change, "Washington" relaxes, knowing that nothing will really change. What is it politicians are promising to change? What do you think needs changing? Why aren't candidates more specific?
3. Examine the quotes from the candidates on this page. Which are Democrats and which Republicans?
Additional resources
More by Pat Oliphant: http://www.gocomics.com/patoliphant/
Association of American Editorial Cartoonists http://editorialcartoonists.com/
Between the lines
"I want to make change, but I've already made change. I will continue to make change. I'm not just running on a promise of change. I'm running on 35 years of change."
"We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America." -- Barak Obama
-- Hillary Clinton
"Everywhere I go people say Washington is broken. And they know that those who've spent their careers in Washington can't change Washington. It's long past time to bring real change to Washington." -- Mitt Romney
"It's about people who love America but want it to be better and believe that change is necessary, and it's not going to happen from within Washington." --Mike Huckabee
"The results show that the American people are ready for a president who will stand up to corporate greed and fight for hard-working families, someone who will fix the broken system in Washington and achieve real change in this country." -- John Edwards | <urn:uuid:b13ab451-2a1e-4279-a980-e4672e53fe91> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://nieonline.com/cftc/pdfs/politicsofchange.pdf | 2020-09-23T05:58:57+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400209999.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20200923050545-20200923080545-00172.warc.gz | 539,800,692 | 543 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998762 | eng_Latn | 0.998762 | [
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E-SAFETY POLICY
Last update: November 2016
Rationale
New technologies have become integral to the lives of children and young people in today's society, both within schools and in their lives outside school.
The internet and other digital and information technologies are powerful tools, which open up new opportunities for everyone. Electronic communication helps teachers and students learn from each other. These technologies can stimulate discussion, promote creativity and increase awareness of context to promote effective learning. Children and young people should have an entitlement to safe internet access at all times.
The requirement to ensure that children and young people are able to use the internet and related communications technologies appropriately and safely is addressed as part of the wider duty of care to which all who work in the school are bound. This policy should help to ensure safe and appropriate use.
The use of these exciting and innovative tools in school and at home has been shown to raise educational standards and promote students' achievement.
However, the use of these new technologies can put young people at risk within and outside the school. Some of the dangers they may face include:
- Access to illegal, harmful or inappropriate images or other content
- Unauthorised access to, loss of or sharing of personal information
- The risk of being subject to grooming by those with whom they make contact on the internet.
The sharing/distribution of personal images without an individual's consent or knowledge
- Inappropriate communication/contact with others, including strangers
-
- Cyber-bullying
- Access to unsuitable video/internet games
- An inability to evaluate the quality, accuracy and relevance of information on the internet
- Illegal downloading of music or video files
- Plagiarism and copyright infringement
- The potential for excessive use which may impact on the social and emotional development and learning of the young person.
Many of these risks reflect situations in the off-line world and it is essential that this e-safety policy is used in conjunction with other school policies (eg behaviour, anti-bullying and child protection policies).
As with all other risks, it is impossible to eliminate those risks completely. It is therefore essential, through good educational provision to build students' resilience to the risks to which they may be exposed, so that they have the confidence and skills to face and deal with these risks.
The school must demonstrate that it has provided the necessary safeguards to help ensure that they have done everything that could reasonably be expected of them to manage and reduce these risks. The e-safety policy that follows explains how we do this, while also addressing wider educational issues in order to help young people (and their parents/carers) to be responsible users and stay safe while using the internet and other communications technologies for educational, personal and recreational use.
Scope of the Policy
This policy applies to all members of the school community (including staff, students, volunteers, parents, carers, visitors, community users) who have access to and are users of school ICT systems, both in and out of school.
The Education and Inspections Act 2006 empowers Headteachers, to such extent as is reasonable, to regulate the behaviour of students when they are off the school site and empowers members of staff to impose disciplinary penalties for inappropriate behaviour. This is pertinent to incidents of cyberbullying, or other e-safety incidents covered by this policy, which may take place out of school, but is linked to membership of the school.
The school will deal with such incidents within this policy and associated behaviour and anti-bullying policies and will, where known, inform parents/carers of incidents of inappropriate e-safety behaviour that take place out of school.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The following section outlines the roles and responsibilities for e-safety of individuals and groups within the school:
Governors
Governors are responsible for the approval of the E-Safety Policy and for reviewing the effectiveness of the policy. This will be carried out by the Wellbeing and Community Committee receiving an annual report about e-safety incidents.
Headteacher and Senior Leaders:
The Headteacher is responsible for ensuring the safety (including e-safety) of members of the school community, though the day to day responsibility for e-safety will be delegated to the E-safety coordinator (currently Mike Coley – November 2016)
The Headteacher and other relevant Senior Leaders are responsible for ensuring that the E-Safety Coordinator and other relevant staff receive suitable CPD to enable them to carry out their e-safety roles and to train other colleagues, as relevant
The Headteacher and other relevant Senior Leaders will ensure that there is a system in place to allow for monitoring and support of those in school who carry out the internal e-safety monitoring role. This is to provide a safety net and also support to those colleagues who take on important monitoring roles.
The Headteacher and another member of the Senior Management Team should be aware of the procedures to be followed in the event of a serious e-safety allegation being made against a member of staff. (see flow chart on dealing with e-safety incidents – included in a later section – "Responding to incidents of misuse" and the school's disciplinary procedures)
E-Safety Coordinator:
- takes day to day responsibility for e-safety issues and has a leading role in establishing and reviewing the school e-safety policies and associated documents
- ensures that all staff are aware of the procedures that need to be followed in the event of an esafety incident taking place
- provides training and advice for staff
- liaises with the school's Designated Safeguarding Lead over specific incidents
- reports regularly to the member of the senior management team with responsibility for safeguarding.
- liaises with school ICT technical staff
- receives reports of e-safety incidents and creates a log of incidents to inform future e-safety developments,
- regularly monitors filtering / change control logs
- meets regularly with E-Safety Governor to discuss current issues, review incident logs and filtering/change control logs
Network Manager and ICT Support staff:
are responsible for ensuring:
- that the school's ICT infrastructure is secure and is not open to misuse or malicious attack
- that the school meets the e-safety technical requirements outlined in the SWGfL Security Policy and Acceptable Usage Policy and the Governors' E-Safety Policy and guidance
- that users may only access the school's networks through a properly enforced password protection policy
- the school's internet connection provider is informed of issues relating to filtering
- the school's filtering policy, is applied and updated on a regular basis and that its implementation is not the sole responsibility of any single person
- that they are up to date with e-safety technical information in order to effectively carry out their e-safety role and to inform and update others as relevant
- that the use of the network, remote access and email is regularly monitored in order that any misuse or attempted misuse can be reported to the E-Safety Co-ordinator, Headteacher or other relevant Senior Leader for investigation and appropriate actions and sanctions
- that monitoring software and systems are implemented and updated in line with the policies of
- the supplying organisations.
- that all data is wiped or overwritten as appropriate from any equipment before disposal.
Teaching and Support Staff
are responsible for ensuring that:
- they have an up to date awareness of e-safety matters and of the current school e-safety policy and practices
- they have read, understood and signed the school Staff Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)
- they do not create identities on social networking sites which can be viewed by the public and that students are not given any access to their social networking content.
- they report any suspected misuse or problem to the E-Safety Co-ordinator, Headteacher or relevant member of the Senior Management Team for investigation and appropriate action.
- digital communications with students should be on a professional level only and carried out using the school's systems.
- e-safety issues are embedded in the curriculum, where relevant, and other school activities
- students understand and follow the school e-safety and acceptable use policy
- students have a good understanding of research skills and the need to avoid plagiarism and uphold copyright regulations
- they monitor ICT activity in lessons, extra curricular and extended school activities
- they are aware of e-safety issues related to the use of mobile phones, cameras and hand held devices and that they monitor their use and implement current school policies with regard to these devices
- images of students must not be retained on personal equipment such as mobile 'phones
- in lessons where internet use is pre-planned students should be guided to sites checked as suitable for their use and that processes are in place for dealing with any unsuitable material that is found in internet searches
Designated Safeguarding Lead
should be trained in e-safety issues and be aware of the potential for serious child protection issues to arise from:
- sharing of personal data
- inappropriate on-line contact with adults and/or strangers
- access to illegal and/or inappropriate materials
- potential or actual incidents of grooming
- cyber-bullying
Students
- are responsible for using the school ICT systems in accordance with the Student Acceptable Use Policy, which they will be expected to sign before being given access to school systems.
- must have a good understanding of research skills and the need to avoid plagiarism and uphold copyright regulations
- need to understand the importance of reporting abuse, misuse or access to inappropriate materials and know how to do so
- will be expected to know and understand school policies on the use of mobile phones, digital cameras and hand held devices.
- must understand that they must not access inappropriate material using the school's computer systems at any time or using their own equipment ('phone, tablet, laptop etc.) on the school site, during the school day or when engaged in any school activity
- should know and understand school policies on the taking and use of images and on cyberbullying.
- should understand the importance of adopting good e-safety practice when using digital technologies out of school and realise that the school's E-Safety Policy covers their actions out of school if related to their membership of the school
Parents and Carers
Parents and other carers play a crucial role in ensuring that their children understand the need to use computers and mobile devices in an appropriate way. Research shows that many parents and carers do not fully understand the issues and are less experienced in the use of ICT than their children. The school will therefore take every opportunity to help parents understand these issues. Parents and carers will be made aware that their child/children have signed the Student Acceptable Use Policy and will be able to access a copy.
Community Users
Community Users, including parents/carers who make unsupervised use of school ICT systems will not have access to the main computer network. Their access will be limited to their own device and to our internet connection.
E-SAFETY EDUCATION
Students
Whilst regulation and technical solutions are very important, their use must be balanced by educating students to take a responsible approach. The education of students in e-safety is therefore an essential part of the school's e-safety provision. Children and young people need the help and support of the school to recognise and avoid e-safety risks and build their resilience. E-Safety education will be provided in the following ways:
- In Year 7, all students receive a series of lessons focussing on e-safety
- All Year 7 students receive a copy of the Student Internet Acceptable Use Policy agreement which they take home. The students and parents/carers sign the agreement which is then returned to school. Students are not allowed to have internet access until this form has been signed and returned.
- The Student Internet Acceptable Use Policy agreements are retained in the students' files.
- A planned e-safety programme is provided as part of the Computing and PHSE programmes and is regularly revisited – this covers the use of computing and new technologies both in school and outside school
- Key e-safety messages are reinforced as part of a planned programme of assemblies and tutorial activities
- Students are taught to be critically aware of the materials and content they access on-line and be guided to validate the accuracy of information
- Students are helped to understand the need for the student AUP and encouraged to adopt safe and responsible use of ICT, the internet and mobile devices both within and outside school
- Students taught to acknowledge the source of information used and to respect copyright when using material accessed on the internet
- Staff act as good role models in their use of ICT, the internet and mobile devices.
Parents/carers
Some parents and carers have only a limited understanding of e-safety risks and issues, but they have a key role in the education of their children and in the monitoring and regulation of children's online experiences. Parents/carers often either underestimate or do not realise how often children and young people come across potentially harmful and inappropriate material on the internet and are often unsure about what they would do about it. The school will therefore seek to provide information and awareness to parents and carers through:
- Letters, newsletters, the school web site;
- Parents' information evenings;
- Reference to the SWGfL Safe website (NB the SWGfL "Golden Rules" for parents)
Staff
It is essential that all staff receive e-safety training and understand their responsibilities, as outlined in this policy.
- All staff have to sign the Staff Internet Acceptable Use Policy agreement. Copies are filed centrally.
- Application forms from staff for access which bypasses the proxy filtering are retained centrally
Training is offered as follows:
- All new staff should receive e-safety training as part of their induction programme, ensuring that they fully understand the school e-safety policy and Acceptable Use Policies
- The E-Safety Coordinator (or other nominated person) will receive regular updates through attendance at relevant training sessions and by reviewing guidance documents released by DfE, SWGfL and others.
- Updates to the E-Safety policy and guidelines will be brought to the attention of all members of staff as and when necessary
- Staff awareness of E-Safety will be maintained by an item on the agenda for one of the staff training days at the start of each academic year
- The E-Safety Coordinator (or other nominated person) will provide advice, guidance and training as required to individuals as required
Governors
Governors should take part in e-safety training/awareness sessions, with particular importance for those who are members of any sub committee or group involved in computing, ICT , e-safety, health and safety or child protection.
Technical – infrastructure/equipment, filtering and monitoring
- The school will be responsible for ensuring that the school's network infrastructure is as safe and secure as is reasonably possible and that policies and procedures approved within this policy are implemented. It will also need to ensure that the relevant people named in the above sections will be effective in carrying out their e-safety responsibilities:
- School ICT systems will be managed in ways that ensure that the school meets the e-safety technical requirements outlined in the SWGfL Security Policy and Acceptable Usage
- There will be regular reviews and audits of the safety and security of school ICT systems
- All users will have clearly defined access rights to school ICT systems. Details of the access rights available to groups of users will be recorded by the Network Manager (or other person) and will be reviewed, at least annually, by the E-Safety Committee (or other group).
- Servers, wireless systems and cabling must be securely located and physical access restricted
- All users will be provided with a username and password by the school network manager who will keep an up to date record of users and their usernames.
- The administrator passwords for the school ICT system, used by the Network Manager (or other person) must also be available to the Headteacher or other nominated senior leader and kept in a secure place (eg school safe)
- Users will be made responsible for the security of their username and password, must not allow other users to access the systems using their log on details and must immediately report any suspicion or evidence that there has been a breach of security.
- The school maintains and supports the managed filtering service provided by the school's internet connection provider, currently EXA networks.
- In the event of the Network Manager (or other person) needing to switch off the filtering for any reason, or for any user, this must be agreed with the Headteacher or a Deputy Headteacher in advance and the details of the reason and the duration of the unfiltered access logged.
- Any filtering issues should be reported immediately to the school's internet connection provider..
- Requests from staff for sites to be removed from the filtered list will be considered by the esafety coordinator and, if agreed, actioned by the Network Manager.
5 of 10
- School ICT technical staff regularly monitor and record the activity of users on the school ICT systems and users are made aware of this in the Acceptable Use Policy
- Remote management tools are used by staff to control workstations and view users' activity
- Users must report any actual or potential e-safety incident to the Network Manager (or other relevant person).
- Appropriate security measures are in place to protect the servers, firewalls, routers, wireless systems, work stations, hand held devices etc from accidental or malicious attempts which might threaten the security of the school systems and data.
- An agreed procedure is in place for the provision of temporary access of "guests" (eg trainee teachers, visitors) onto the school system.
- Each member of teaching staff is provided with a laptop computer. While staff may use their allocated laptop as a personal computer, it remains the property of the school and all use must adhere to the relevant sections of this policy and the separate School Laptop Policy.
- All users must have regard to the data security and protection matters described in the Data Protection section of this policy.
- The school infrastructure and individual workstations are protected by up to date virus software.
- Personal data can not be sent over the internet or taken off the school site unless safely encrypted or otherwise secured.
Curriculum
E-safety is a focus in all areas of the curriculum and staff reinforce e-safety messages in the use of ICT across the curriculum.
- Where students are allowed to freely search the internet, eg using search engines, staff will be vigilant in monitoring the content of the websites the young people visit.
- It is accepted that from time to time, for good educational reasons, students may need to research topics (eg racism, drugs, discrimination) that would normally result in internet searches being blocked. In such a situation, staff can request that the Network Manager (and other relevant person) can temporarily remove those sites from the filtered list for the period of study.. Any request to do so, should be recorded with clear reasons for the need.
- Students will be taught to be critically aware of the materials / content they access on-line and be guided to validate the accuracy of information
- Students will be taught to acknowledge the source of information used and to respect copyright when using material accessed on the internet.
Use of digital and video images - Photographic, Video
The development of digital imaging technologies has created significant benefits to learning, allowing staff and students instant use of images that they have recorded themselves or downloaded from the internet. However, staff and students need to be aware of the risks associated with sharing images and with posting digital images on the internet. The school will inform and educate users about these risks and will implement policies to reduce the likelihood of the potential for harm:
- When using digital images, staff should inform and educate students about the risks associated with the taking, use, sharing, publication and distribution of images. In particular they should recognise the risks attached to publishing their own images on the internet eg on social networking sites.
- Staff are allowed to take digital still and video images to support educational aims, but must follow school policies concerning the sharing, distribution and publication of those images. Those images should be taken on school equipment wherever possible. If personal equipment is used, the images should be stored on that equipment for the minimum time possible before deletion or transfer to school based media or equipment.
- Care should be taken when taking digital still or video images that students are appropriately dressed and are not participating in activities that might bring the individuals or the school into disrepute.
- Students must not take, use, share, publish or distribute images of others without their permission
- Photographs published on the website, or elsewhere that include students will be selected carefully and will comply with good practice guidance on the use of such images.
- Staff will check the list of students for whom permission has not been granted for use on the school's website before using images including students. Student's work can only be published
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with the permission of the student and parents or carers. If images are to be posted on the internet, this must be approved by either M Coley, R Warren or A Harris.
Data Protection
Personal data will be recorded, processed, transferred and made available according to the Data Protection Act 1998 which states that personal data must be:
- Fairly and lawfully processed
- Processed for limited purposes
- Adequate, relevant and not excessive
- Accurate
- Processed in accordance with the data subject's rights
- Kept no longer than is necessary
- Secure
- Only transferred to others with adequate protection.
Staff must ensure that they:
- At all times take care to ensure the safe keeping of personal data, minimising the risk of its loss or misuse.
- Use personal data only on secure password protected computers and other devices, ensuring that they are properly "logged-off" at the end of any session in which they are using personal data.
Students' personal data (names with dob, address, 'phone, health data, other personal circumstances) should not be retained on portable computers. It is accepted that occasionally some information concerning individual students, for example a copy of a letter to a parent, may be stored on a portable computer and that this will include some personal data. The extent of this data should be minimised. Such documents should either be deleted or copied to a secure location on the school's computer network and then deleted from the portable computer at the earliest opportunity. Databases or other lists including the personal data of students must not be stored on portable computers.
Personal data must not stored on removable media (USB or card based flash memory devices, portable hard disc drives or optical discs). If removable media is used to transfer such data between computer systems, this must only take place on the school site and the removable media must be destroyed or reformatted as soon as the transfer has been completed. Under no circumstances should removable media with such data be removed from the school site or retained for a period longer than that required for the transfer between computer systems to be carried out.
COMMUNICATION
When using communication technologies the school considers the following to be good practice:
- The official school email service is monitored and may be regarded as safe and secure. Staff and students should therefore use only the school email service to communicate with others when in school, or on school systems (eg by remote access).
- It is accepted that personal 'phone numbers will be known to students or parents with whom they have contact outside school. Any abuse of this information which is related to the business of the school should be reported to a member of SMT.
- Staff should not distribute home or personal mobile 'phone numbers to parents or students within their role as a member of staff. If calls to parents or students are made from a home landline or personal mobile 'phone, the number should be preceded by 141. Staff organising educational visits should use one of the school mobile 'phones to provide a contact number.
- Under exceptional circumstances, a student or parents may need to know the personal 'phone number of a member of staff. In such cases, please inform the Headteacher or a Deputy Headteacher.
- Users must immediately report, to the Headteacher or a Deputy Headteacher – in accordance with the school policy, the receipt of any email that makes them feel uncomfortable, is offensive, threatening or bullying in nature and must not respond to any such email.
- Students should be taught about email safety issues, such as the risks attached to the use of personal details. They should also be taught strategies to deal with inappropriate emails and be reminded of the need to write emails clearly and correctly and not include any unsuitable or abusive material.
- Any digital communication between staff and students or parents must be professional in tone and content. Personal email addresses, text messaging from a personal mobile 'phone or public chat/social networking programmes must not be used for communications relating to school business.
- Personal information should not be posted on the school website and only klbschool.org.uk email addresses should be used to identify members of staff.
Social Networking
- Staff who have accounts on social networking sites should ensure that their pages are not available to the public.
- Staff must not have 'friends' who are current students at the school.
- Privacy settings must be such that only your friends can see photographs on your pages, comments made by you and comments made to you.
- If ex-students are amongst your 'friends', staff should be aware that younger siblings may gain access to comments which are accessible to the ex-student.
- Staff must not use social networking sites during their working day.
- Staff must not post offensive, derogatory or otherwise inappropriate comments or images relating to school business on their site. If comments are made to you about students, members of staff or other aspects of school business, they must be deleted immediately.
- Twitter accounts which relate to the business of the school can only be set up if they have been authorised by Andrew Harris (Headteacher) or Hannah Khan (Deputy Headteacher and DSL).
Unsuitable and inappropriate activities
The school believes that the activities referred to in the following section would be inappropriate in a school context and that users, as defined below, should not engage in these activities in school or outside school when using school equipment or systems. The school policy restricts certain internet usage as follows:
Users shall not visit Internet sites, make, post, download, upload, data transfer, communicate or pass on, material, remarks, proposals or comments that contain or relate to:
- child sexual abuse images
- promotion or conduct of illegal acts, eg under the child protection, obscenity, computer misuse and fraud legislation
- adult material that potentially breaches the Obscene Publications Act in the UK
- criminally racist material in UK
- pornography
- promotion of any kind of discrimination
- promotion of racial or religious hatred
- any other information which breaches the integrity of the ethos of the school or brings the school into disrepute
- threatening behaviour, including promotion of physical violence or mental harm
Responding to incidents of misuse
It is intended that all members of the school community will be responsible users of ICT, who understand and follow this policy. However, there may be times when infringements of the policy could take place, through careless or irresponsible or, very rarely, through deliberate misuse. Listed below are the responses that will be made to any apparent or actual incidents of misuse:
If any apparent or actual misuse appears to involve illegal activity, for example:
- child sexual abuse images;
- criminally racist material;
- adult material which potentially breaches the Obscene Publications Act;
- other criminal conduct, activity or materials
the SWGfL flow chart below should be consulted and actions followed in line with the flow chart, in particular the sections on reporting the incident to the police and the preservation of evidence.
If members of staff suspect that misuse might have taken place, but that the misuse is not illegal (as above) it is essential that correct procedures are used to investigate, preserve evidence and protect those carrying out the investigation. In such event the SWGfL "Procedure for Reviewing Internet Sites for Suspected Harassment and Distress" should be followed. This can be found on the SWGfL Safe website within the "Safety and Security booklet". This guidance recommends that more than one member of staff is involved in the investigation which should be carried out on a "clean" designated computer.
It is more likely that the school will need to deal with incidents that involve inappropriate rather than illegal misuse. It is important that any incidents are dealt with as soon as possible in a proportionate manner, and that members of the school community are aware that incidents have been dealt with.
Monitoring and Review
1) The implementation of this policy will be monitored by the E-safety Coordinator and the Senior Management Team.
2) The implementation, effectiveness and currency of the policy will be considered annually by the E-safety coordinator and the Governors' Community and Wellbeing committee.
3) This policy will be reviewed annually by the Governors' Community and Wellbeing committee in light of (2) above.
4) Should serious e-safety incidents take place, the following external agencies will be informed as appropriate:
i. The school's designated safeguarding lead
ii. The Headteacher
iii. The Governor with responsibility for safeguarding
iv. The Local Authority Designated Officer for Child Protection
v. The police
The school will monitor the impact of the policy using:
i. Logs of reported incidents;
ii. Logs of internet activity (including sites visited);
iii. Internal monitoring data for network activity;
iv. Surveys of
- parents/carers
- students
- staff
Associated Policies and Guidance
Internet Acceptable Use Policies Child Protection Policy Safeguarding Policy Behaviour and Discipline Policy
Keeping children safe in education: information for all school and college staff (DfE 2016)
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24th meeting of East-Zonal Council
Union Minister for Home Affairs chaired the 24th meeting of the Eastern Zonal Council at Bhubhaneswar (Odisha).
About Zonal Councils -
* The councils aimed to promote interstate cooperation and coordination.
* These are the statutory bodies established under the States Reorganisation Act 1956 and not constitutional bodies. They are only deliberative and advisory bodies.
There are 5 five Zonal councils namely:
* The Central Zonal Council, HQ at Allahabad
* The Northern Zonal Council, headquarter (HQ) at New Delhi.
* The Eastern Zonal Council, HQ at Kolkata.
* The Southern Zonal Council, HQ at Chennai
* The Western Zonal Council, HQ at Mumbai.
Note - The North Eastern States are not included in the Zonal Councils and their special problems are looked after by the North Eastern Council, set up under the North Eastern Council Act, 1972, with HQ at Shillong.
Composition -
* Vice Chairman– The Chief Ministers of the States included in each zone act as Vice-Chairman of the Zonal Council for that zone by rotation, each holding office for a period of one year at a time.
*Chairman– The Union Home Minister is the Chairman of each of these Councils.
* Members – Chief Minister and two other Ministers as nominated by the Governor from each of the States and two members from Union Territories included in the zone.
RAISE 2020
The government has announced the mega event, RAISE 2020- - 'Responsible AI for Social Empowerment 2020', to be held in April in New Delhi.
What is it?
* It is India's first Artificial Intelligence summit to be organised by the Government in partnership with Industry and Academia.
* RAISE 2020 is a first of its kind, a global meeting of minds on Artificial Intelligence to drive India's vision and roadmap for social empowerment, inclusion and transformation through responsible AI.
* It is being organised by Ministry of Electronics & IT.
* It will facilitate an exchange of ideas to further create a mass awareness about the need to ethically develop and practice AI in the digital era.
* The summit will be a global meeting of minds to exchange ideas and charter a course to use AI for social empowerment, inclusion and transformation in key areas like healthcare, agriculture, education and Smart Mobility amongst other sectors.
India submits two nominations for World Heritage List
India has submitted two nomination dossiers namely 'Dholavira: A Harappan City' and 'Monuments and Forts of Deccan Sultanate' for inclusion in the World Heritage list for the Year 2020.
Dholavira - A Harappan City -
* It has two seasonal streams: Mansar in the north and Manhar in the south.
* It is located in Khadir islet of the Rann of Kutch, Gujarat.
* It is one of the two largest Harappan sites in India and 5th largest in the subcontinent.
* Efficient Water conservation system that supported life for more than 1200 years (3000 BCE to 1800 BCE).
* Town planning - it consisted of a bipartite 'Citadel', a 'Middle town' and a 'lower town', two 'stadia', an 'annexe', a series of reservoirs all set within a fortification running on all four sides.
* The water conservation methods of Dholavira are unique and measures as one of the most efficient systems of the ancient world.
Monuments and Forts of Deccan Sultanate -
* It comprises of four components namely:
* The Monuments demonstrate the convergence of national and international styles of Islamic architecture and their intersections with the Hindu architecture of the period southern Indian in present-day Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
I. Bahmani Monuments at Gulbarga, Karnataka.
III. Adil Shahi Monuments at Bijapur, Karnataka.
II. Bahmani and Barid Shahi Monuments at Bidar, Karnataka.
IV. Qutub Shahi Monuments at Hyderabad Andhra Pradesh.
President of India confers 61st Annual Lalit Kala Akademi Awards
President of India has conferred the 61st annual Lalit Kala Akademi Awards on 15 meritorious artists at a function held at Rashtrapati Bhawan recently.
About Lalit Kala Akademi -
* The Akademi was given statutory authority in 1957, under the Societies Registration Act 1860.
* The Akademi was inaugurated on August 5, 1954, by the then Honourable Minister for Education, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
* Since its establishment it has been serving the entire country by promoting the creative endeavours of Indian artists and bringing their arts to bear upon a large number of people, thereby playing an important role in defining and redefining the sensibility of an entire culture, falling under the visual arts spectrum.
* It is headquartered in New Delhi.
1000 springs initiative
Union Tribal Affairs Ministry has launched "1000 Spring Initiatives" and an online portal on GIS-based spring Atlas with Hydrological and chemical properties of the springs on the occasion.
What is a 'spring'?
A Spring is a point at which water flows from an aquifer to the Earth's surface.
What is the initiative?
* Infrastructure for piped water supply for drinking;
The "1000 springs initiative" aims at improving access to safe and adequate water for the tribal communities living in a difficult and inaccessible part of rural areas in the country. It is an integrated solution around natural springs. It includes the provision of -
* Water for irrigation;
* Provision for water for backyard nutrition gardens,
* Community-led total sanitation initiatives;
* Generating sustainable livelihood opportunities for the tribal people.
Significance -
It will help in harnessing the potential of perennial springs' water to address the natural scarcity of water in tribal areas.
Janaushadhi Week
PIB Summary (March 2020)
Context - Janaushadhi week is being celebrated across the country from 1st March to 7th March 2020. On this occasion various activities like health checkup Camp, Jan Aushadhi Paricharcha, Jan Aushadhi ka sath are being undertaken.
About Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana -
* BPPI (Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India), under the administrative control of the Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers will be the implementation agency for the PMBJP.
* It was launched in the year 2015 to bring down the healthcare budget of every citizen of India through providing quality generic medicines at affordable prices.
About BPPI -
* It is under the administrative control of the Department of Pharmaceuticals.
* It got registered as an independent society in the year 2010 under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 as a separate legal entity.
EKAM Fest
Union Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment inaugurated the week long Exhibition-cum-Fair "EKAM Fest" in New Delhi.
About -
* The term 'Ekam' stands for Entrepreneurship, Knowledge, Awareness, and Marketing.
* EKAM Fest is being organised by National Handicapped Finance Development Corporation (NHFDC) under M/o Social Justice & Empowerment.
* It also represents the inclusiveness, oneness and unity.
* Ekam Fest aims to promote Craftsmanship & Products of Divyang/Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) Artisans and Entrepreneur.
* EKAM Fest is an effort for promoting entrepreneurship and knowledge among Divyangjan community, generating awareness among society about potentialities of PwDs; providing a major marketing opportunity to PwDs entrepreneurs.
SPICe+ web form
As part of Government of India's Ease of Doing Business (EODB) initiatives, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has notified a new Web Form christened 'SPICe+' replacing the existing SPICe form.
Details -
* It aims to save as many procedures, time and cost for starting a business in India and would be applicable for all new company incorporations.
* SPICe+ would offer 10 services by 3 Central Government Ministries & Departments (Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Labour & Department of Revenue in the Ministry of Finance) and one State Government (Maharashtra).
* The new web form would facilitate On-screen filing and real time data validation for seamless incorporation of companies
* Registration for Profession Tax shall also be mandatory for all new companies to be incorporated in the State of Maharashtra through SPICe+.
* Registration for EPFO and ESIC shall be mandatory for all new companies to be incorporated through SPICe+
MIEWS Portal launched
Union Ministry of Food Processing has launched Market Intelligence and Early Warning System (MIEWS) Portal for Monitoring prices of Tomato, Onion and Potato (TOP) crops.
What is MIEWS Portal?
* MIEWS Portal is a 'first-of-its-kind' platform for 'real time monitoring' of prices of (TOP) and for simultaneously generating alerts for intervention under the terms of the Operation Greens (OG) scheme.
* MIEWS portal would help in planning and timely intervention for price stabilisation and generating alerts.
* The portal would disseminate all relevant information related to TOP crops such as Prices and Arrivals, Area, Yield and Production, Imports and Exports, Crop Calendars, Crop Agronomy, etc. in an easy to use visual format.
Features -
* Prices and arrivals of TOP crops across the country including interactive charts and comparisons with previous seasons.
* There would be a dashboard that would indicate low price and high price alerts as well as price forecasts for 3 month forward
* Crop Agronomy and Trade Profile of each of the TOP crops
* This portal is a novel initiative of MoFPI leveraging IT tools and furthering the goals of Digital India.
About Operation Greens -
* It aims to promote Farmer Producers Organisations (FPO), Agri-logistics, processing facilities and professional management of agri-produce.
* It is a price fixation scheme that aims to ensure farmers are given the right price for their produce.
* It focuses on organised marketing of Tomatoes, Onions and Potatoes (TOP vegetables) by connecting farmers with consumers.
* State Agriculture and other Marketing Federations, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO), cooperatives, companies, Self-help groups, food processors etc. can avail the financial assistance under it.
Lok Sabha passes Mines and Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill
The Lok Sabha gave its nod to the Mines and Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill recently.
Background -
* The Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015 provides for the auction and allocation of mines whose allocation was cancelled by the Supreme Court in 2014. Schedule I of the Act provides a list of all such mines.
* The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act (1957) regulates the overall mining sector in India.
* Schedule II and III are sub-classes of the mines listed in the Schedule I.
* Schedule II mines are those where production had already started then, and Schedule III mines are ones that had been earmarked for a specified end-use.
Details -
* The Bill removes this restriction on the use of coal mined by such companies.
* Currently, companies acquiring Schedule II and Schedule III coal mines through auctions can use the coal produced only for specified end-uses such as power generation and steel production.
* Companies will be allowed to carry on coal mining operation for own consumption, sale or for any other purposes, as may be specified by the central government.
* Further, the competitive bidding process for auction of coal and lignite blocks will not apply to mines considered for allotment to: (i) a government company or its joint venture for own consumption, sale or any other specified purpose; and (ii) a company that has been awarded a power project on the basis of a competitive bid for tariff.
* The Bill clarifies that the companies need not possess any prior coal mining experience in India in order to participate in the auction of coal and lignite blocks.
130th foundation day of National Archives of India
Recently, the National Archives of India celebrated its 130th foundation day with an exhibition named "Jallianwala Bagh' at its premises in New Delhi.
About National Archives of India -
* In 1889 Professor G.W. Forrest of Elphinstone College, Bombay entrusted the job of examining the records of the Foreign Department of the Government of India made a strong plea for transferring all records of the administration of East India Company to a Central Repository.
* The genesis of National Archives of India can be traced to the report of Sandeman, the Civil Auditor who had stressed the need of relieving the offices of congestion by the destruction of the papers of routine nature and transfer of all valuable records to a 'Grand Central Archive'.
* This led to the establishment of Imperial Records Department (IRD) on 11 March 1891 in the Imperial Secretariat Building at Calcutta (Kolkata).
* After the Independence, the government of India rechristened IRD as the National Archives of India with Director of Archives as its head.
* In 1911 the IRD was shifted to Delhi.
* In the year 1990, the office of the Director of Archives was re-designated as Director General of Archives.
* At present National Archives of India is an attached office under the Ministry of Culture and has a Regional Office at Bhopal and three Records Centres at Jaipur, Puducherry and Bhubaneswar.
Deccan Queen Express
India's Deccan Queen Express will be upgraded to German design Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches. With the up gradation to LHB coaches, the train will have better safety features and improved travelling experience – better suspension system and better riding comfort.
About Deccan Queen Express -
* Deccan Queen is the first long-distance electric-hauled train, first vestibuled train, first train to have a 'ladies only' car and the first train to feature a dining car.
* Indian Railways' Deccan Queen, which has been running between Mumbai and Pune since 1930, is the country's first superfast train.
* It is operated by the Central Railway Zone of the Indian Railways.
International Day of Yoga 2020
The main national event for the 6th International Day of Yoga (IDY) will be held on 21st June 2020 at Leh, the capital of UT of Ladakh and the event will be led by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi.
About International Day of Yoga -
* A draft resolution on 'International Day of Yoga' introduced by India's Ambassador to UN received support from 177 nations, the highest number of co-sponsors for any UNGA resolution.
* The idea of International Day of Yoga was first proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his speech at the UN General Assembly (UNGA), on September 27, 2014.
* Thereafter, the United Nations proclaimed June 21 as the International Day of Yoga.
* Yoga is inscribed in the list of UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of India.
* International yoga day coincides with the summer solstice.
International Conference on Nano Science and Nano Technology (ICONSAT)
The International Conference on Nano Science and Nano Technology (ICONSAT) under the aegis of Nano Mission, Department of Science and Technology (DST) is being held at Kolkata focusing on the recent advances in this frontier research field.
Mission on Nano Science and Technology (Nano Mission) -
* It was launched in the year 2007 as an "umbrella capacity-building programme".
* The Mission's programmes target all scientists, institutions and industry in the country.
* It seeks to strengthen activities in nano science and technology by promoting basic research, human resource development, research infrastructure development, international collaborations, among others.
* It is anchored in the Department of Science and Technology and steered by a Nano Mission Council chaired by an eminent scientist.
States to be asked to invoke Epidemic Disease Act
It has been decided that all States/UTs should be advised to invoke provisions of Section 2 of the Epidemic Disease Act, 1897 so that all advisories being issued from time to time by the Ministry/State/UTs are enforceable to tackle the spread of Novel Coronavirus outbreak.
About Epidemic Disease Act, 1897 -
* Section 2 of the act empower the state government to take special measures and prescribe regulations as to dangerous epidemic disease.
* The Epidemic Act is meant "to provide for the better prevention of the spread of dangerous epidemic diseases".
* Section 2A of the Act empowers the central government to take steps to prevent the spread of an epidemic.
* According to Section 3 of the act," Any person disobeying any regulation or order made under this Act shall be deemed to have committed an offence punishable under section 188 of the Indian Penal Code."
India joins Indian Ocean Commission
India has been approved as an observer state for a five-nation grouping in the Western Indian Ocean, which includes Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, Mauritius and French Reunion.
Details -
With the decision, India will join China, which was made an observer in 2016, as well as the "International Organisation of the Francophonie" or the 54-nation French-speaking collective, the European Union (EU) and Malta, which were all admitted in 2017.
About Indian Ocean Commission -
* It was institutionalised in 1984 by the Victoria Agreement in Seychelles.
* It is an intergovernmental organisation created in 1982.
* The Commission is composed of five African Indian Ocean nations - Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion Islands (French territory), and Seychelles.
* The Commission has a Secretariat which is located in Mauritius and headed by a Secretary General.
* COI's principal mission is to strengthen the ties of friendship between the countries and to be a platform of solidarity for the entire population of the African Indian Ocean region.
* The Commission has four observers — China, EU, Malta and International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF).
Lok Sabha passes Appropriation Bill
The Lok Sabha has passed the Appropriation Bill 2020-21 that empowers the government to draw over ₹110 lakh crore from the Consolidated Fund of India for its working, as well as for the implementation of its programmes and schemes.
What is 'Appropriation Bill'?
* Post the discussions on Budget proposals and the Voting on Demand for Grants, the government introduces the Appropriation Bill in the Lok Sabha.
* Appropriation Bill gives power to the government to withdraw funds from the Consolidated Fund of India for meeting the expenditure during the financial year.
,
* It is intended to give authority to the government to withdraw from the Consolidated Fund the amounts so voted for meeting the expenditure during the financial year.
Constitutional Provisions -
* The government introduces the Appropriation Bill in the lower house of Parliament after discussions on Budget proposals and Voting on Demand for Grants.
* As per the Article 114 of the Constitution, the government can withdraw money from the Consolidated Fund only after receiving approval from Parliament.
* The Appropriation Bill is first passed by the Lok Sabha and then sent to the Rajya Sabha.
* The Rajya Sabha has the power to recommend any amendments in this Bill. However, it is the prerogative of the Lok Sabha to either accept or reject the recommendations made by the upper house of Parliament.
RS nod for 'Vivad se Vishwas Bill'
The Parliament has approved the Direct Tax Vivad Se Vishwas Bill, 2020, which will give taxpayers a chance to settle tax disputes by paying their dues without any interest or penalty till March 31.
About Vivad se Vishwas Bill -
* The Bill defines an appellant as the income tax authority, or the person, or both, whose appeal is pending before any appellate forum as on January 31, 2020. These appellate forums are the Supreme Court, the High Courts, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunals, and the Commissioner (Appeals).
* The Bill provides a mechanism for resolution of pending tax disputes related to income tax and corporation tax.
* The Bill proposes a resolution mechanism under which an appellant can file a declaration to the designated authority to initiate resolution of pending direct tax disputes.
How the matters are resolved?
* The amount payable by the appellant for resolution of disputes is determined based on whether the dispute relates to payment of tax, or payment of interest, penalty, or fee. Further, he is required to pay an additional amount if such payment is made after March 31, 2020.
* Once the designated authority issues the certificate, appeals pending before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunals and the Commissioner (Appeals) will be deemed to be withdrawn. In case of appeals or petitions pending before the Supreme Court and High Courts, the appellant is required to withdraw the appeal or petition.
* Once a dispute is resolved, the designated authority cannot levy interest or penalty in relation to that dispute. Further, no appellate forum can make a decision in relation to the matter of dispute once it is resolved. Such matters cannot be reopened in any proceeding under any law, including the IT Act.
GreenCo Rating System
GreenCo has been acknowledged in India's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) document, submitted to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015.
About GreenCo Rating System -
* It is a proactive voluntary action of Indian industry / private sector towards combating climate change.
* It is developed by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII.
* It helps the industrial units in identifying and implementing various possible measures in terms of energy conservation, material conservation, recycling, utilisation of renewable energy, Green House Gases (GHG) reduction, water conservation, solid and liquid waste management, green cover etc.
Abortion till 24 weeks for special categories
The Lok Sabha has passed a Bill to extend the upper limit for permitting abortions from 20 weeks to 24 under special circumstances. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (Amendment) Bill, 2020, which seeks to amend the MTP Act, 1971 has made for the provisions of such abortion.
Special categories -
The "special categories of women" include rape survivors, victims of incest, the differently abled and minors.
Salient features of Medical Termination of Pregnancy (Amendment) Bill, 2020 -
* Enhancing the upper gestation limit from 20 to 24 weeks for special categories of women which will be defined in the amendments to the MTP Rules and would include 'vulnerable women including survivors of rape, victims of incest and other vulnerable women (like differently-abled women, Minors) etc.
* Proposing requirement for opinion of one provider for termination of pregnancy, up to 20 weeks of gestation and introducing the requirement of opinion of two providers for termination of pregnancy of 20-24 weeks of gestation.
* Upper gestation limit not to apply in cases of substantial foetal abnormalities diagnosed by Medical Board.
* Name and other particulars of a woman whose pregnancy has been terminated shall not be revealed except to a person authorised in any law for the time being in force.
Government brings masks and hand sanitisers under the Essential Commodities Act
In view the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 (Corona Virus) and concern of the logistics for COVID-19 management, the Government has notified these items as Essential Commodities by amending the Schedule of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955.
What happens now?
Under the E.C Act, after discussions with the manufacturers, States can ask them to enhance their production capacity of these items, to make the supply chain smooth, while under the Legal Metrology Act the States can ensure sale of both the items at MRP.
About Essential Commodities Act -
* It has since been used by the Government to regulate the production, supply and distribution of a whole host of commodities it declares 'essential' in order to make them available to consumers at fair prices.
* The ECA was enacted way back in 1955.
* The list of items under the Act include drugs, fertilisers, pulses and edible oils, and petroleum and petroleum products.
* A State can, however, choose not to impose any restrictions. But once it does, traders have to immediately sell into the market any stocks held beyond the mandated quantity. This improves supplies and brings down prices.
* The Centre can include new commodities as and when the need arises, and take them off the list once the situation improves.
* The recent amendment to the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules 2011 is linked to the ECA. The Government can fix the retail price of any packaged commodity that falls under the ECA.
Major Port Authorities Bill 2020
Major Port Authorities Bill 2020 was introduced in the Lok Sabha to replace the Major Ports Trusts Act, 1963.
Objective -
The Bill seeks to provide for regulation, operation and planning of Major Ports in India and to vest the administration, control and management of such ports upon the Boards of Major Port Authorities and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
Salient Features -
* The new Bill has proposed a simplified composition of the Board of Port Authority which will comprise of 11 to 13 Members from the present 17 to 19 Members representing various interests. A compact Board with professional independent Members will strengthen decision making and strategic planning
* The Bill is more compact in comparison to the Major Port Trusts Act, 1963 as the number of sections has been reduced to 76 from 134 by eliminating overlapping and obsolete Sections.
* The role of Tariff Authority for Major Ports (TAMP) has been redefined. Port Authority has now been given powers to fix tariff which will act as a reference tariff for purposes of bidding for PPP projects.
* Provisions of CSR & development of infrastructure by Port Authority have been introduced.
* An Adjudicatory Board has been proposed to be created to carry out the residual function of the erstwhile TAMP for Major Ports, to look into disputes between ports and PPP concessionaires, to review stressed PPP projects and suggest measures to review stressed PPP projects and suggest measures to revive such projects and to look into complaints regarding services rendered by the ports/ private operators operating within the ports would be constituted.
* Provision has been made for safeguarding the pay & allowances and service conditions including pensionary benefits of the employees of major ports and Tariff of Major Ports.
Central Sanskrit Universities Bill 2020
The Central Sanskrit Universities Bill, 2020 has been passed by the Parliament after it was passed by Rajya Sabha today. The Lok Sabha had already passed the Bill on 12th December 2019.
Details -
* This is one of the landmark Bills passed by the Parliament which has fulfilled the aspirations and long standing wish of many Sanskrit lovers, scholars and Sanskrit speaking people in the country.
* This bill will convert (i) Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, New Delhi, (ii) Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, New Delhi, and (iii) Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, Tirupati into Central Sanskrit Universities.
Features of the Bill -
* This will pave way for many people from abroad to learn Sanskrit and Shastraic lore from these prestigious Central Sanskrit Universities in our country
* The Central University status awarded to these 3 Universities will enhance the status of these Universities and will give boost to Post Graduate, Doctoral and Post-doctoral education and Research in the field of Sanskrit and Shastraic education.
* Now the universities will: (i) disseminate and advance knowledge for the promotion of Sanskrit, (ii) make special provisions for integrated courses in humanities, social sciences, and science, and (iii) train manpower for the overall development and preservation of Sanskrit and allied subjects.
* Powers and functions - These include: (i) prescribing courses of study and conducting training programmes, (ii) granting degrees, diplomas, and certificates, (iii) providing facilities through a distance education system, (iv) Conferring autonomous status on a college or an institution, (v) providing instructions for education in Sanskrit and allied subjects.
* Like at all central universities, the President of India will be the Visitor of the central Sanskrit universities. He may appoint persons to review and inspect the functioning of the University. The Executive Council may take action based on the findings of the inspection.
* Some of the authorities that the universities will have - A court, which will review the policies of the university and suggest measures for its development. An Executive Council,which will be the principal executive body. The 15-member council will include the Vice-Chancellor appointed by the Centre, who will be the chairperson. The council will, among other functions, create teaching and academic posts and their appointment, and manage the revenue and property of the university. An Academic and Activity Council, which will supervise academic policies. A Board of Studies, which will approve the subjects for research and recommend measures to improve standards of teaching.
NCC Certificate holders to join paramilitary forces
Union Minister for Home Affairs, Shri Amit Shah has taken an unprecedented decision to give NCC Certificate holders Bonus Marks in direct entry examinations for in the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), as prevalent in Armed forces examinations.
Details -
* NCC 'C' certificate holders will be given 5% of the maximum marks of the examination as bonus marks.
The provisions are as below:
* NCC 'B' certificate holders will be given 3% of the maximum marks of the examination as bonus marks.
* NCC 'A' certificate holders will be given 2% of the maximum marks of the examination as bonus marks.
About NCC -
* The motto of the organisation is 'Unity and Discipline', following which it prepares youth as disciplined and patriotic citizens.
* NCC is a tri-service organisation comprising of the Army, Naval and Air wings.
* NCC was formed under the National Cadet Corps Act, 1948.
* It is a voluntary organisation which recruits cadets from high schools, higher secondary, colleges and universities all over India.
* Cadets are given basic military and weapons training in NCC, by serving officers of the Armed forces.
* The officers and cadets have no liability for active military service once they complete their course.
* It can be traced back to the 'University Corps', which was created under the Indian Defence Act 1917, with the objective to make up for the shortage in the Army.
* NCC falls under the domain of Ministry of Defence.
* The NCC is headed by a Director General with the rank of Lieutenant General.
NCRB celebrates 35th inception day
National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) celebrated its 35th Inception Day, on March 12, 2020. The Union Minister of Home Affairs launched the National Cybercrime Training Centre (NCTC) for professional quality eLearning services on cybercrime investigation on large scale to police officers, judges, prosecutors and other stakeholders.
What is CCTNS project?
* Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) is a project initiated in June 2009 which aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of policing at the Police Station level.
* This will be done through adoption of principles of e-Governance, and creation of a nationwide networked infrastructure for evolution of IT-enabled state-of-the-art tracking system around "investigation of crime and detection of criminals".
* CCTNS is a Mission Mode Project (MMP) under the National e-Governance Plan of Government of India.
Lok Sabha passes bill on national importance tag for IITs
The Lok Sabha passed a bill to confer the status of Institution of National Importance (INI) on five more Indian Institutes of Information Technology.
Details -
* These five IIITs, along with the 15 others, will be able to use the nomenclature of Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) or Master of Technology (M.Tech) or Ph.D degrees.
* The bill proposes to bring the five institutions- located in Surat, Bhopal, Bhagalpur, Agartala, and Raichur - under the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (Public-Private Partnership) Act, 2017, similar to the other 15 IIITs established under the scheme through Public-Partnership.
* The status will also help the institutes attract students required to develop a strong research base in information technology.
About Institutes of National Importance -
* Institutes of National Importance receive special recognition and funding from the Government of India.
* Institute of National Importance (INI) is a status that may be conferred on a premier public higher education institution in India by an act of Parliament of India, an institution which "serves as a pivotal player in developing highly skilled personnel within the specified region of the country/state".
Scheme for Promotion of manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors
The Union Cabinet has approved to offer financial incentive of 25% of capital expenditure for the manufacturing of goods that constitute the supply chain of an electronic product under the Scheme for Promotion of manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS).
Details -
The scheme will help offset the disability for domestic manufacturing of electronic components and semiconductors in order to strengthen the electronic manufacturing ecosystem in the country.
Benefits -
* Development of electronic components manufacturing ecosystem in the country and deepening of Electronics value chain.
The proposal when implemented will lead to the development of electronic components manufacturing ecosystem in the country. Following are the expected outputs/outcomes in terms of measurable indicators for the scheme:
* New investments in Electronics Sector to the tune of at least Rs. 20,000 crore.
* Reducing dependence on import of components by large scale domestic manufacturing that will also enhance the digital security of the nation.
* Direct employment of approximately 1,50,000 is expected to be created in the manufacturing units supported under the scheme, including indirect employment of about three times of direct employment as per industry estimates. Thus, total employment potential of the scheme is approximately 6,00,000.
Background -
The vision of National Policy on Electronics 2019 (NPE 2019) is to position India as a global hub for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) by encouraging and driving capabilities in the country for developing core components, including, chipsets, and creating an enabling environment for the industry to compete globally.
Modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0) Scheme
The Union Cabinet has approved financial assistance to the Modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0) Scheme for development of world class infrastructure along with common facilities and amenities through Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMCs).
Details -
* For the purpose of this Scheme, an Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) would set up in geographical areas of certain minimum extent, preferably contiguous, where the focus is on development of basic infrastructure, amenities and other common facilities for the ESDM units.
* The Modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0) Scheme would support setting up of both Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMCs) and Common Facility Centres (CFCs).
* For Common Facility Centre (CFC), there should be a significant number of existing ESDM units located in the area and the focus is on upgrading common technical infrastructure and providing common facilities for the ESDM units in such EMCs, Industrial Areas/Parks/industrial corridors.
Benefits -
* Availability of ready infrastructure and Plug & Play facility for attracting investment in electronics sector:
The Scheme will create a robust infrastructure base for electronic industry to attract flow of investment in ESDM sector and lead to greater employment opportunities. Following are the expected outputs/outcomes for the Scheme:
* New investment in electronics sector
* Revenue in the form of taxes paid by the manufacturing units
* Jobs created by the manufacturing units;
Background -
To build and create requisite infrastructure ecosystem for electronics manufacturing; Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC) Scheme which was open for receipt of applications upto October, 2017.
Cabinet approves recapitalisation of Regional Rural Banks
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has given its approval for continuation of the process of recapitalisation of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) by providing minimum regulatory capital up to 2020-21 for those RRBs which are unable to maintain minimum Capital to Risk weighted Assets Ratio (CRAR) of 9%, as per the regulatory norms prescribed by the Reserve Bank of India.
Background -
Consequent upon RBI's decision to introduce disclosure norms for Capital to Risk Weighted Assets Ratio (CRAR) of RRBs with effect from March 2008, a committee was set up under the Chairmanship of Dr. K.C. Chakrabarty. Based on the Committee's recommendations, a Scheme for Recapitalisation of RRBs was approved.
Implications -
* As per RBI guidelines, the RRBs have to provide 75% of their total credit under PSL (Priority Sector Lending)
* A financially stronger and robust Regional Rural Banks with improved CRAR will enable them to meet the credit requirement in the rural areas.
* RRBs are primarily catering to the credit and banking requirements of agriculture sector and rural areas with focus on small and marginal farmers, micro & small enterprises, rural artisans and weaker sections of the society.
What are Regional Rural Banks?
* Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) were set up as government-sponsored, regional based rural lending institutions under the Regional Rural Banks Act, 1976. RRBs were configured as hybrid micro banking institutions, combining the local orientation and small scale lending culture of the cooperatives and the business culture of commercial banks
* Regional Rural Banks are local level banking organisations operating in different States of India. They have been created with a view to serve primarily the rural areas of India with basic banking and financial services.
* These were set up on the recommendations of the M. Narasimham Working Groupduring the tenure of Indira Gandhi's government with a view to include rural areas into economic mainstream since that time about 70% of the Indian population was of rural orientation.
Functions of Regional Rural Banks -
* Carrying out government operations like disbursement of wages of MGNREGA workers, distribution of pensions etc.
* Providing banking facilities to rural and semi-urban areas.
* Providing Para-Banking facilities like locker facilities, debit and credit cards.
National Supercomputing Mission
The year 2020-21 is an important year for India's National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).
Details -
The mission is set up to provide the country with supercomputing infrastructure to meet the increasing computational demands of academia, researchers, MSMEs, and startups by creating the capability design, manufacturing, of supercomputers indigenously in India.
About National Supercomputing Mission -
* The target of the mission was set to establish a network of supercomputers ranging from a few Tera Flops (TF) to Hundreds of Tera Flops (TF) and three systems with greater than or equal to 3 Peta Flops (PF) in academic and research institutions of National importance across the country by 2022.
* A first of its kind attempt to boost the country's computing power, the National Super Computing Mission is steered jointly by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
* This network of Supercomputers envisaging a total of 15-20 PF was approved in 2015 and was later revised to a total of 45 PF (45000 TFs), a jump of 6 times more compute power within the same cost and capable of solving large and complex computational problems.
* With the revised plan in place, the first supercomputer assembled indigenously, called Param Shivay, was installed in IIT (BHU) and was inaugurated by the Prime Minister. Similar systems Param Shakti and Param Brahma were installed at IIT-Kharagpur and IISER, Pune. They are equipped with applications from domains like Weather and Climate, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Bioinformatics, and Material science.
Companies Fresh Start Scheme, 2020
In pursuance of the Government of India's efforts to provide relief to law abiding companies and Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) in the wake of COVID 19, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), has introduced the "Companies Fresh Start Scheme, 2020" and revised the "LLP Settlement Scheme, 2020" which is already in vogue to provide a first of its kind opportunity to both companies and LLPs to make good any filing related defaults, irrespective of duration of default, and make a fresh start as a fully compliant entity.
Details -
* The USP of both the schemes is a one-time waiver of additional filing fees for delayed filings by the companies or LLPs with the Registrar of Companies during the currency of the Schemes, i.e. during the period starting from 1st April, 2020 and ending on 30th September, 2020.
* The Fresh Start scheme and modified LLP Settlement Scheme incentivise compliance and reduce compliance burden during the unprecedented public health situation caused by COVID-19.
* The Schemes, apart from giving longer timelines for corporates to comply with various filing requirements under the Companies Act 2013 and LLP Act, 2008, significantly reduce the related financial burden on them, especially for those with long standing defaults, thereby giving them an opportunity to make a "fresh start".
* However, the immunity is only against delayed filings in MCA21 and not against any substantive violation of law.
* Both the Schemes also contain provision for giving immunity from penal proceedings, including against imposition of penalties for late submissions and also provide additional time for filing appeals before the concerned Regional Directors against imposition of penalties, if already imposed.
What is a limited liability partnership?
* Legislation in India - All limited liability partnerships are governed under the limited liability partnership act of 2008. The Corporate Affairs Ministry implements the Act.
* LLP is an alternative corporate business form that gives the benefits of limited liability of a company and the flexibility of a partnership. Hence LLP is called a hybrid between a company and a partnership.
* LLP vs Traditional partnership firm - Under "traditional partnership firm", every partner is liable, jointly with all the other partners and also severally for all acts of the firm done while he is a partner. Under LLP structure, liability of the partner is limited to his agreed contribution. Thus, individual partners are shielded from joint liability created by another partner's wrongful acts or misconduct.
Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India
A Science and Technology Empowered Committee for COVID-19 response was constituted to examine the response to the pandemic.
Details -
The committee is chaired by Prof. Vinod Paul, Member, NITI Aayog and Prof. K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, and is responsible for coordination amongst science agencies, scientists, industries and regulatory bodies, and to take speedy decisions on research and development to implementation related to the SARS-COV-2 virus and the COVID-19 disease.
About the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India -
* It is currently a Secretary level position created in 1999 by the AB Vajpayee government. At the time, the position was a Cabinet rank position, with the first PSA being APJ Abdul Kalam.
* The Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) is the chief advisor to the government on matters related to scientific policy.
* This was followed by Rajagopala Chidambaram who held the rank of a Minister of State and was the PSA for 16 years.
* The 'Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser', through the Prime Minister's Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) helps scientific cross-sectoral synergy across ministries, institutions and the industry.
* The current PSA is K. Vijay Raghavan.
Objective -
The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India advises the government in science and technology polices and interventions that are of strategic socio-economic importance to the country. This is done in collaboration with various ministries, institutions, academia and industry. The PM-STIAC is one of the catalysts for such tasks and also overseas the implementation of the tasks.
About PM-STIAC -
* PSA's Office also oversees the implementation of such interventions by concerned S&T Departments and Agencies and other government Ministries.
* Prime Minister's Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) is an overarching Council that facilitates the PSA's Office to assess the status in specific science and technology domains, comprehend challenges in hand, formulate specific interventions, develop a futuristic roadmap and advise the Prime Minister accordingly.
Business Immunity Platform
The Invest India Business Immunity Platform hosted on the website of Invest India, India's National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency, under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is working 24X7 as a comprehensive resource to help businesses and investors get realtime updates on India's active response to COVID-19.
What is Business Immunity Platform (BIP)?
* Invest India has also announced a partnership with SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India) for responding and resolving queries for MSMEs.
* The Business Immunity Platform (BIP) is the active platform for business issue redressal, with a team of dedicated sector experts who respond to queries at the earliest.
* This dynamic and constantly updating platform keeps a regular track on developments with respect to the virus, provides latest information on various central and state government initiatives, gives access to special provisions, and answers and resolves queries through emails and on WhatsApp.
* BIP has launched 'Joining the Dots' campaign to procure essential healthcare supplies. It is also facilitating matchmaking to fill the demand-supply shortages of essential equipment to combat COVID-19.
About Invest India Programme -
* The current shareholding pattern of Invest India is 51 % of Industry Associations (i.e. 17% each of FICCI, CII & NASSCOM) and the remaining 49% of Central and 19 State Governments.
* Invest India was formed in 2009 under Section 25 of the Companies Act 1956 for promotion of foreign investment with 49% equity of the then Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (now Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade) , Ministry of Commerce and Industry and 51% shareholding by FICCI.
* It is the National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency of India and act as the first point of reference for investors in India.
Increase in the usage of SWAYAM
The access to the National Online Education Platform SWAYAM and other Digital Initiatives has tripled in the last one week.
Details -
Ministry of HRD has said that the growth has been seen after provision of free access to best teaching learning resources at SWAYAM while earlier the courses of SWAYAM were time bound for which registration needed to be done in advance.
About SWAYAM -
* This is a program under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
* SWAYAM stands for Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds.
PIB Summary (March 2020)
* SWAYAM is a free online education program started by the Government of India.
* Courses included are from Class 9 till post-graduation
* It is conducted through a platform that facilitates the hosting of all courses.
.
* It was started to achieve 3 important principles of education policy - Access; Equity, and; Quality.
PM-CARES
Keeping in mind the need for having a dedicated national fund with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation, like posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected, a public charitable trust under the name of 'Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund' (PM CARES Fund)' has been set up.
Details -
* Donations to this fund will be exempted from income tax under section 80(G).
* Prime Minister is the Chairman of this trust and its Members include Defence Minister, Home Minister and Finance Minister.
Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana
The Union Finance & Corporate Affairs Minister Smt. Niramla Sitharaman has announced Rs 1.70 Lakh Crore relief package under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana for the poor to help them fight the battle against Corona Virus.
Details of the package -
* 80 crore poor people will to get 5 kg wheat or rice and 1 kg of preferred pulses for free every month for the next three months. (PM Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana)
* Insurance cover of Rs 50 Lakh per health worker fighting COVID-19 to be provided under Insurance Scheme.
* 20 crore women Jan Dhan account holders to get Rs 500 per month for next three months.
* An ex-gratia of Rs 1,000 to 3 crore poor senior citizen, poor widows and poor disabled.
* Increase in MNREGA wage to Rs 202 a day from Rs 182 to benefit 13.62 crore families.
* Under PM Garib Kalyan Yojana, gas cylinders, free of cost, would be provided to 8 crore poor families for the next three months.
* Wage-earners below Rs 15,000 per month in businesses having less than 100 workers are at risk of losing their employment. Under this package, government proposes to pay 24 percent of their monthly wages into their PF accounts for next three months.
* Government to front-load Rs 2,000 paid to farmers in first week of April under existing PM Kisan Yojana to benefit 8.7 crore farmers.
* Central Government has given orders to State Governments to use Building and Construction Workers Welfare Fund to provide relief to Construction Workers.
* The State Government will be asked to utilise the funds available under District Mineral Fund (DMF) for supplementing and augmenting facilities of medical testing, screening and other requirements in connection with preventing the spread of CVID-19 pandemic as well as treating the patients affected with this pandemic.
About District Mineral Fund -
* They arenon-profit truststo work for the interest and benefit of persons and areas affected by mining-related operations.
* DMFs were instituted under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (MMDR) Amendment Act 2015.
* They aim to work for the interest of the benefit of the persons and areas affected mining related operations in such manner as may be prescribed by the State Government.
* Its manner of operation comes under the jurisdiction of the relevant State Government.
* The fund is collected at the district level. There are certain high-priority areas identified in all states' DMF rules, where at least 60 per cent of the fund must be used. These include vital and pressing concerns, including healthcare.
About Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana -
The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalayan Yojana was a retailored version of Income Declaration Sheme with a black money declaration option from December 17, 2016 to March 31st 2017. Money mobilised from the PMGKY Income Declaration Scheme was to be utilised to finance the welfare programme for the poor which is called in the same name -Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalayan Yojana (PMGKY).
Force Majeure
Keeping in view Ministry of Finance advisories inter alia citing "A force majeure (FM) means extraordinary events or circumstance beyond human control such as an event described as an Act of God (like a natural calamity)" clarifying that spread of corona virus should be considered as a natural calamity and Force Majeure clause may be invoked, Ministry of Railways has decided that the period from 22.03.2020 to 14.04.2020 shall be treated under force majeure.
Impact -
Railways will not apply several charges that it levies on users and clients to collect money for deferred payment or cancellation of tickets/rescheduling of tickets.
What is Force Majeure?
It is an unforeseeable circumstance that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract. There are dozens of circumstances or events that we class as examples of force majeure. War, riots, earthquakes, hurricanes, lightning, and explosions, for example, are force majeure events. The term also includes energy blackouts, unexpected legislation, lockouts, slowdowns, and strikes. | <urn:uuid:b7964edc-cc0c-4536-84bd-cd60e3dfea5d> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://rajiasacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PIB-Summary-March-2020.pdf | 2020-09-23T07:10:25+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400209999.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20200923050545-20200923080545-00180.warc.gz | 578,528,892 | 11,477 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.989501 | eng_Latn | 0.992517 | [
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INSPECTION REPORT
NINE MILE RIDE PRIMARY SCHOOL
Wokingham, Berkshire
LEA area: Wokingham
Unique reference number: 109814
Headteacher: Mrs CA Jones
Lead inspector: Ruth Frith
Dates of inspection: 4 – 6 May 2004
Inspection number: 257026
© Crown copyright 2004
This report may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-commercial educational purposes, provided that all extracts quoted are reproduced verbatim without adaptation and on condition that the source and date thereof are stated.
Further copies of this report are obtainable from the school. Under the School Inspections Act 1996, the school must provide a copy of this report and/or its summary free of charge to certain categories of people. A charge not exceeding the full cost of reproduction may be made for any other copies supplied.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE SCHOOL
Type of school:
Primary
School category:
Community
Age range of pupils:
4 to 11 years
Gender of pupils:
Mixed
Number on roll:
313
School address:
430 Finchampstead Road Finchampstead Wokingham Berkshire RG40 3RB
Postcode:
Telephone number:
0118 9733118
Fax number:
0118 9731402
Appropriate authority:
The governing body
Name of chair of governors: Mrs Karen Morrison
Date of previous inspection: 21 September 1998
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SCHOOL
Nine Mile Ride is a larger than average size community primary school which provides for boys and girls aged four to eleven years. Pupils come from a range of social backgrounds but overall, the socio-economic status of families is very favourable and a lower than average percentage of pupils receives free school meals. When children join the school, overall they show levels of attainment which are above average but there is an increasing number of pupils with special educational needs and lower attainers. Currently, 36 pupils have been identified as having special educational needs, two of whom have a statement of special educational needs. Most pupils are from White – British heritage with a few pupils coming from a narrow range of minority ethnic groups. There are four pupils from the traveller community. Eighteen pupils joined the school and nine left other than at the usual times during the last school year and in the 2002/3 Year 6 cohort, 80 per cent of pupils had been in the school from Year 1. Teacher mobility over the previous two years has been quite high. The school achieved Healthy Schools and Investors in People in 2002 in recognition of its work. The Artsmark Gold was applied for in January 2004 and the Activemark is being applied for.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE INSPECTION TEAM
| Members of the inspection team | | |
|---|---|---|
| 2490 | Ruth Frith | Lead inspector |
| 9519 | Sue Pritchard | Lay inspector |
| 17288 | Megan Warner | Team inspector |
| 23805 | Margaret Lygoe | Team inspector |
| 24097 | Grant Pedrick | Team inspector |
| 32287 | Mary Clennett | Team inspector |
The inspection contractor was:
Cambridge Education Associates
Demeter House Station Road Cambridge CB1 2RS
Any concerns or complaints about the inspection or the report should be made initially to the inspection contractor. The procedures are set out in the leaflet 'Complaining about Ofsted Inspections' , which is available from Ofsted Publications Centre (telephone 07002 637833) or Ofsted's website (www.ofsted.gov.uk).
REPORT CONTENTS
PART A: SUMMARY OF THE REPORT
OVERALL EVALUATION
Nine Mile Ride is a good school with very good features and a strong commitment to improve further. Staff create a happy and supportive environment where pupils become confident and enjoy learning. Teaching is good and results in pupils achieving well. The school runs very effectively and the parents have a great deal of confidence in what is provided for their children. Overall, the school provides very good value for money.
The school's main strengths and weaknesses are:
* Teaching and learning are good across the school and pupils achieve well. The use of teaching assistants throughout, and specialist teachers in Years 3 to 6, is particularly effective.
* Over the last few years, pupils have continued to reach high standards in English, mathematics and science by the time they leave the school. Although improving, standards in information and communication technology are not as high but remain satisfactory.
* Pupils with special educational needs receive very good support and frequently achieve well.
* Pupils' attitudes to school are good and help them to maintain very good attendance.
* Overall, pupils receive a stimulating curriculum that maintains their interest but more opportunities are needed for them to use their skills to write at length in a variety of contexts.
* Pupils' personal qualities are developed well and this leads to good relationships and behaviour.
* Links with parents are very good and they, in turn, support the school well.
* Leadership by the headteacher and other senior staff is very good, as are the management and governance of the school.
The school has shown good improvement since the last inspection and successfully addressed all the main issues identified in the last report. Provision for the youngest children and for pupils with special educational needs has improved significantly, thereby ensuring more effective learning. The quality of teaching and learning overall has also improved, mainly due to better planning and assessment and a greater focus on developing pupils' investigative skills.
STANDARDS ACHIEVED
| Results in National Curriculum tests at the end of Year 6, compared with: | all schools | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 |
| English | A | A* | A |
| mathematics | A | A | A |
Key: A* - very high; A - well above average; B – above average; C – average; D – below average; E – well below average
Similar schools are those whose pupils attained similarly at the end of Year 2.
Throughout the school, pupils achieve well due to the good quality teaching and interesting curriculum. Good provision for the children in the Foundation Stage ensures that by the time they enter Year 1 most are working at the levels expected nationally for children of that age in all areas of learning. Some children, particularly those who have attended school since September, exceed these. In Years 1 and 2, pupils achieve well and currently, pupils in Year 2 are working at levels above those expected nationally for pupils of that age in English, mathematics, science, information and communication technology and religious education. In Years 3 to 6, pupils continue to achieve well and are currently working at well above average levels in English, mathematics, science and religious education. Standards are above average in design and technology and physical education and average in information and communication technology. Across the school, pupils reach well
above average standards in art and design due to the excellent provision. Some of the pupils' artwork is outstanding. Pupils with special educational needs achieve well overall due to the very effective support provided.
Pupils' personal qualities, including their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, are good. Pupils enjoy school, are eager to take part in activities and have good attitudes to learning. Consequently, they behave well and attendance rates are above average.
QUALITY OF EDUCATION
The quality of education provided by the school and the quality of teaching are good. Teachers have very good subject knowledge and use this well to encourage pupils to learn. Expectation and challenge are good, and frequently very good for pupils in Years 3 to 6. Here, specialist teachers use their skills well to gain the interest of the pupils who, in turn, achieve well and frequently reach high standards. Teamwork is a key feature of the school as staff share their skills and expertise to ensure that all pupils receive good learning experiences and have their needs met well. Teaching assistants make a positive contribution to the pupils' learning and are key members of the school team. Activities for the youngest children have recently been developed well and overall the school provides a very good curriculum with very good opportunities for enrichment through extra-curricular activities and support for sport and the arts. Accommodation and resources are good with some particularly good developments for learning outside. Pupils are well cared for and supported. Their views are taken into account well so they become involved in school developments. Staff have very good links with parents, the community and other schools and colleges.
LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
Leadership, management and governance of the school are very good. The headteacher and governors share a clear vision of how the school should develop and are fully committed to running a school where all pupils' needs are met and where pupils are helped to achieve well, both academically and socially.
PARENTS' AND PUPILS' VIEWS OF THE SCHOOL
Parents' views are very positive. They believe the school is well led and managed, teaching is good and pupils are expected to work hard. Staff are accessible and the information provided is thought to be useful. Most pupils feel that they can approach a member of staff if they have a problem, that teachers encourage them to work hard and pupils are friendly and play well together.
IMPROVEMENTS NEEDED
The most important things the school should do to improve are:
* Develop more opportunities for pupils to write at length, particularly in Years 2 to 4.
* By the end of Year 6, bring standards in information and communication technology up to those in other subjects by continuing to implement the subject development plan.
PART B: COMMENTARY ON THE INSPECTION FINDINGS
STANDARDS ACHIEVED BY PUPILS
Standards achieved in areas of learning and subjects
Pupils achieve well and by the time they leave school, their standards overall are well above average.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* In the 2003 national tests, pupils in Year 6 reached well above average standards in English and mathematics and very high standards in science.
* Pupils in the junior part of the school have achieved satisfactorily in information and communication technology (ICT) and their standards in Year 6 are average.
* Throughout the school pupils generally achieve well.
* Pupils with special educational needs generally achieve well because they receive very good support.
* Higher-attaining pupils achieve well because they are appropriately challenged.
Commentary
1. On entry to school, children's attainment is above average overall. This is because many have experienced good pre-school provision and are also well supported by their parents. Due to the good teaching overall and provision of a broad and interesting curriculum, most children achieve well and are likely reach the standards expected for their age nationally in all areas of learning by the time they start in Year 1. Some children are likely to attain standards above those expected, particularly the children who started school in September.
2. Attainment in the 2003 national tests for pupils in Year 2 was average in reading, writing and mathematics when compared with pupils in all schools. These results show a decline in overall standards from the previous year. When compared with schools with a similar number of pupils claiming free school meals, they attained below average standards in reading and mathematics and well below average standards in writing. Teacher assessment in science indicated a below average percentage of pupils attained the standard expected for their age with an average percentage achieving a higher level. These standards resulted in the trend of improvement over the last five years being below the national trend. However, results in 2003 were unusual and reflect that particular cohort when four pupils were new to the school, four had summer birthdays, three were from traveller families with their achievement being affected by absences and two had statements of special educational needs. This reflects the changing profile of pupils in the school. In the previous three years, pupils had attained above or well above average standards and pupils in the current Year 2 are expected to reach higher standards than in 2003.
Standards in national tests at the end of Year 2 – average point scores in 2003
| reading | 16.1 (17.9) |
|---|---|
| writing | 14.7 (15.6) |
| mathematics | 16.8 (18.7) |
There were 51 pupils in the year group. Figures in brackets are for the previous year.
3. Attainment in the 2003 national tests for pupils in Year 6 was well above average in English and mathematics and very high in science when compared with pupils in all schools. These results continued the high standards attained over several years and continued the school's
trend of improvement in line with the national trend. When compared with pupils who attained similarly in the Year 2 National Curriculum tests, pupils attained well above average standards in all three subjects. The science results were particularly impressive and placed the school in the top five per cent of schools nationally for their 2003 results. The school was successful in broadly meeting its targets for the percentage of pupils reaching the standard expected for their age in English and mathematics. Although there were no signs of underachievement in relation to gender differences during the inspection, in 2003, girls did better than boys in English, mathematics and science. Over the last three years, girls did better than boys in English and boys did better than girls in mathematics and science.
Standards in national tests at the end of Year 6 – average point scores in 2003
| Standards in: | School results |
|---|---|
| English | 29.9 (30.6) |
| mathematics | 29.4 (28.7) |
There were 45 pupils in the year group. Figures in brackets are for the previous year.
4. Evidence from this inspection shows that the pupils in Years 1 and 2 achieve well and those currently in Year 2 are working at above average levels in English, mathematics, science, information and communication technology (ICT) and religious education. Pupils in Years 3 to 6 similarly achieve well and those currently in Year 6 are reaching well above average standards in English, mathematics, science and religious education. Their standards are above average in design and technology and physical education. Across the school, pupils achieve well in art and design and reach well above average standards. The excellent provision in art and design helps pupils to produce high quality work, some of which is outstanding. Pupils' attainment in Year 6 is broadly average in ICT because they have not benefited from the good facilities and recently improved provision throughout their time in school. Pupils generally achieve well because of the good quality teaching and the work in lessons which builds systematically on their prior learning.
5. Pupils of higher attainment are appropriately challenged and this helps them to achieve standards in line with their capabilities. Results of the 2003 national tests for Year 6 pupils showed that over half of the pupils achieved a level higher than that expected for their age in English and mathematics and over three-quarters in science. The school has identified those pupils who are gifted and talented and provision in class, in school clubs and in other schools helps to ensure that they are appropriately challenged. Pupils with special educational needs reach standards in line with the targets in their individual education plans and achieve well. This is because difficulties with learning are quickly identified and they receive effective support from teachers and teaching assistants. A few lower-attaining pupils in Year 3, who do not have special educational needs, sometimes do not achieve as well as they could. There are not enough pupils from specific minority ethnic groups to analyse any trend in their progress and attainment but school data and test results indicate that individual pupils have achieved well by the time they leave school.
Pupils' attitudes, values and other personal qualities
Pupils' attitudes and behaviour are good. Pupils have very good rates of attendance and their punctuality is good. The provision for pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development has improved significantly since the last inspection and is now good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Pupils' good moral and social values are promoted well in school.
* Religious education lessons add considerably to pupils' cultural awareness.
* Teachers find many opportunities in lessons to develop pupils' spiritual awareness.
* Not all assemblies inspire and engage pupils as much as they could.
Commentary
6. Children start school with very good attitudes and good behaviour. Their attitudes and behaviour remain good as they progress through the school. They are enthusiastic, keen to investigate and eager to offer an opinion, but sometimes need to be reminded to listen and to keep the level of noise down. Pupils with special educational needs have very positive attitudes because they are given very good support.
7. Good opportunities are provided for pupils to put their personal and social skills into practice. They regularly work in groups or pairs in lessons to come up with ideas or find solutions to a particular problem. They develop good skills in doing this. Opportunities such as school clubs and school council meetings take these skills one step further. The elected school councillors, for example, are now very good at listening to both sides of an argument and making their points clearly and at the right time.
8. The best led assemblies provide good opportunities for pupils to reflect on the sort of personal qualities the school tries hard to promote. However, it is surprising to find in a school with such a good ethos, assemblies that are not always effective in promoting a sense of unity or a true sense of occasion. Pupils' spiritual awareness is very much more evident in lessons and in their written work. Teachers seize the opportunity to promote an insight into experiences that motivate. The older pupils have, for example, written some particularly moving accounts of places that hold a special meaning to them. A good selection of their imaginative work on the theme has been put on display for others to see and aspire to.
9. Pupils' knowledge of cultures and religions is good. Important festivals and traditions are celebrated. Work in religious education reflects the distinctive features of other world religions. When studying the Sikh Code of Conduct for example, pupils learned that religious beliefs are often based on the principles of good personal conduct. Educational visits, such as those made by the Year 1 classes to a Victorian school in Reading, are well chosen to allow pupils to get a real feel of their own and other cultures.
10. Pupils are very clear of the rules to follow should they feel unhappy or threatened in school. Exclusion is used cautiously and then only when it is in the best interests of the pupils involved. Two pupils are temporarily excluded under these terms. Bullying is rare, which owes much to the way pupils are encouraged to talk to adults and have their views taken seriously. Whilst a very small minority of parents felt the school was not dealing with bullying effectively, there is evidence to suggest their views were formed on past rather than present experiences.
Exclusions
Ethnic background of pupils
Exclusions in the last school year
| Number of fixed period exclusions | Number of permanent exclusions |
|---|---|
| 2 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
| 0 | 0 |
The table gives the number of exclusions, which may be different from the number of pupils excluded.
Attendance
11. As can be seen from the registers, and as shown in the table below, attendance levels are above the national average and there is very little unauthorised absence. Pupils arrive promptly and lessons start on time. The school monitors attendance carefully. Parents know that regular attendance and good punctuality play a very important role in helping their children adopt a responsible attitude to school and work.
Attendance in the latest complete reporting year (%)
The table gives the percentage of half days (sessions) missed through absence for the latest complete reporting year.
QUALITY OF EDUCATION PROVIDED BY THE SCHOOL
The quality of education provided by the school is good. The curriculum is very good overall with very good opportunities for enrichment. Pupils are well cared for and their views are sought so that they contribute to the development of the school well. Links with parents, the community and other schools and colleges are very good.
Teaching and learning
Teaching, learning and assessment are good throughout the school.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* The quality of teaching and learning is good overall and supports pupils' good achievement.
* Arrangements for teaching higher-attaining pupils and those with special educational needs are good so their needs are well met.
* Teaching assistants support pupils well and help them to achieve.
* Teachers assess pupils well and use this information to plan work that meets pupils' needs.
Commentary
12. Pupils make good progress throughout their time in school and achieve well. This is because of the good overall quality of teaching and provision of a very good curriculum. The table below gives an outline of the quality of lessons seen during the inspection. Teachers use the expertise of teaching assistants well in lessons and this enhances pupils' learning. A higher percentage of very good teaching was seen in the junior part of the school where specialist teaching is provided in workshops for most subjects.
Summary of teaching observed during the inspection in 49 lessons
The table gives the number of lessons observed in each of the seven categories used to make judgements about lessons; figures in brackets show percentages where 30 or more lessons are seen.
13. The quality of teaching has improved since the last inspection, particularly in the percentage of lessons that were judged to be very good or better and in the reduction of lessons that were judged to be unsatisfactory. The headteacher has shown very good leadership in creating a team of staff with a shared sense of purpose and has helped them to improve their teaching skills through very good quality continuing professional development. She has also recognised the skills of particular staff and used these well to enhance the overall quality of teaching. This expertise goes beyond the teaching by full-time teaching staff and includes part-time specialists such as the music teacher and coaches for the wide variety of sporting activities. Her innovative approach is also extended to the teaching of pupils in Years 3 to 6 through workshops. Here the expertise of staff shines through as they spread their enthusiasm for their subjects and share their very good knowledge and understanding. This was seen, for example, in a Year 3/4 lesson when the geography teacher shared her very good knowledge of the area surrounding the school and helped pupils to identify changes over time. Her ICT skills were particularly effective as she used the interactive whiteboard to show photographs of key features of years ago and compared these with photographs she had taken recently. Learning in this lesson was very good because the pupils were interested in what they were doing and felt able to succeed at their individual levels.
14. In the best lessons, teachers have a clear idea of what they want pupils to learn and share that with them. They provide appropriate support and challenge, which ensure that pupils of all levels of attainment maintain a good pace in their learning. Lessons are planned so that the expertise of teaching assistants can be fully utilised either through supporting within lessons or through teaching small groups of pupils. Pupils benefit from the teaching which is specifically targeted to their level of ability and learn well. Expectations are high, particularly in Years 3 to 6.
15. Another significant improvement since the last inspection has been the way staff assess what pupils have achieved and use this to place them in appropriate groupings and provide work of appropriate challenge. The school provides well for higher-attaining pupils and has developed its practice for those that are gifted and talented. Results of the 2003 National Curriculum tests for pupils in Year 6 indicate that pupils are effectively challenged, as over half achieved a standard higher than that expected for their age in English and mathematics and over threequarters in science. Teachers use their knowledge of pupils well in lessons and encourage them to improve and work harder if they think they can. Most are also effective in indicating through their marking how pupils can improve their work. The quality of relationships between staff and pupils is good. Teachers are encouraging and supportive, which results in pupils becoming confident in their abilities and aware of how they can improve their work and attain higher standards.
16. The teaching of pupils with special educational needs is good, both in class and in withdrawal groups. Three withdrawal groups were observed, taught by teaching assistants and a special needs teacher. Groups within class lessons were also observed. Special needs staff are all very experienced and have built up an excellent system for supporting these pupils, especially in literacy and numeracy. Enthusiastic teaching motivates the pupils well. Pupils' needs are assessed regularly and the most appropriate support is then provided. These pupils make good progress and achieve well.
The curriculum
The overall quality of the curriculum is very good. Very good extra-curricular provision enriches the curriculum. The quality and range of learning resources are good and the quality of the accommodation is also good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* The school has succeeded in developing a curriculum to meet the needs of all its pupils.
* Insufficient opportunities are provided for pupils to use their skills to write at length in a variety of contexts.
* Opportunities for enrichment are very good and accessed by many pupils.
* Provision for pupils with special educational needs is very good.
Commentary
17. The school plans the curriculum carefully to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum and other national initiatives. It is currently working towards the Artsmark award. The quality and range of opportunities provided are very good overall. The national strategies for literacy and numeracy have been thoroughly implemented by teachers and this has contributed to the high standards attained by pupils in English and mathematics. However, in Years 2 to 4, in particular, pupils do not have sufficiently long periods of time on a piece of work to develop fully their independent writing skills. Also, in geography and history, although the use of worksheets supports learning, particularly for the lower attainers, pupils should be given a wider range of contexts in which to develop their writing. The school has produced long-term plans for all subjects. This planning has been adapted from the range of national initiatives and guidance to meet the needs of pupils. The school has mixed age classes in Years 3 to 6 and has introduced setting for pupils according to ability, to ensure they are appropriately challenged in English, mathematics and some science lessons. Good links between subjects are regularly made.
18. The school provides a very good range of extra-curricular activities. These enrichment activities include visits and visitors, and the opportunity to play a wide range of sport, play musical instruments and have the opportunity for residential trips whilst in Year 6. Links with local secondary schools also enhance the curriculum, for example during the school Science Week when support is given by pupils from the secondary school. The school is committed to ensuring that all pupils, regardless of ability or gender, have good equal access to the opportunities it provides. For example, a pupil in Year 5 who has outstanding ability in mathematics is given specific support at the local secondary school in order to ensure he is challenged and enabled to make progress in the subject. This approach is a reflection of the high level of inclusion evident in all aspects of the school's work.
19. There is a good number of well-qualified staff to support pupils' learning and the school makes very good use of specialist staff to enhance the teaching of certain subjects. In Years 3 to 6, workshop sessions taught by specialist staff are effective in providing a curriculum which is stimulating and challenging and also prepares pupils well for their secondary education. Resources are good and well used to support pupils' learning. The school's accommodation is good and much has been done to enhance it. The development of the outside environment enhances the curriculum and helps to improve pupils' science skills and awareness of nature.
High quality displays of pupils' work, and features such as the gardens in the school grounds, help to create a pleasant and welcoming learning environment and teach pupils, for example, about recycling.
20. Pupils with special educational needs are very well provided for. A well-organised system of support through withdrawal groups, particularly in literacy and numeracy lessons, has been developed throughout the school. Pupils with statements of special educational needs are very well supported individually in a range of lessons including art and design and design and technology. Resources are generally good and include some information and technology software.
Care, guidance and support
The arrangements for pupils' care, health and safety are good. The provision of support, advice and guidance based on monitoring pupils' needs is also good. The school takes good account of pupils' views.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Pupils have very good and trusting relationships with adults in school.
* School council meetings foster pupils' personal development well.
* Health and safety and child protection issues are dealt with efficiently by vigilant staff.
* Most lessons have elements of personal, social and health education woven into them and staff are developing planning for the subject that will reflect their good practice.
Commentary
21. The pupils' good attitudes reflect the warmth and effectiveness of the staff and the very good links the school has with parents. The contribution made by school clubs and school council activities to the pupils' personal and social wellbeing is very good. Teachers and support staff talk enthusiastically about their pupils and exercise a high degree of patience and goodwill in their dealings with them. They call on a good range of persuasive and supportive tactics, chosen wisely to meet the needs of the child. This has a noticeable and positive impact on pupils' personal development.
22. Good care is taken to ensure every pupil regardless of age, gender or ability has regular opportunities to enjoy responsibility and to understand the merits of it. This results in pupils who are proud of their school and eager to find ways of improving it. School council sessions are lively affairs with pupils making some very sensible suggestions on issues close to their heart such as improving facilities in the playground and the behaviour of some pupils. The school is keen to develop the pupils' already good understanding of personal, social and health issues in a more structured way. The co-ordinator for this subject has made it a priority for development.
23. Child protection procedures are well known to staff and carefully monitored, in the first instance, by the headteacher who has good contacts and is well versed in local procedures. First aid arrangements work very well. A good number of staff are fully trained in administering first aid and are supported by others who have been trained to know what to do in an emergency. Individual health care plans are drawn up to support pupils with specific medical needs, and the staff who work with them are specially trained in implementing these. This represents very good practice.
24. The school's safety and security measures stand up well to the incidents of vandalism that occur sporadically when the school is closed. Staff react quickly and use all methods at their disposal to deal with the incidents and minimise the likelihood of the trouble recurring; an issue
which is a problem to many schools. Good use is made of governors' expertise and staff who are alert to identifying, recording and dealing with routine health and safety matters.
25. There are good ways of checking and recording how well pupils are doing in all subjects. The information gained from monitoring pupils' progress is analysed by senior staff and used effectively to enable teachers to plan lessons appropriate to the range of abilities. All staff contribute strongly to the care, guidance and support of pupils with special educational needs. Their rate of progress is very closely monitored.
26. The school views all incidents of racism or bullying in school as reportable incidents and by monitoring these, staff and governors work to eliminate intolerance. In doing so, they create a secure place to learn that positively embraces all pupils, and their parents.
Partnership with parents, other schools and the community
The partnership between the school and parents is very good. The school is highly regarded, is heavily over-subscribed and has a very good standing in the local community.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* The school is indebted to its very enthusiastic parent/teacher association whose members excel at fundraising for school improvement projects.
* The school works hard to establish itself as a community resource.
* There are very good systems to deal with parents' concerns and complaints.
Commentary
27. Parents have very positive views of the school. The school works very closely with them and the community, motivating a great deal of interest and enthusiasm for its work. In return, parents and others in the community give generously of their time to the school. They are tremendously successful in raising funds for particular projects, as is evident from the vastly improved gardens and grounds. Parents give good support to homework and make sure their children attend school regularly and as often as possible, and that they behave well when they are there. Parents help in classes and some help run the extensive range of clubs and activities. They are very keen to see their children develop into well-rounded individuals.
28. Much helpful information is provided by the school to help parents understand how they can help their children learn. Curriculum, PTA and school newsletters are sent out in hard copies and also linked to the school's website for ease of access. The "How you can help" section in curriculum newsletters is particularly useful. It includes many different ways parents can help children use and extend their learning as they go about their daily lives together. The prospectus and governors' report are attractive documents and contain all the information parents must have about the school and its achievements. The headteacher is available to parents daily in the playground and is able to deal with many worries or problems at an early stage. The school is very keen for parents to have a voice on issues that need their support. Monitoring questionnaires were sent out to gauge parents' views on healthy eating in school.
29. Parents are impressed by the way the school treats their children fairly and as individuals, and are therefore openly receptive to the feedback they receive from teachers at open evenings. The end-of-year reports form a good basis for a constructive discussion at these meetings. School productions, inter-school competitions, class and corridor displays are all open to parents and give good information about the expectations and standards pupils attain. Parents of children with special educational needs are consulted about the individual educational plans made for them and are kept well-informed of their progress. They are fully involved in the annual review meetings with the special needs co-ordinator. They also meet with her halftermly to assess progress. Parents of pupils who are also on the special needs register but without a formal statement of need meet termly with the class teacher and with the coordinator, as necessary.
30. The school is valued and respected by the local community. There is a very active lettings policy with many local organisations and schools taking advantage of it. Using her good connections, the headteacher has taken a lead in forging strong and reciprocal links with local colleges, schools and nurseries. These are of particular benefit when teachers need to access Key Stage 3 work, as they do for gifted pupils. Through exchange visits, college placements and inter-school challenges, pupils are able to build good relationships with staff and pupils from other schools, helping them transfer, with confidence, to the next stage of their education.
31. The governors have an outward-looking approach to working in partnership with the local community. They are adamant that all pupils should be welcomed into the school community, whatever their needs, and given a good start. In an effort to strike the balance between what the community needs and the experiences that pre-school children should have, the school is working in partnership with a private nursery which is soon to be built on school grounds.
LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
The leadership of the headteacher and other senior managers is very good, as are the management and governance of the school.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* The leadership of the headteacher and senior managers is clearly focused on raising attainment for all pupils and improving the quality of provision.
* Governors are involved well in shaping the school's future direction and contribute very effectively to the school's leadership and management.
* Good management means that the school evaluates its effectiveness and improves its practices so that pupils can achieve well.
* Financial management is good and helps the school to achieve its educational priorities.
Commentary
32. The headteacher demonstrates very good leadership that ensures that pupils have access to a well designed and stimulating curriculum and effective teaching. This contributes strongly to the pupils' good achievement and the well above average standards they attain by the time they leave the school. She has been particularly effective in building a strong team with a shared sense of purpose and has managed sensitively recent changes such as those connected with staffing and significant building works.
33. The headteacher's vision underpins the work of the staff and governors and this is reflected in the way everyone is involved in planning for school development. This ensures the understanding and commitment of all those involved. The school improvement plan provides the school with a valuable guide to help it move forward and monitor progress. Clear targets for improvement are identified together with timescales and appropriate resource implications. Systems for monitoring and evaluating the school's performance have been well devised so that strengths and weaknesses can be accurately diagnosed and appropriate action taken. The headteacher and staff are innovative in their approaches, for example, in the way they have developed the curriculum in Years 3 to 6 and continue to use expertise from outside the school to keep up-to-date with current initiatives. Performance management and the continuing professional development of staff are managed very well by the headteacher and are well regarded by staff.
34. The headteacher and governors are committed to developing effective leadership through the role of subject leaders and this, in turn, helps to improve the quality of teaching through subject leaders teaching workshop sessions and the raising of standards. Subject leaders are fully aware of their roles and responsibilities and respond accordingly. Provision for pupils with
special educational needs is managed well by the co-ordinator. She has been co-ordinator for a year and has checked that all pupils are correctly identified and receive the support they need. To do this she has used the local education authority's diagnostic assessments and distributed the results to class teachers with suggestions for action. The organisation of teaching assistants and a special needs teacher is very successful.
35. Governors support and challenge the school very well. They are well informed and show a good knowledge of how the school is performing. Governors have good relationships with all staff and pupils through their regular visits to classrooms and they operate effectively as a critical friend. The school finances are efficiently managed and the governing body ensures that financial resources are allocated in accordance with the school's identified priorities. For example, funds have been built up to cover the cost of improvements to the provision of ICT and the Foundation Stage. The school implements well the principles of best value through its use of data, its methods of consulting those involved with the school, its challenging aims and use of the budget. The school provides very good value for money overall.
Financial information
Financial information for the year April 2002 to March 2003
PART C: THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION IN AREAS OF LEARNING AND SUBJECTS
AREAS OF LEARNING IN THE FOUNDATION STAGE
There have been good improvements since the last inspection, most of which have taken place within the last year. The school has successfully tackled the shortcomings identified in the last report. The classes have been brought together in one area as an early years' unit, and a good outdoor area is being developed. Activities are now planned in line with the statutory guidance for children of this age and all areas of learning are adequately emphasised. Children now have good opportunities for practical work, and there is a good balance between adult-directed and independent play activities. The key factors underpinning the improvements are the very good leadership and management, and the strength of the team of teachers and teaching assistants. They have a very good understanding of how young children learn, and planning is securely based on detailed individual assessments. Activities capture children's interests, and are carefully planned to move children forward in each area of learning. Children with special educational needs are given very good support, while there is additional challenge for those who are high achievers.
Children start school at the beginning of the term in which they are five, and attend for half time for one term, before starting full-time school. Those children with summer birthdays start full-time school at the beginning of Year 1, and the school prepares them suitably for this change. The standard of attainment on entry is above average, and progress is good in all areas of learning. Many of the older children are on track to exceed the early learning goals in all aspects of the curriculum. Children who enter in the summer term have less time in school than the others but most are on track to reach the early learning goals by Year 1.
PERSONAL, SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Provision in personal, social and emotional development is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* The quality of teaching is good, enabling children to achieve well.
* Children are encouraged to develop good behaviour and attitudes to learning.
* Links with parents are good, and almost all children start school confidently.
* Staff provide good role models for the children, and relationships are good.
Commentary
36. Good teaching in this area of learning underpins the work of the two classes. Staff fully understand the needs and interests of young children and routines are carefully planned. Parents are involved well, for example at the start of the day, and help their children settle in each morning. At the time of the inspection a few younger children were still finding the moment of parting difficult, and staff were very sensitive to their needs. Once the parents have left all children rapidly become involved in the good variety of activities. Children develop good attitudes to learning because they are interested in what they are doing. They are encouraged to persevere and to complete activities before moving on, and levels of concentration are often good. Teachers and support staff remind children of the importance of sharing and taking turns, and organise activities which promote these skills. Children often co-operate well; for example painting large pictures together and playing together in the role-play area. There are good opportunities for children to make choices and to develop confidence and independence. Relationships are good. Children respond well to the staff because they are confident that adults will listen to them and treat them fairly. Most children are on course to meet, and many to exceed, the expected standard by the time they reach Year 1.
COMMUNICATION, LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
Provision in communication, language and literacy is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* The quality of teaching is good and as a result children of all abilities achieve well.
* Phonics (letter sounds) are taught thoroughly, giving children a good foundation for developing reading and spelling skills.
* Standards in speaking are good, although many children find it more difficult to take turns in speaking.
* Parents give their children good support.
Commentary
37. When children start school most, but not all, have standards above average for their age. Progress is good, and at times very good because language skills are promoted very effectively by all staff in all activities. Children are encouraged to talk about what they are doing, and do so confidently knowing that adults will listen. Staff work hard to encourage children to take turns and to listen to others within the group, while ensuring that children still feel confident in expressing their ideas. Children make a good start in learning to read. A structured approach allows children to match letters to sounds, and direct teaching is matched very well to the needs of different groups. Many of the older children are already exceeding the expectations for their age group. Children enjoy stories and many make a good start on reading independently. Parental support is strong, and children enjoy sharing their work at home. This support reinforces and values the work done at school while promoting high standards. Children learn to link reading with writing, and are taught to form their letters correctly. Many children in the older group already write simple sentences independently. Teachers demonstrate writing very well, and plan good opportunities for writing. In the younger class, where children had only just settled into school, staff were introducing children to the school's writing style, and carefully assessing their knowledge of phonics. The teachers quickly identify those who are capable of being further challenged, while supporting those who need to work more slowly. Standards overall, by Year 1, should be above average.
MATHEMATICAL DEVELOPMENT
Provision in mathematical development is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Teaching is very good and children achieve well.
* Mathematical skills are promoted through many practical activities.
Commentary
38. Assessment data shows that children start school with good skills particularly in number. Teachers and support staff build on these very effectively, not just during specific sessions, but through daily activities. During the activity session at the start of the day, for example, children in the younger group were transferring the correct number of blocks onto plates. When a child had moved two blocks, the support assistant said "And another two", as she helped. The child then said "Two more is…four!", and they counted the bricks together. In the other group, a short formal teaching session reinforced children's understanding of shapes. The class enjoyed passing round a bag of shapes as they sang, and when the song stopped they took turns at choosing a shape. The teacher guided them carefully as they described the threedimensional shapes and their properties. Children with special educational needs are fully included in all activities and they achieve well, because questions are at a suitable level to
enable them to join in and to learn. Children who entered in the autumn and spring terms already record addition and subtraction formally, and write numbers at least to 20 and often beyond. Overall standards are above average when children enter Year 1.
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD
Provision in knowledge and understanding of the world is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Teaching is good and children achieve well
* Standards in information and communication technology (ICT) are very good because children have access to good resources
Commentary
39. It was only possible to observe a limited range of activities during the inspection, but teacher's planning and classroom observations show that children enjoy a good range of experiences over time. They are likely to reach, and many older children to exceed, the expected standards by the time they reach Year 1. Model making skills are good and children work well independently to develop their ideas. Children learn about different countries and cultures through well-planned practical activities. After a brief introduction describing Japanese Children's Day, most children enjoyed tasting rice cakes. They made carp kites, wrapped rice cakes and were introduced to Japanese writing. Children were interested and showed respect for different traditions and learning was good because the teacher's presentation was good and the children were open to new ideas. Standards in ICT are very good. Children have ready access to computers in the early years' unit and are taught specific skills in the ICT suite. The children can log on and close the computers down. In one lesson, children typed their names competently, changed font size and style, and quickly mastered the new challenge of changing colours. They maintained concentration very well and thoroughly enjoyed their lesson. One girl worked very systematically typing her name in each colour in turn. In the classroom, children operate the listening base independently.
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
Provision in physical development is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Planning is based on thorough assessment of children's needs.
* Teaching is good and children achieve well.
Commentary
40. Teachers and support staff plan carefully to cover all aspects of the curriculum. Detailed assessments when children entered the school showed that many children needed practice in small motor skills, such as using scissors, tools and construction materials. Many of the daily activities include an element of manual dexterity, combining fun with a strong element of learning. Children in one group, for example, concentrated hard as they used chopsticks to pick up bricks. Others cut with scissors, threaded string through banners and used tools such as staplers as they made kites. Adults encourage independence and promote confidence by praising effort. Children have good opportunities for energetic play in the outdoor area involving balancing, running and riding wheeled toys. They are introduced to aspects of formal physical education through lessons in the hall. The older group showed good skills in using small apparatus, catching and throwing beanbags. Younger pupils, in only their third week in school, worked very well in a movement lesson. They had a very good awareness of space, avoiding
collisions as they worked. All children followed instructions very well and experimented with a variety of ways of moving over the large mats. Overall standards are likely to be above those expected by the end of the school year.
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
Provision in creative development is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Children make good progress in music because of very good quality specialist music teaching
* Staff plan a good variety of structured activities and provide good opportunities for independent play
Commentary
41. Teaching in music is very good and children learn quickly because the teacher has high expectations and a high level of expertise. Children improve their singing and playing quickly, learn to hold instruments correctly and to copy repeated patterns of sound. There is good support for children with special educational needs, which enables them to participate fully in the lessons. Displays of artwork show that many children draw well, and that they have the opportunity to work with a variety of materials. Children are often absorbed in their activities including drawing, painting, cutting and sticking. Adults promote learning well through talking with children and discussing their work. A teaching assistant encouraged children to discuss their work and to predict what would happen as they made prints from painted patterns. Children are proud of their work, and in the case of the "Japanese" kites, thoroughly enjoyed flying them in the outside area. The classrooms and outdoor learning area are thoughtfully organised and offer children good opportunities for independent play, and for developing their imaginations. Overall most children are likely to meet and many to exceed the expected outcomes before they reach Year 1.
SUBJECTS IN KEY STAGES 1 AND 2
ENGLISH
Provision in English is very good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Pupils achieve well and in Year 6 reach well above average standards.
* The organisation of literacy throughout the school meets the needs of pupils of all levels of attainment very well indeed.
* The majority of pupils are articulate and many draw on a wide vocabulary.
* Work for Year 3 lower-attaining pupils, who do not have special educational needs, is not always planned and taught effectively to ensure good progress and achievement.
* Small group teaching is very well organised and promotes learning very well.
* Limited opportunities are given for pupils to write at length, particularly in Years 2 to 4.
* The school has a very good library which encourages pupils' reading and research skills.
Commentary
42. There is a very wide range of attainment within most year groups and the setting of pupils from Year 2 upwards, together with withdrawal groups, provides very well for pupils in the majority of classes. This is a considerable improvement since the last inspection when the lack of wellmatched work to pupils' levels of attainment was criticised.
43. In 2003, the standards reached in the National Curriculum tests in Year 2 were in line with the national average in reading and writing. This result was unusual and reflected the particular cohort at the time. Although these standards are not as high as they were in previous years, they reflect the changing intake, and more inclusive ethos, of the school, with a larger number of lower-attaining pupils and pupils with special educational needs than in past years. In the previous three years, standards in reading had either been well above average or high in comparison with other schools nationally. In writing, results had previously been above or well above other schools nationally. Standards in Year 6 have been maintained and, in 2003, were well above both the national average and those of similar schools.
44. In Years 1 and 2, pupils' speaking skills are developed well through, for example, a puppet theatre, role-play and hot-seating activities. In Year 1, pupils are taught in their own class in ability groups and the majority are achieving very well, reaching well above average standards. In Year 2, pupils are taught in two sets, with additional support given to pupils with special educational needs. This provides very well for pupils at all levels of attainment. In the lessons observed, the higher-attaining pupils achieved very well, were highly motivated and articulate, and reached well above average standards in speaking and listening. Very good teaching promoted pupils' enthusiasm and developed their already wide vocabulary very well indeed. When studying a text, pupils also brought their own knowledge to the answers they gave. The pupils who respond to questions in hot-seating activities are confident and mature in their approach, often able to answer unexpected questions 'thinking on their feet': for example, "How did you know the colour of the animals' eyes when you were so far away?" saying, "Because I looked through my binoculars."
45. In Year 1, many pupils write a series of simple sentences confidently with little support, and enjoy reading aloud what they have written. They also write longer stories, sometimes recounting stories they know, and are beginning to use full stops and capital letters. They are also beginning to identify speech using 'speech bubbles'. A smaller number of average- and lower-attaining pupils make satisfactory progress in their writing with additional support. In Year 2, the teaching of grammar, handwriting and spelling are methodical and a small group of very high-attaining pupils answer comprehension exercises very well indeed using a wide vocabulary. However, the presentation of pupils' work is inconsistent and few opportunities are given for high- and above-average attaining pupils to write at length. This restricts the standards that they can reach. The teaching of handwriting is in a process of change in the school, with a new style being introduced in the younger classes. This should ensure a more consistent approach in the future.
46. Pupils in Years 3 to 6 continue to use a wide vocabulary which is developed well by teachers. Pupils are articulate, confident and often well read and able to use phrases that they have read in books. Teaching in this age groups ranges from excellent to unsatisfactory. Where it was excellent, as in a Years 3 and 4 lesson with higher-attaining pupils, the level of discussion was high with the teacher setting excellent standards of English which pupils followed. In this lesson pupils were successfully identifying terms such as verse, chorus, couplet, stanza, rhyme and alliteration in different forms of poetry such as elegies. Pupils named the rhyming couplets, could define 'elegy' and 'epitaph' and showed understanding and a clarity of thought well above average for their age. This lesson also contributed very well to pupils' spiritual and personal development as they discussed poems such as 'Cat's Funeral'. Pupils' learning and their achievement were excellent. Very occasionally learning is not as good as it could be as in the Year 3 and 4 lower set lesson observed. Here, some younger pupils made little progress, as they did not understand the task. The use of incorrect spellings for this age and ability group, in the poem 'Out in the desert', was confusing for some pupils and would not have helped those with a visual memory. The pace of the lesson was slow and the pupils' own spellings, such as 'wright' for 'right' were not corrected. Opportunities to write at length are also few in Years 3 and 4. Teaching in Year 5 and 6 sets is good overall and is very good in the upper set. In the lower set, most pupils achieve well from a lower than average level because teaching is lively and support is effective in meeting pupils' needs. Pupils in the upper set reach above average standards and some write with a high standard of English. In the
lesson observed, all pupils confidently compared and contrasted two texts with speed and accuracy. Very good deductions were made during discussions, with pupils able to justify their opinions. Good opportunities were given for pupils to develop their responses, which is an improvement since the last inspection when this was criticised. Pupils' books show that they write for a wide range of purposes and audiences. For example, a variety of genres are used, including persuasive writing, when pupils consider a proposal for a local leisure centre and produce a group book about it. Imaginative writing is sometimes particularly successful such as in a story about an object in a classroom tray that watched different classes come and go over the years. Pupils convey fear very well when writing a poem about a nightmare and they develop and argument successfully giving a balanced view of both sides. Work is constructively marked so that pupils know how they can improve and, overall, standards are above average, with many pupils reaching well above average standards.
47. Much of the success of the pupils with special educational needs is due to the very well organised provision through withdrawal groups. Assessment is used very well indeed to ascertain what level of help pupils need and what progress they have made. Provision is then tailor-made to their needs. The teaching assistants have considerable expertise and over the years have built up a very successful support system for these pupils.
48. Pupils of all abilities in Years 1 and 2 have books appropriate to their levels of attainment and enjoy reading to adults. Guided reading takes place in literacy lessons and good support is given in these sessions. In Years 3 and 4 group, guided reading also takes place in literacy lessons and, for example in the lesson on poetry, pupils compared different poems about death as written in the context of different cultures. Pupils were very observant and could recognise that one poem was from Jamaica, as they already knew a Jamaican poet and recognised the style, and that another was from Africa, as they had heard African drummers last year and the poem mentioned the drums and the market place. Literacy lessons contribute very well to pupils' social and cultural development.
49. The subjects is very well led and managed resulting in significant developments since the last inspection. For example, the school has a very pleasant, well-stocked library which is managed by a volunteer for four days a week from 8 am to 1 pm. Pupils change books before and after school, as well as at lunch time, and the librarian is happy to look for books that pupils have asked for. The library is computerised and is a valuable resource, providing well for pupils of all abilities and ages. Staff are also effective in looking at how pupils' progress and the standards they reach and us this information to develop the curriculum and individual lessons.
Language and literacy across the curriculum
50. Language and literacy are generally used well across the curriculum. They are used particularly well in religious education and in pupils' own research work. Good opportunities are given for pupils to research and work collaboratively on different projects of their own choice. Books on these different topics are displayed around the school for pupils to read. Literacy is less well developed in geography and history and this is an area for improvement.
MATHEMATICS
Provision in mathematics is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Lessons are planned and structured well because teachers' subject knowledge is very good; consequently pupils achieve well and make good progress.
* The good relationships in classrooms ensure that children are always well motivated.
* Frequent good quality opportunities are provided for children to develop their mathematical knowledge, understanding and skills.
* Leadership and management of the subject are good, particularly in the use of assessment data to focus on areas for development.
* Teaching assistants are well used in lessons to support pupils.
Commentary
51. Standards in mathematics are above average in Year 2 and well above average in Year 6. They are improving because teaching and learning are good. The subject has continued to be developed since the previous inspection and consequently, standards continue to rise. Pupils' achievement is good and they reach the targets set by the school. These challenging but realistic targets are based securely on the very good assessment information gathered by teachers. There are plenty of opportunities for pupils to develop skills in all areas of mathematics.
52. Teachers have very good subject knowledge and plan lessons well ensuring they are firmly based on what pupils have already learned. Many opportunities are provided in lessons for pupils to learn and develop their use of mathematical language. Pupils are shown, and encouraged to use, a wide range of problem solving strategies and are provided with appropriate resources that support learning. The emphasis placed on good presentation of work ensures that pupils lay out calculations logically and neatly, and so make few errors. Teacher mark pupils' work well, ensuring that they know what they need to do to improve their work.
53. Pupils have a very positive attitude and enjoy their lessons. They are encouraged to work with other pupils in order to discuss and evaluate their work, and to work independently. Teachers clearly communicate to pupils what they are intended to learn and achieve in each lesson. This helps pupils to focus clearly on their tasks and as a result, learning is good. Classroom relationships are consistently good. Teachers and teaching assistants support and challenge pupils and value their efforts and responses. Consequently pupils, including those with special educational needs are motivated and keen to learn because they feel well supported.
54. Leadership and management of the subject are good. The subject leader is knowledgeable. She analyses the progress made by pupils very thoroughly and uses this information to identify what needs to be done to continue to improve teaching and standards. She monitors and evaluates the school's work in mathematics through looking at teachers' planning and pupils' work and has had the opportunity to monitor teaching. Teachers make good use of ICT to support the subject, particularly through the use of interactive whiteboards that have been recently acquired in some rooms. Pupils are taught how to perform calculations using spreadsheets and to store and display data through databases.
Mathematics across the curriculum
55. Opportunities for pupils to use their mathematical skills in other subjects are good. The use of ICT skills in mathematics has been greatly developed since the previous inspection and is now good. Pupils' skills in mathematics help them to solve investigations in science effectively. Pupils have good skills in compiling graphs when analysing data. Their measuring skills help them significantly in design and technology projects.
SCIENCE
Provision in science is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Pupils achieve well and in the 2003 National Curriculum tests reached standards in Year 6 which were very high.
* Teaching is consistently good and this ensures that pupils make good gains in their learning.
* There have been significant improvements since the last inspection.
* The subject is well led and managed.
* Higher-attaining pupils are well challenged.
* Although some use of ICT is effective, it is not systematically planned across the school.
Commentary
56. Inspection findings and recent national test results for pupils in Year 6 indicate that pupils make very good progress in science and achieve well. By the time they leave school, they reach very high standards. These results show significant improvement since the last inspection. The subject has been well managed with a strong focus on improving standards and providing a broad and interesting curriculum with an emphasis on investigative science. The latter has been a key feature in raising attainment, particularly that of more able pupils, and in stimulating pupils' interest.
57. Most pupils in the school respond well to the way science is taught and enjoy the practical nature of the tasks. Staff have focused well on developing the pupils' skills of scientific enquiry so that by the time pupils leave school they can select a suitable way of finding things out when trying to answer a scientific question. Pupils also base their predictions on previously gained scientific knowledge and understanding and identify key factors to be considered when a fair test is part of the investigation. Discussion with pupils in Year 6 indicated that their knowledge and understanding in all the areas of science were very good. They spoke well about microorganisms in one lesson and described the process of composting well. Correct scientific terminology was used and pupils were confident in what they were saying. Expectations are high and pupils rise well to the challenges set. A particular strength of the teaching is the way in which teachers develop questions which encourage the pupils to think scientifically and explain their ideas.
58. In one good Year 3/4 lesson, the teacher used her ICT skills well and maintained the pupils' interests by the use of the interactive whiteboard. Pupils learnt well as they saw the movement of a skeleton on screen and by the end of the lesson could identify several types of joints found in the body. Although some teachers encourage activities where pupils develop their own ICT skills, these are not developed systematically at a whole-school level so it is difficult to see how pupils progress over time.
59. The subject has been led and managed well over time and this has resulted in improved standards. The current co-ordinator has an enthusiastic approach and has ensured that the curriculum fully meets national expectations and the pupils' needs. The use of science workshops is effective as pupils receive good opportunities to develop their investigative skills and are challenged by a teacher with good knowledge and expertise. The co-ordinator has identified strengths and those areas which should be improved, for example, a whole-school approach to recording what pupils have achieved. This has resulted in improvements in the curriculum and teaching. Pupils are well challenged and additional activities such as the focus on Science Week has helped to raise the profile of the subject and widened the pupils' learning experiences. Consequently, pupils are well prepared for their scientific work in secondary school.
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Provision in information and communication technology is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Provision has improved significantly during the past year and all pupils have lessons in the wellequipped computer suite.
* Resources are good and the introduction of whiteboards is having a positive impact on teaching across the curriculum.
* Teachers cater well for most pupils, but some pupils in Year 3 need more support.
* Standards in Year 2 are above average but standards in Year 6 are not yet as high as they are in other subjects.
* Leadership is good, but the co-ordinator has not had enough time to monitor teaching.
Commentary
60. Improvement in ICT since the last inspection has been good, and much of this improvement has taken effect relatively recently. All pupils are taught in the new computer suite and every pupil has access to an individual machine during these lessons. As a result, during lessons, all pupils can be fully involved throughout without having to wait for turns. Pupils also have access to computers in their classrooms, and some rooms have been fitted with computerlinked whiteboards. Teachers have been trained to use the new equipment effectively, and during the inspection the use of the new boards contributed significantly to the quality of lessons. Presentations are clear and lively, engaging pupils' attention fully.
61. Standards in Year 2 are above average because teaching is good. Pupils' achievement is good. In the lesson observed, work was linked very well across the curriculum. Pupils worked well to draw their own version of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. The teacher used the whiteboard very successfully to show video clips as a stimulus. Pupils were fully absorbed in their work, working in near silence, using the drawing tools confidently to create competent pictures. Work completed by the parallel group was equally successful. Displays of pupils' word processing show that they have good skills in combining text and pictures.
62. Pupils in Year 6 can describe in detail the work they have covered this year, and show a secure understanding of the aspects they have covered. They know how to develop a multimedia presentation incorporating text, pictures, movement and sound. In discussion, they show an understanding of entering data and of the need to check their work for accuracy. During a lesson, pupils worked well to develop simple sequences of commands to control a lighthouse, with most pupils achieving success. Standards overall are in line with expectations and are not yet as high as those achieved in other subjects. Pupils have only had access to the improved resources for a relatively short time, and their achievement is satisfactory. The school has already identified ICT as an area for continuing development. Classes in Years 3 and 4 are very large, and a few less able pupils in Year 3 tend to achieve relatively little during some lessons because they do not get enough support.
63. Leadership of the subject is good. The co-ordinator has worked hard to ensure the successful installation of the computer suite, and has organised relevant staff training. Routine maintenance tasks and trouble shooting the new equipment have taken up much of her management time. The school has now appointed a part-time technician, and the co-ordinator has properly identified the need to monitor teaching and learning in the subject.
Information and communication technology across the curriculum
64. ICT is now being used across the curriculum in most subjects, although there has not been time for the full potential to be realised. Links with art and literacy are good, and pupils use the Internet for research in history and geography. Aspects of mathematics are reinforced through drawing programs, data-handling and work with spreadsheets. There was less evidence during the inspection of ICT being used in science, although work with sensors is planned for Years 5 and 6 later in the term.
HUMANITIES
65. Inspectors observed one geography, two history and two religious education lessons. They also looked at pupils' work and teachers' planning. It was not possible to make overall judgements on provision in history or geography.
66. The one geography lesson observed was taught by the subject leader and the quality of teaching and learning was very good. Her very good subject knowledge and expertise were used well to provide activities which stimulated the pupils' interests and maintained their concentration. Pupils achieved well because the work built systematically on previous learning and expectations were high. The pupils' work that was completed in the workshops was usually of a good quality and displayed a good range of activities and good coverage of the geography curriculum, including activities to further pupils' knowledge, skills and understanding. Mapping skills were well developed and some interesting work was achieved in the Year 5/6 work on contrasting localities. Pupils are learning well about the environment, for example, through completing a waste survey with a focus on improving the school environment. Sometimes, particularly with the younger pupils, insufficient opportunities are provided to extend their independent writing skills in geography and the use of worksheets does, at times, restrict their achievement.
67. In history , an analysis of pupils' work and discussions with them indicated that standards are in line with what is expected nationally. Most pupils make satisfactory progress; however, work is not always sufficiently challenging for more capable pupils. There is an over-reliance on the use of worksheets to support learning. Pupils do not have enough opportunities to present their work in different formats, such as through graphs, charts and leaflets/pamphlets. Teachers use artefacts well so pupils develop secure skills of using evidence to draw conclusions about the past and how life has changed for people over time. In Years 5 and 6 pupils answer questions about the 1960s by examining articles, looking at pictures and researching information on the Internet. Pupils examine a pair of John Lennon's spectacles and are delighted to know they were actually worn by John Lennon. Teachers' use of ICT to support learning is developing well. Pupils in Years 3 and 4 use information retrieved from the Internet to find out about raids carried out by the Vikings. They enjoy the activity and are enthusiastic to share their findings with their peers. As a result, most pupils confidently answer questions about the Vikings and they demonstrate an understanding and factual knowledge of some of the main Viking raids.
Religious education
Provision in religious education is very good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Standards in religious education are high across the school.
* A wide range of topics and religions is studied.
* Pupils gain a good basic knowledge of Christianity.
Commentary
68. Standards in Years 1 and 2 are high. No lessons were observed in this age group but pupils' books were looked at and inspectors talked with pupils. The amount of work recorded in their books is far greater than is usually seen and the pupils demonstrated considerable knowledge and understanding of this work. They could remember each lesson and reported accurately what had been taught. A wide range of topics is covered and four world religions are studied. Pupils know about parables, miracles and other stories from the Bible. They visit a local church and can name different pieces of church furniture. As a result of studying Islam they know that Eid follows a time of fasting and as a result of studying Hinduism know stories such as that of Rama and Sita. They know about the Five Ks of the Sikh religion. Pupils learn about what it is to 'belong'. They know that a family is a 'group of people who belong to each other and care about each other'. They know that they belong to their family, the school and to other
groups. They learn about the importance of rules and the right ways and wrong way to do things. Pupils learn about religion and from religion, drawing, for example, from the story of Joseph an understanding of how people feel different emotions at different times. They record their work in a variety of ways. The written work of the more able pupils is of a well above average standard. Many pupils, especially the boys, enjoy writing at lengths on a variety of subjects. Pupils' work is marked constructively and helps pupils know how they can improve their work.
69. Standards by Year 6 are well above average. The range of work covered is again wide. In Years 3 and 4, more able pupils write and record what they have learned independently and lower-attaining pupils are supported well by worksheets. In Year 4, the teacher adds comments to pupils' work which develops their understanding further. As result, the writing of these pupils often shows a good understanding of what they have been taught. In the lesson observed in Years 3 and 4, pupils listened very attentively to, and could answer questions on, a video teaching them about the Hindu creation story, told in words and dance. Judaism is studied in some depth in Year 5 and further work on Hinduism and the Sikh religion is completed in Year 6. In the lesson observed in Years 5 and 6, teaching was good and pupils learned well about Hindu worship in the home and the use and meaning of the Puja tray. Pupils also think about who they admire and learn about people such as Mother Theresa and Florence Nightingale. All pupils have a wide knowledge of Biblical stories and Christian customs, demonstrate a very good degree of respect for different religions, are interested in the subject and achieve very well. Religious education makes a strong contribution to pupils' personal development including their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. The coordinator is relatively new to the post and is leading the subject satisfactorily.
CREATIVE, AESTHETIC, PRACTICAL AND PHYSICAL SUBJECTS
70. Three lessons were seen in art and design and physical education and two lessons each in design and technology and music. Further evidence was gained by looking at pupils' work and teachers' planning. It was not possible to make overall judgements on provision and standards in music.
71. The school employs a music specialist for two days a week, with the specific aim of raising the profile of the subject. This is proving a very successful investment. Instrumental specialists also teach some lessons offering pupils a rich experience. Year 3 pupils have the very good opportunity of beginning to learn to play stringed instruments. All pupils work with a violin or a cello, and almost all hold the instruments and bows confidently after only a few lessons. These lessons include other important musical skills, such as listening, singing and an introduction to formal notation. During the one such lesson observed, learning was slowed by the silly behaviour of a group of boys. Pupils sing well in unison during singing practices. The teacher has high expectations and improves the standards of singing by demonstration and direct teaching. In a Year 5 and 6 lesson, the teacher's enthusiasm and high expectations promoted good learning. Her strong focus on clear diction, for example, resulted in an improvement in singing. Music makes a good contribution to pupils' spiritual, social and cultural development. There is a good range of enrichment activities including instrumental tuition and choir activities.
Art and design
Provision in art and design is excellent.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* The subject is excellently led.
* Standards are well above average and sometimes high.
* Most classes are taught by the specialist.
* Provision for gifted and talented pupils is very good.
Commentary
72. The subject is excellently led by an Advanced Skills Teacher who teaches all the Year 3 to 6 classes in lessons known as workshops. This has raised the status of art and design in the school. During the inspection, in her role as an Advanced Skills Teacher, she also taught Year 2 with the class teacher present. A large portfolio of work has been collected which shows that pupils are taught a very wide range of techniques and reach well above average standards. Occasionally standards are outstanding, such as in two pictures; those of a brown boot coloured in pastels, and of a green bottle, where glass was conveyed exceptionally well. The portfolio of work is used to inspire both pupils and teachers.
73. In the Year 2 lesson observed, a considerable amount of time was given to discussing a famous painting before the pupils began their own painting. As a result, pupils gained an enormous amount of information and knowledge about how to appreciate art and interpret a picture, as well as then practising skills themselves. The picture they began, a portrait of themselves as an adult, was to be continued in a future lesson or two. Pupils' enthusiasm was great and their achievement high. The portraits were very personal and reflected the pupils' own interests and ambitions extremely well. For example, portraits of a bird watcher, policeman and teacher in a mortar board and gown were very recognisable. Although only the backgrounds were painted in this lesson, standards were already above average.
74. Teaching of the Year 5 and 6 class was again excellent, resulting in standards being well above average. These standards were again achieved through a long introduction where pupils learned how to draw a moving figure and apply their knowledge of the work of other artists to their own pictures. It is the specialist teaching in these introductions that results in the well above average standards. The task was a challenging one and whilst teaching was excellent, pupils' own skills and level of development enabled them to learn and achieve very well. Many of the drawings conveyed movement very well indeed.
75. Display shows that three-dimensional work is well developed with imaginative models made from broken toys into fantastic animals. A local sculptor has also worked with pupils who made clay figures. The school has its own kiln. Pupils learn to sew, such as in some crossstitch work, to print and to use a sketch book for sketching and practising techniques. Year 3 pupils have designed an adventure playground and Year 4 created a number of texture pictures. Wall hangings and displays in the hall show imaginative three-dimensional collages and colourful felting pictures. Information and communication technology is used well in the subject with pupils using the 'Paint' program to make, for example, pictures in the style of Van Gogh. The subject is very well resourced.
76. Very good provision is made for pupils who are gifted or talented in the subject, both through class lessons and in clubs. A new club has recently been started with Year 6 pupils teaching younger pupils at lunch time, thereby developing their sense of responsibility and willingness to take the initiative. The school also runs a successful annual arts week. In past years, artists have worked alongside the pupils. This year it will focus on arts around Asia as part of the topic 'Art on the Move'. Work in previous years has been displayed at the Council Offices.
Design and technology
Provision in design and technology is very good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* Pupils reach above average, and sometimes well above average, standards by Year 6.
* The subject is very well led by a specialist.
* Pupils have a good understanding of the process from a young age.
Commentary
77. Throughout the school the subject is taught consistently. Evidence shows that the subject is very well led and pupils are attaining average standards in Year 1 and 2 and above average standards in Years 3 to 6. For example, from Year 1, pupils understand the whole process of planning, designing, making and evaluating their products. Pupils' work in Year 2 shows that they plan very well with the help of planning frames. Models of moving vehicles on display show that they understand the mechanism needed to make their models move. Having completed the model, both the teacher and pupil evaluate the work separately. This both encourages the pupils and shows them how they improve the model further. There is a clear programme of work which develops skills across the whole school.
78. In Year 5, pupils begin to use electrical power and links are made between science and design and technology. In Year 6, they design shelters, slippers and controllable vehicles and are carrying out homework tasks. They label their plans well and provide measurements to follow. They compare and contrast different models and write and draw in some detail, both at the planning and evaluating stages. Their own evaluations of their completed products are very good. By Year 6, pupils have worked with a variety of materials. Their work is assessed well and their ability to solve problems is noted. In the lesson observed in Year 5 and 6, teaching by the specialist co-ordinator was very good and, as a result, pupils learned and achieved very well. It was the first lesson of a new project and pupils planned with a partner and as part of a team. Planning as part of a team was also observed briefly in Years 3 and 4. Having given some thought to the subject for homework in Years 5 and 6, pupils were highly motivated, listened well and were keen to put forward their ideas. The teacher demonstrated pupils' ideas very well, for example a chassis and different types of switches, and a wide range of unusual vehicles to make were suggested, ranging from a Moon Buggy to a petrol tanker and supermarket trolley. Boys, in particular, were full of ideas and came up with some advanced technical solutions.
79. In all classes pupils learn food technology. In Years 3 and 4 they make healthy snacks, learning about safety in the kitchen, cooking tools and food facts. In Years 5 and 6 they learn to make bread and biscuits. Parent volunteers help with this subject. These lessons were not observed during the inspection.
Physical education
Provision in physical education is good.
Main strengths and weaknesses
* The broad range of activities available to pupils ensures that they are encouraged to develop a full range of skills.
* The resources available to support the curriculum are good.
* The use of specialist staff enables pupils to develop their skills well.
* The range of enrichment activities is very good.
Commentary
80. In the lessons observed, standards were above those expected and pupils achieved well. Teaching was good, and lessons were well planned and organised. Pupils' behaviour was very good. Teachers gave good demonstrations and communicated clearly to pupils what they were expected to learn. Pupils understand the importance of warming up and cooling down sessions to protect their bodies. Pupils are very enthusiastic about the subject and appreciate the range of activities on offer. Specialist staff sometimes takes workshops and in these, pupils achieve well. For example, in a Year 3/4 tennis session, the coaches maintained the
pupils' interest and developed their skills well by providing a good range of activities and the pupils using good quality equipment.
81. All pupils have many opportunities to take part in an interesting and wide range of sport activities out of school hours and through this the school participates in many sports competitions, often successfully. The school offers pupils a full range of physical education. The development of the outside environment as a creative play area encourages pupils to be active. The school hall is well equipped to support pupils' learning in gymnastics.
PERSONAL, SOCIAL AND HEALTH EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP
82. This area of the school's work was sampled by looking at two lessons and provision throughout the school's everyday practice, in assemblies, during extra-curricular activities and through speaking with pupils.
83. Provision for personal, social and health education is good overall. All classes cover aspects of development relevant to the age of the pupils. The co-ordinator has identified the need to strengthen this programme, particularly the aspects relating to drugs awareness.
84. Personal and social education is however, implicit in all aspects of school life. Pupils talk confidently to adults and know that their ideas are valued. The school council introduces pupils to the concept of democracy, and is giving them the opportunity to suggest improvements. Pupils readily take responsibility; they are confident and some organise clubs for younger pupils. Work in various curriculum subjects promotes pupils' awareness of community and environmental issues. Year 5 and 6 pupils were introduced to the local decision-making process when they completed work on a road crossing and on proposals for improving leisure facilities.
PART D: SUMMARY OF THE MAIN INSPECTION JUDGEMENTS
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Activity Ideas
These are quick, easy everyday learning activities for children of all ages to do. Many can be done individually but often are more fun to do with a sibling or other family members.
How to Wear Your Mask
Here's a poster to help you remember how to wear your mask:
http://elisegravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Mask.jpg
This is a great poster, but it's missing a step!
When you take off your reusable mask, put it directly into a bag.
(This keeps the germs on your mask in the bag, not spreading to other surfaces.)
You might want to draw this missing step and add it to the poster.
Consequence Course
Set up a course to do something. For example, knock an item into a container, push something over, ring a bell, or anything else you can think of.
Gather materials to make the course:
* paper tubes
* construction paper
* cardboard
* toy car track
* dominos
* blocks
* sticks
Things to travel on your course:
* marbles
* balls
* toy cars
* anything that rolls
And things to put the course together:
* masking tape
* cans or other items to hold things in place
* books or boxes to create different heights
Build your course!
Start at the end and build backwards.
It might take some testing and tweaking to get your course to work.
Inspiration
What you're building is known as a 'Rube Goldberg machine'. Use this term to find video examples online. Or to see some Rube Goldberg cartoons.
Night Lights
All you need for stargazing is a clear night and a spot where you can see wide open sky away from lights. A mat or chair to sit on and a blanket to keep warm might be nice too.
You can stargaze from anywhere, but the more sky you can see the better. Here are some suggestions:
* large open field
* on top of a hill
* by a large body of water
* dark sky park (if there's one near you)
Start by looking for the moon:
* What shape is it?
* Over a month, look every 3-5 nights.
o Take a photo or draw a picture.
o How many days does it take for the moon to go through all its phases?
* Did you know full moons have names?
You'll see more stars and planets when the moon is at its darkest (new moon phase). A star chart, night sky map, or stargazing app can help with where to look and what to see.
Some things to look for:
* North Star
* Big Dipper
* Little Dipper
* Orion's Belt
* Milky Way
* Meteor showers
* Venus and other planets
* Satellites and the International Space Station
* Groups of stars that look like something to you.
What did our ancestors see in the night sky?
The constellation names we commonly use come from ancient Middle Eastern, Greek, and Roman cultures. But every culture had their own names and stories for what they saw. Here are some to explore:
* Why Coyote Howls: A Star Story (audio story about constellations) https://www.lpi.usra.edu/education/skytellers/constellations/preview/
* Relearning the Star Stories of Indigenous Peoples https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/indigenous-peoples-astronomy/
* The Chinese Sky
http://idp.bl.uk/4DCGI/education/astronomy/sky.html
*
African Mythology s/6.4.5_SD.7.AfricanMythology.pdf
https://www.raritanval.edu/sites/default/files/aa_PDF%20Files/6.x%20Community%20Resource
ABC Me
Create an alphabet about yourself.
For each letter of the alphabet, think of something that's meaningful to you:
* things you like
* activities you do
* places you've been
* people you know
* things you've done
For each letter write a word or sentence. Maybe add a drawing.
For a difficult letter like x, q, or z you could choose a word that contains the letter instead of starting with it.
Create your alphabet as a:
* poster
* booklet
* set of cards (recipe cards work well)
* set of slides (using presentation software)
* poem
* song
* video
If you know someone who's also created an alphabet, get in touch. How are your alphabets similar? In what ways are they different? Did you learn anything new about that person?
Take Ten
Match cards that add up to 10 in this game for one player.
Set Up:
* Remove all face cards and jokers from a deck of cards.
* At the top of a table put down one card face up.
* Below it, put down two cards face up. Both cards overlap the top card (about half horizontally and vertically) but do not touch each other. The three cards make a stepped triangle shape.
* Add a row of three cards below with the same overlap.
* Add a row of four cards below with the same overlap.
* Add a row of five cards below with the same overlap.
* Add a row of six cards below with the same overlap.
* You now have 21 cards face up in a stepped triangle shape.
* Place the remaining cards in a deck to the side.
Goal:
Match two cards whose numbers added together make 10 (e.g. 5 + 5, Ace + 9, 6 + 4).
Only open cards can be matched. (An open card is one not overlapped by another card.)
Once matched, cards are removed from the triangle. To win, remove all the cards from the triangle.
To Play:
* Starting with the last row of open cards, find two cards that make 10.
* Remove the match.
* If no match can be found, take a card from the deck. Match it to an open card in the triangle and remove the card.
* If no match can be made, discard the deck card and draw another. You may only go through the deck once during the game.
* Continue matching open cards from the triangle with each other or a deck card.
* The game ends when no cards are left in the triangle (you win!). Or if all the deck cards have been played and no more matches can be made.
Variations:
* Try subtraction. Match cards with a difference of 2 (e.g. 9 - 7, 5 -3 , 3 - Ace, etc.)
* Try adding to a different number, like 15. To do so match two or three cards.
Two (or more) Players:
Players take turns making a match or taking a card from the deck to make a match. The player's turn continues until no match can be made. At game end, the player with the most matches wins.
or
Each player takes a turn playing the entire triangle on their own. The player with the lowest number of cards left in their triangle wins.
Body Building
Two (or more) people share drawing characters or creatures. Each draw a part of the body without knowing what the other parts look like.
Set up:
* Each person gets a blank piece of paper and a pencil.
* Divide the paper into 4 horizontal sections by folding it in half twice in the same direction.
* Unfold. These are the 4 sections for the drawing.
A part of a body will be drawn on each section. Some lines will extend just below the fold, so the next person knows how to connect to the drawing. Starting at the top, the drawing for each section is:
1. Head and neck. Lines for the neck go past the fold.
2. Top of shoulders to belly button with arms stretched out. Lines for the waist go past the fold.
3. Hips to knees. Lines for legs go past the fold.
4. Lower legs and feet.
Draw:
* Each person draws the head and neck at the top of their page. Don't show others what you're drawing.
* Using the fold line, fold that part behind the rest of the paper to hide it.
* Pass the paper to someone else to draw the next part.
* Continue to draw, hide, pass to someone else until the drawing is complete.
Unfold the drawings and discover who/what you've drawn!
Word Scramble
Make a word scramble for someone (the unscrambler):
* Pick a theme.
* Choose 4-6 words that work with the theme. Choose words appropriate for the person your puzzle is for. For example, keep to 3 or 4 letter words for younger unscramblers.
* Write out each word, with letters in a different order.
* Give the puzzle to the unscrambler.
Solve the puzzle:
* Work out what each word is.
* Guess the theme.
Here's one for you to unscramble!
* koa
* fri
*
nepi
* dreca
What's the theme?
Inukshuk
An inukshuk is a landmark made from stacked stones. Inuit people make inukshuks by choosing stones that fit well together. Nothing is added to keep them in place. An inukshuk can be any shape or size.
Try building your own inukshuk:
* Collect a variety of stones.
* Look at each shape to see how they might fit together.
* Start stacking!
* How tall can you make your inukshuk?
If you're interested, learn more about inukshuks at: https://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/do-youknow-what-an-inukshuk-is
Old Song, New Words
It's fun to rewrite the words to a familiar song to say something different. If you write a silly song, it's called a parody—an imitation of something with exaggerations to make people laugh. You could also write sincere words that convey a message. Or tell a story.
Think of what you'd like to write about. Any idea you have is a great place to start. Here are some suggestions if you need them:
* what your stay-at-home life is like
* things you do in the summer
* something you enjoy doing
* something you'd like to change
* a problem
* a story
* a thank you for someone or something
Think of songs you know that might fit with your idea.
Rewrite the lyrics. Try and keep the same rhyme scheme.
Sing your new song to someone!
Measure Up
How tall are you?
(If you're unsure, find out! Measure your height in centimeters.)
Gather a tape measure or metre stick, pencil and paper.
Predict:
* Look around you.
* Choose 3-5 items you think will add up to be the same length as you.
* You can choose to use an item's width, length or height.
Measure:
* Make a quick drawing of each item.
* Measure the item. Label the drawing with its measurement.
* Add all the measurements together.
Compare:
* How close is it to your height?
Extras:
* Choose some new items. Can you get closer to your height the second time?
* Draw a picture of yourself made up of the items.
Pattern Picnic
A game for two or more players.
To start each round of play one player, the Pattern Maker, lists something to bring on a picnic.
The items the Pattern Maker lists are part of a pattern (see below for examples).
Everyone takes a turn listing one thing to take until all players can use the pattern.
How to Play
* Pattern Maker: I'm going on a picnic, and I'm going to take _______ .
* Player: Can I bring ________?
* Pattern Maker: Answers 'yes' if it matches the pattern. Or 'no' if it does not.
* Keep playing until every player can answer using the pattern.
Ideas for Patterns
* Similar types of things:
o same food group, e.g. carrots, peas, beans, kale
o same colour, e.g. apple, stop sign, ketchup, roses
o same shape, e.g. ball, hula hoop, orange, plate
o same location, e.g. toaster, fork, oven mitt (things in a kitchen)
* Patterns in words:
o each item starts with the same letter, e.g. drum, dandelion, duck
o each item has the same number of letters, e.g. cake, bird, book
o each item starts with the same letter as the last letter of the previous item, e.g. apple, eggs, salmon, naan bread, drum
* Patterns in numbers:
o increase, e.g. 2 apples, 4 chop sticks, 6 blankets
o decrease, e.g. 100 apples, 96 chop sticks, 92 blankets
o prime numbers, e.g. 1 egg, 3 dogs, 5 sweaters, 7 friends, 11 olives
Different Day
We've been staying home for over a month now.
Adding a little variety to our daily routine can help keep things interesting.
Think of things you do every day. Often without much thought. Is there a way to do them differently?
Think of something to try. Here are some suggestions:
* Brush your teeth or hair with the hand you don't normally use.
* Sleep with your head at the other end of your bed.
* Take on a role, e.g. be a waiter and serve dinner to your family.
* Try a new type of something: food, music, dance, etc.
* Wake up earlier and go outside. Close your eyes, notice what you hear, smell and sense.
What did you notice about doing something differently?
Will you try something else tomorrow?
Are you square?
Get a tape measure, pencil and paper and find out!
* Lie on the floor with your feet flat against a wall.
* Place an object at the top of your head (you may want someone to help you).
*
Get up and measure the distance between the wall and object.
* Write down this measurement for your height.
* Lie on the floor again with both arms stretched in a straight line (like a 'T').
* Lie so the tips of one hand just touch a wall.
* Place an object at the tips of the other hand.
* Get up and measure.
* Write down the measurement.
How do the two measurements compare?
If they're the same, you form a square!
If this interests you, look up Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
Art Pair
2 people work together to do a drawing.
Do with someone in your home or with a friend through video chat.
Here's how:
* One person, the picture holder, makes a simple drawing or finds a picture.
* The challenge is for the other person, the artist, to draw the same picture without seeing it.
* The picture holder describes the picture for the artist as the artist draws.
* The picture holder doesn't look at the artist's work until it's finished.
* The artist may ask questions about the picture.
When the artist is done, compare the two pictures.
Then switch roles and do another picture.
Variation:
* Choose a theme for the picture such as a character, animal, plant, person, etc.
* The picture holder tells the artist the theme but does not describe the drawing.
* The artist asks questions to gain information.
* The picture holder can only answer with a 'yes' or 'no' to the artist's questions.
Up and Up and Up
How long would it take you to do 10 sit-ups?
* Make a guess, then try it!
* How long did it take?
* Can you do 40 sit-ups in four times that time?
* Try it out.
How many sit-ups could you do without stopping?
(In 2016 10-year-old Kyleigh Bass did 2110 sit-ups in 90 minutes!)
Come Fly with Me
Make some paper airplanes!
Try folding different sizes and types of paper.
Use different fold designs.
(If you need some ideas, search 'paper airplanes' online.)
Test to see which fly best:
* furthest
* straightest
* highest
Choose an area and see if you can land your plane there:
* book, towel or pillow placed on the floor
* piece of paper with circles or boxes drawn on it
* part of the floor marked with painter's tape
Challenge:
Try folding a stunt plane that flies in a loop.
Word Play
A game for 2 or more players.
Players take turns saying a word related to a chosen theme (anything of interest to the group could be used). When a word is repeated or doesn't meet the theme the player drops out. The last player remaining wins.
Possible themes:
* plants (or a type of plant e.g. trees)
* animals (or a type of animal, e.g. birds)
* countries
* song titles
* anything that all players know about
A simple task can be added between each turn to give players time to think of a word:
* clapping hands 6-10 times
* jumping up and down 5 times
* bouncing or tossing a ball
Variation:
Instead of a theme, use words with a certain number of letters.
After a player drops out, increase the number of letters in the word.
For example: start with 3 letter words, then 4 letter words, then 5 letter words, etc.
The Big Splash
This is an outside activity.
Get a bucket and fill it half-way with water.
Place the bucket away from anything that can't get wet.
Choose 3 (or more) objects you think will make the biggest splash when thrown into the bucket.
What's important for splash making:
* Size?
* Shape?
* Weight?
* What it's made out of?
Predict which will make the biggest splash and try it out!
* Drop each object into the bucket in the same way.
* Note the splash.
*
Re-fill your bucket to the same level before testing the next object.
What object made the biggest splash?
Was your prediction correct?
What is it about that object that made it the winner?
Quiz Master
Make a quiz game for your family or friends.
Create question cards:
* Get a piece of paper and fold it in half once vertically and 2 times horizontally.
* Unfold and cut on the fold lines to make cards (or use recipe cards).
* Write your questions on one side and the answer on the other side.
* Make at least 8 cards, more are better.
* You may want to use themes for your questions: music, science, stories, sports, history, entertainment, geography, or whatever interests you.
Play:
Since you know all the answers, you'll be Quiz Master!
* Invite 2 teams to play (in person or online). A team can be one person or a group of people.
* You choose how to deliver the questions:
o teams take turns answering questions or
o teams compete to answer the question by making a noise
* If a team answers incorrectly, the other team can try to answer.
* Keep score, one point for each correct answer.
* After all the questions have been asked, announce the winner!
Earth Day! (April 22)
Today we celebrate our planet and think about why it's important to care for it. What can we do to make things better for the earth and the people, animals and plants that live here?
Make a list of 3 (or more!) things you can do to help.
Share your ideas in one of these ways:
* create a poster
* have a conversation with someone
* write a song, poem or speech
Live your ideas:
* make a plan for recording the times you work on something on your list
* after a week or two revisit your plan
o How many times did you do something on your list?
o How did it go?
o Any adjustments to make to the plan?
o Are there more ideas to add to the list?
More ways to recognize Earth Day:
* do an outdoor activity (see the Resources section of this website for ideas)
* read about Greta Thunberg and her accomplishments
On a Roll
A game for 2 or more players using dice, pencil and paper.
Goal: Be the first to get exactly 100 (don't go over) and then back to exactly 0.
How: Use numbers from dice rolls and basic math operations: add, subtract, multiply and divide.
To start:
* Each player rolls the dice, to get their first total. The player with the largest number goes first.
To play:
* Player rolls the dice. (e.g. 4)
* The player uses their total (e.g. 6) and the new number in a math operation. (e.g. 6 x 4 )
* The player calculates their new total. (e.g. 24)
* Next player's turn.
Play is repeated until a player reaches exactly 100 (don't go over) and then back to exactly 0. A turn is lost if a player can't use their numbers (would go over 100 or under 0).
Variations:
* Play on your own trying to reduce the number of turns it takes you to complete the task.
* Use 2 dice so you have 3 numbers to play with in your equations.
* Use 3 (or more!) dice so you have more numbers to use in your equations.
* For early math players, limit to addition and subtraction and play to 50 and back.
Earth Art
Create a design outside using only natural materials.
Find a clear area of ground to work on that won't disrupt any plants or animals.
Make your image:
* move the earth with your hands making shapes and patterns
* maybe arrange some found items such as pebbles, twigs and leaves (use what you find already on the ground, avoid picking from growing plants)
When finished, you might consider:
*
taking a photo
* visiting a few days later, has it changed?
* visiting after a rainy day, how is it different?
Dictionary Game
A game to play (in person or online) with 3 or more players.
Gather some pencils, paper and a dictionary (book or online).
Each player takes a turn being Word Keeper:
1. The Word Keeper finds a word in the dictionary and reads it out to all players.
2. Each player writes down a definition for the word and passes it to the Word Keeper.
3. The Word Keeper writes down the correct definition.
4. The Word Keeper reads out all the definitions.
5. Each player guesses which they think is the correct definition (you can't choose your own).
6. Players receive a point if they pick the correct definition or if another player chooses their definition.
7. Another player becomes the Word Keeper and the steps are repeated.
A complete round is finished when every player has had a turn being Word Keeper. The number of rounds to play is up to you!
Writer's Block
Think about what you'd like to write: a descriptive sentence, message to someone, poem? Instead of starting with a blank page, start with a page full of text.
Here's how:
* find a page from a magazine or newspaper with more words than pictures
* get a dark coloured marker
* start at the top of the page and read down until you find your first word
* draw a box around it with the marker
* read on to find your second word
* draw a box around it
* keep reading through the article until you've found and boxed all the words you need
* block out the rest of the text with the marker
* You're done!
What do you think about this approach to writing?
Plant a Seed
Now is the perfect time to think about growing vegetables. Do a bit of research on what to plant, where to grow it and how to care for it.
Where?
If you don't have a garden, many vegetables can be grown in a planter in a sunny location. A planter can be made from many things, e.g. a large yogurt container or milk jug. Just punch a few holes in the bottom to let water drain out.
What?
These are easy to grow. Check how deep their roots go if you're using a planter:
* lettuce
* spinach
* swiss chard
* radishes
* green onions
* herbs
How?
All vegetables need good soil, regular watering and sun. Check the seed package for more information.
My Current Life
Create a poster, infographic, or comic of your daily life at home. Use drawings and words to show your routines.
You could include ways you:
* stay connected with friends and family
* do schoolwork and chores
* keep healthy
* help out
* have fun
When you're finished, discuss your drawing with someone.
Clue to Clue
Make a clue hunt for someone in your home.
Create a series of clues. Each clue gives hints about where the next clue is hidden.
The final clue leads to a small prize (a congratulations message, drawing, or treat).
Here's what to do:
* Decide where to hide each clue and what order to put them in.
* Write each clue. You may want to include drawings.
* Here are different ways to write a clue:
o Direct: "It's in a cold spot."
o Voice of the clue: "Come find me, it's cold in here!"
o Rhyming: "It's dark inside and airtight.
Open the door to give me light!"
* Hide the clues and prize.
* Start the hunt! (Give someone the first clue.)
PS Did you guess the example clues were for a fridge?
Obstacle Course
Make an obstacle course indoors or outdoors.
Things you might include:
* objects to move around
*
surfaces to step on to avoid the ground
* different ways of moving through different parts of the course
o hands and knees
o hopping
o somersaulting
o balancing
* a map to show how to go through the course
Once the course is built, you might:
* share it with a family member
* go through it in different ways, maybe backwards
* act as a character (superhero, animal, ?) when going through it
How many folds?
How many times can you fold a piece of paper in half?
* Make a guess.
* Fold a piece of paper in half as many times as you can.
* How close was your guess?
* Could you make more folds if the paper was thinner? Larger?
* Try it and see.
Signs of Spring
Take a pencil and some paper and go outside:
* Look around. What do you see that tells you it's spring?
* Close your eyes and listen. Can you hear anything, you don't hear in winter?
* Do you smell anything new?
List 5 (or more!) signs of spring that you've found.
Share your list with someone. Ask them how they know it's spring.
How many jumping jacks can you do?
Set a timer for one minute and start jumping!
* How many did you do?
(Kapil Kumar from India holds the world record of 103!)
* Try again, can you improve your score?
* If you practice every day, will you get faster?
Thank You Art
Gather some materials:
* different coloured paper
* old magazines, newspapers or flyers
* anything else you think might work
* glue and scissors
* markers, crayons and maybe some paint
Think of someone who's done something nice for you or others.
Make a drawing, collage or painting to show how you feel about what they did.
Add some words if you'd like to.
If you can't give the finished art to them in person, maybe take a photo to send to them.
The Alphabet Game
Everyone takes a turn completing this phrase, working through the alphabet:
My name is ____, my friend is ____, and we make/sell/build/grow ____.
For ____, use words that start with the same letter, for example:
Player 1: My name is Alastair, my friend is Aamir, and we grow apples.
Player 2: My name is Beth, my friend is Brandon, and we make bannock.
Player 3: My name is Carly, my friend is Cass, and we sell cinnamon buns.
What does 2 metres look like?
Get a tape measure or ruler and measure out 2 metres on the floor.
* Mark the distance with tape or placed objects.
Things you might want to try. (Guess first, then do it!)
* How many steps does it take to go 2 metres?
* How many hops?
* If someone stands at either end can you reach each other?
How much closer do you have to move to touch?
* Is 2 metres a good amount of space for physical distancing*?
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The Domestic Sunday Horarium
Sunday
The most important day of the Liturgical Year is Sunday. Known as the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, and as a "little Easter", Sunday is the primordial feast day celebrating the Paschal Mystery. The celebration of Sunday gives us our identity as Christians.
For most of us, Sunday centres on going to church for Mass and engaging in other activities with community members and family. The rhythm we follow from week to week gives us a sense of belonging, comfort, and purpose.
'Self-isolation' and 'social-distancing' may be new terms for most of us in 2020 but some Christians have been setting themselves apart for centuries. Concerning prayer, Jesus says to all of us: when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen (Matt. 6:6). Monastic life takes this prescription full-time and looking to it for inspiration can help us to express and even strengthen our identity as Christians through our domestic celebration of Sunday.
Monastic Horarium
One of the hallmarks of monastic life is the structure. The monastic timetable, called a horarium, not only has fixed times for communal prayer but also for waking, sleeping, eating, study, work, personal prayer, rest, and recreation. It is not possible to say you became so caught up in your study that you forgot to eat or to recreate at the expense of your work. When the bell rings it is time to move to the next item on the horarium.
This global pandemic has disrupted our usual Sunday observances from gathering for the celebration of the Eucharist and visiting loved ones, to sharing meals and playing games together. Creating a domestic horarium can help you and your family mark the Lord's Day and stay grounded in your Christian identity in this time of flux.
Your Domestic Horarium
Every household is different so the division of the hours should be up to you but these are some elements from the Tradition to integrate:
* Keep consistent times for waking and sleeping
* Change into daytime clothes rather than spending the whole day in pyjamas
* Observe set meal times
* Schedule prayer time, especially at the traditional times of morning and evening. The Liturgy of the Hours is a public liturgical prayer even for those who are reciting it alone. Download a family-friendly form of Morning and Evening Prayer for the Sundays in Lent.
* If you live with others, plan time to be alone and to observe silence
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APPLICATION BULLETIN UGANDA
Background: Uganda, an East African country, sits on the equator. It is landlocked by Kenya, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. It is a country that has been ravaged by civil unrest. Life expectancy is 44 years, the GDP per capita is USD1200 and it is ranked as 157 th on the Human Development Index.
For nineteen years, war has plagued northern Uganda. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has brutalized the Acholi, the largest ethnic group in the north. It is estimated that around 1.6 million people, have been internally displaced, and up to 500,000 have died. There is a push to resettle the communities who have been affected by the LRA, however much of the infrastructure has been destroyed and essential services such as sanitation and water are sadly
lacking. Lack of access to safe water is an impediment to the progress of public health, education and poverty reduction in Uganda.
The Need: Partnerships and networks are increasingly recognised as effective means of achieving development goals, such as safe water and sanitation. The projects in this bulletin illustrate how the collaborative efforts of small organisations and individuals make a real and immediate difference to the lives of those living without access to safe water and sanitation. Bill McKay and Hunter Beattie from Western Australia work in partnership with 'Drop in the
Bucket' to provide equitable and sustainable water and sanitation systems to small bush schools and orphanages in northern Uganda. The SkyJuice Foundation shares the same goal of affordable safe water, and donated two SkyHydrant water purification units for projects in Iganga and Kampala.
The schools/orphanages are generally church run as there is little likelihood that the government will provide this essential service to remote communities. In order to ensure the ongoing care and maintenance of the water supply, a water committee made up from school and village is formed. The best results are when there is more than 50% female representation, as culturally the women are responsible for water. The water committee
organises everything associated with the payment for water to ensure that there is money available when maintenance is required. Although it sounds simple, it is one of the most important aspects of a successful project.
Most of the school projects involve installing an under ground (UG) tank at the hand pump and siphoning off about 20% of the hand pumped water into the UG tank. This is then pumped to the school reservoir tank using one of the roundabout pumps. The tanks are made from local bricks which the villagers supply as their contribution to the scheme. They are also responsible for any manual labour such as digging trenches. As a result, communities enhance their ownership of the water and sanitation activities through active participation in the project.
Villagers supply labour and building materials for the water and sanitation projects
One of the SkyHydrant water purification units has been installed at the Iganga Babies home near Iganga. Sister Elizabeth Achieng runs the orphanage for 35 babies who have generally either been abandoned or the parents have died. The other unit is installed in a church where a micro finance scheme aimed at breaking the poverty cycle is being established. The church is located in a poor area in the outskirts of Kampala. The community had little choice but to drink scheme water which is not potable, and has to be boiled. It is now gravity fed through the SkyHydrant into 200 ml bags which are sealed using an impact sealer. The water will be chilled then distributed to schools and other outlets by bicycle. It is anticipated that eventually the micro finance scheme participants will be able to sell as much as several thousand litres of water per day at an affordable price for the local population who cannot afford bottled water. It is anticipated that there will be further opportunities for setting up micro finance schemes to provide safe water after the success of the venture in Kampala has been established.
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CONTEMPORARY ART & DESIGN
AT THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART
Teaching Materials prepared by Ken Kelsey, Gail Davitt, Mary Ann Allday, Barbara Barrett, and Troy Smythe.
These materials have been made possible by the Southwestern Bell Foundation.
© 1995 Dallas Museum of Art. All rights reserved. Use with permission.
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DEAR TEACHER/READER:
CONTEMPORARY ART & DESIGN
is a resource guide for viewing art at the elementary and secondary student level. An introductory text section presents a brief overview of the works of art. Nineteen artworks are provided as a sample of the works on display. The artworks are accompanied by object sheets which focus on questions that can be used to direct discussion of the works reproduced. A list of activities suggests projects for the classroom. Sheets with quotations and a time-line provide context information. The glossary and bibliography can be used to complement your classroom work both before and following the tour. A pair of evaluation sheets provides places for your responses.
We greatly appreciate your comments.
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The printing in these materials has been manipulated in several ways.
* The titles of individual objects and foreign words are put in italics. For example, the title of the first artwork sheet is Untitled by Arshile Gorky.
* Possible student/reader responses to the questions asked in the text have been placed in parentheses.
* The first mention of a glossary word is also put in italics. For example, the word Surrealists is italicized in the first object sheet because there is a corresponding entry in the glossary.
* When special research tools are needed, their names are printed in all-caps and bolded. For example, the reader may be advised to consult the GLOSSARY, a DICTIONARY, or an ENCYCLOPEDIA, if necessary.
* The boldness and scale of certain words is increased for emphasis. For example, in the first object sheet on Gorky's Untitled, this statement is made, "Focus on the colors." The sentence has been bolded and the scale of the word "colors" has been enlarged.
These changes were made to call visual attention to certain parts of the text. It is hoped the result will be helpful and interesting.
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Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), Grades 6, 7, 8
Language Arts
6-8.1 Listening/ speaking/ purposes
6-8.2 Listening/ speaking/ critical listening
6-8.3 Listening/ speaking/ appreciation
6-8.4 Listening/ speaking/ culture
6-8.8 Reading/ variety of texts
6- 8.9 Reading/ vocabulary development
6-8.14 Reading/ culture
6-8.15 Writing/ purposes
6-8.20 Writing/ inquiry/ research
6-8.22 Viewing/ representing/ interpretation
6-8.23 Viewing/ representing/ analysis
6-8.24 Viewing/ representing/ production
Social Studies, Grades 6, 7, 8
6.1 History
6.2 History
6.3 Geography
6.18 Culture
6.19 Culture
7-6.21 Social studies skills
7-6.22 Social studies skills
7-6.23 Social studies skills
8.27 Culture
8.30 Social studies skills
8.31 Social studies skills
8.32 Social studies skills
Fine Arts, Grades 6, 7, 8
6- 8.1 Perception
6-8.2 Creative expression/ performance
6-8.3 Historical/ cultural heritage
6-8.4 Response/ evaluation
Math (Activities)
6-8.8; 7.9 Measurement
7.8; 8.7 Geometry and spatial reasoning (C) use geometric concepts and properties to solve problems in fields such as art and architecture
6.11; 7.13; 8.14 Underlying processes and mathematical tools
Science (Activities) 6-8.13 Science concepts
ENJOY YOUR VISIT TO
CONTEMPORARY ART & DESIGN AT THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART!!
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In a continuing effort to support Texas teachers, the following list of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) has been compiled from the Texas Education Agency standards. Teachers who use these resource materials are working toward satisfying these state-mandated goals. We hope this list will help in the creation of classroom curricula and lesson plans.
Another important resource for connecting the
TEKS to art education in Texas is the Center for
Educator Development in the Fine Arts
(CEDFA), which can be accessed on the World
Wide Web at http://finearts.esc20.net/resource_center.htm.
CONTEMPORARY ART & DESIGN
CONTEMPORARY ART AND DESIGN is about the art of our own time. Contemporary art surrounds us in paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints, and drawings. Contemporary design shapes the look of our furniture, silver, ceramics, and textiles. Post-1945 art was made specifically for contemporary culture and people. Yet, many today feel uncomfortable with it. They may ask, "but what is it about?" or "What does it mean?" Often it is difficult to find recognizable subject matter, and when there is something that looks familiar, the subject matter seems inappropriate to "art." People wonder if the artist is teasing them. It may appear as if the artist is not skilled in the way that artists of the Renaissance were, and we might wonder if he or she is really serious. However, like all art, contemporary art and design also reflect the time in which they were made. Paintings and sculpture which look very strange and chairs we wouldn't buy for our homes embody the ideas, values, politics, and history of the last half of the 20th century. This is our art; it's all about us.
Throughout history, artists have been drawn to thriving cities that are alive with ideas, cities that are the centers of political and economic power. During the 16th and 17th centuries, artists gathered in Rome. In the 19th century, they went to Paris. By the middle of the 20th century, New York had become the political and economic center of the world, and, for the first time, a U.S. city began to emerge as a cultural capital as well. During World War II, many European artists took refuge in New York; some stayed and became the nucleus for a new international art community. When U.S. artists moved to New York, they were able to learn from the work and ideas of these European artists.
Many of the U.S. artists who moved to New York worked during the 1930s on the Federal Art Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs for artists during the depression. The government paid artists to produce paintings and murals for government buildings, schools, and libraries. Because they were steadily employed as artists (receiving an average of $95 a month), they could concentrate on learning and developing their talents. Through the "Project," artists also had the opportunity to socialize, to talk about their work, and, thereby, to begin to build a sense of themselves as a community of professionals. During the 1940s, they gathered with their friends, both European and American, at the newly opened Art of This Century gallery, where they saw the work of the most influential European artists and where some of them, eventually, had their own work exhibited also.
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ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
This mix of talent, experimentation, encouragement, and excitement regarding new possibilities of art resulted in the development of Abstract Expressionism, the first avant-garde art movement to originate in the United States. The artists generally included in this movement are Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Mark Tobey, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, and Willem de Kooning. Each artist in his or her own way explored the use of color, line, and abstract shapes in order to find new, more direct ways to express the energy and confidence as well as the anxiety of the post-war world. Many of these artists believed that the subconscious could be a source of abstract images and marks that would be universally understood. Through dreams and the process of automatism (an intuitive or spontaneous method of drawing or painting similar to doodling), they sought to probe beneath the rational, conscious mind and find a new visual language that would unify the modern world because all could understand it. They believed in the power of abstract art to directly communicate profound spiritual and philosophical truths.
POP ART
Younger artists who directly followed the Abstract Expressionists doubted the ability of abstract art to effectively convey universal spiritual truths. During the 1950s Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns experimented instead with a new focus on the more concrete reality of everyday life. Rauschenberg used three-dimensional commonplace objects such as tires and quilts in his "paintings." Johns made works based on familiar objects such as flags, targets, and coffee cans.
The Pop artists of the sixties extended many of the ideas and methods of Rauschenberg and Johns with their use of mass-produced images from popular (meaning that they are seen and known by many people) culture. Comic strips, billboards, labels from products on supermarket shelves, and magazine advertisements became the inspiration for artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann. Seeing Robert Rauschenberg's Skyway provokes the public to see images in a new way. The use of mass media images by Pop artists changed the way we define "culture." Instead of referring only to the noblest achievements of the elite, culture became more widely understood as a description of the activities of an entire society.
COLOR FIELD
While Color Field artists, also working in the sixties, retained the Abstract Expressionist interest in color, line, and non-representational shapes, they abandoned the idea that pure use of the visual elements could communicate the truth of the artist's innermost being. Color Field painters delighted in the visual effects of pure color and varied-shaped canvases. Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis applied flowing paint to unprimed canvas as if they were staining or dyeing the cloth. The effect of color embedded in large expanses of canvas allowed these artists to create works which seemed to envelop the viewer in a breath of color. Frank Stella's more structured canvases play with the effects of warm and cool colors and with overlapping flat shapes.
MINIMALISM
Minimalism, a third movement of the 1960s, also challenged some of the basic beliefs of the Abstract Expressionists. Artists such as Carl Andre, Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, and Robert Morris focused on the literal aspects of the objects they made. For these artists, their works exist only as objects, like any other object in the viewer's environment, without claiming any special cultural significance or meaning beyond their physical existence. By assembling repeating units or simplifying colors and shapes, Minimalist artists draw the viewer's attention to the "wholeness" present in their works of art. Often these works are industrially fabricated. If paint is applied, the viewer cannot distinguish brushstrokes
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hat would indicate the personal touch of the artist. The viewer becomes a participant, not in interpreting meaning, but in his/her physical relationship to the object as an equal. "What you see is what you get."
DESIGN
The ceramics, glass, metalware, and furniture of the second half of the 20th century have also undergone radical changes. Design - or how an object looks - has become more important than the use of expensive, exotic materials and evidence of fine craftsmanship. As artists and architects turned to the design of functional objects, those objects tended to be less functional and more sculptural. Although today we can see these objects in most airports, libraries, and schoolrooms, most Americans do not choose them for their homes. As with painting and sculpture, contemporary design also can be difficult to appreciate and understand.
The Abstract Expressionists worked in new ways and investigated new ideas in order to stretch the possibilities of art. In turn, the artists of the 1960s who followed the Abstract Expressionists challenged the basic principles and beliefs of these earlier artists in a variety of ways. Pop artists, Color Field painters, and Minimalists made art radically different from that of the preceding generation. In a similar fashion, a more recent artist such as Christopher Wool challenges the assumptions of the artists who have gone before him as he responds to the values and conflicts of his world. Contemporary art and design continue to reflect the times in which they are made, and thus, continue to connect to contemporary Americans. Post-1945 art may often be difficult to decipher and intellectually challenging; nevertheless, it offers the exciting possibility of investigating our world and knowing ourselves better.
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Arshile Gorky
Page 1 of 2
(American, born Armenia, 1904-1948)
Untitled
,1943-48
Oil on canvas; 54 1/2 x 64 1/2 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase, Contemporary
Arts Council Fund, 1965.17
Arshile Gorky emigrated to the United States from Armenia when he was sixteen. Throughout the early part of his life, Gorky made paintings that looked much like the works of famous modern European masters, such as Pablo Picasso or Wassily Kandinsky. Near the end of his life, Gorky used what he had learned from these influential Europeans to make his own original and unique works of art, such as Untitled. Arshile Gorky became a very important link between the artists of Europe and America and a creative inspiration to a generation of American artists.
1. What does this painting mean? That is a question that many people ask when they look at contemporary art. Can you decode this work of art and figure out what it means? First of all, where are the clues? What parts of this painting provide useful data? (The colors give us information. The shapes and the space could give us information. The title could tell us something.) Lines, textures, light and dark are all used by the artist to create the meaning of a painting.
2. Focus on the colors. How would this painting change if that big area of Sunkist-orange color was Levis-blue? (The painting would feel different. The picture would look dark, like a night scene. The shapes wouldn't show up as much. The picture would seem more quiet and less exciting.) Name some adjectives that describe the colors of this painting. (Adjectives might include bright, full, intense, warm.) Gorky uses lots of orange, but there is also a long pink rectangle at the bottom. The smaller shapes are made of light blues, greens and blacks. Do the colors in this painting go together? How does this mix of colors make you feel? (Some may enjoy the excitement of the mix, while others may find it unsettling.) Choose some more adjectives that describe this combination of pinks and orange and green and black. (Adjectives might include jarring, exciting, ugly, upsetting, strange, hot.)
3. What do the shapes in this painting look like to you? Explain your answer. (They look like animals or bugs or people because they seem to have arms, legs, and faces, and they could be standing or moving around. They look like accidental doodles because they are irregular and don't have firm edges.) Notice that there are no "contour lines" around the shapes. How would the shapes change if they were edged by lines? (The shapes wouldn't seem to move. The shapes might look more like cartoons. Things wouldn't seem to float around like they do now.) Would you say this picture was flat or had some kind of space? Defend your answer. (People might say that since there are no shadows or rounded forms, this is a composition of flat shapes. Or, they might say that since all the shapes are moving around and doing something in the orange space, the pink bar at the bottom could be a stage.) Gorky doesn't seem to make his painting definitely flat or definitely three-dimensional. Does this bother you? Explain your answer.
4. Gorky was influenced by the European Surrealists, a group of artists who were interested in hidden emotions, feelings, and dreams. How does this painting show hidden emotions, feelings, or dreams? (Gorky could have seen things like this in his dreams, or he could have imagined them. Maybe the images are doodles. Maybe Gorky was in a certain mood when he painted this picture.) Imagine that
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this is a memory from Gorky's past. Describe what's happening, and tell how it feels. (Events will vary. The situation could feel wild, scary, puzzling, funny, mixed-up, tense, dramatic, uncomfortable, energetic, or hot.)
5. Titles of paintings can be very informative, but this one, Untitled, refuses to give any clues. Why do you think Gorky would name his picture Untitled? (He might want to confuse us. Maybe he doesn't want us to figure out this painting too easily. Maybe he wants to make the picture strange.)
6. You have investigated the important "clues" and "data" about this painting, and along the way you have written down a number of adjectives and comments that pinned down your findings. In addition, you have found that Gorky does not make things simple. Review that first question again. What does this painting mean? Like many works of contemporary art, there may not be an exact, or single answer. Instead, Gorky provides us with an object that stirs both our senses and imagination .
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Jackson Pollock
Page 1 of 2
(American, 1912-1956)
Cathedral
, 1947
Enamel and aluminum paint on canvas;
71 1/2 x 35 1/16 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard J. Reis, 1950.87
© 2002 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jackson Pollock painted for many years before this work was made. His earliest landscapes. From the beginning, he wanted to make pictures that communicated paintings looked like moody, but realistic scenes with recognizable people and deeply with viewers. Over time Pollock changed the look of his paintings. He worked constantly to develop images that communicated more simply and
forcefully with his audience and that visualized more effectively his creative energy.
Cathedral is very
important because it is one of Pollock's first "Drip Paintings."
1. Look carefully at the lines in this painting. In the air, trace one of these lines with your finger. Choose adjectives that describe either the lines or the movement of your hand. (You might choose flowing, curvy, tangled, intertwining, squiggly, web-like, accidental, knotted, drippy, scattered, stringy, overlapping, jumbled, free-form, springy, meandering.) Overlapping shapes is one of the ways artists create the illusion of space in their paintings. Many of the lines in this painting overlap. Is there a sense of space in this painting? Explain your answer. (Yes, the overlapping does make space, but it is very shallow. No, the paint all lays together on the surface.)
2. The paint seems to move across the surface of this painting. Experience these lines another way. Imagine these lines making sounds. How does Cathedral sound to you? (It might sound scratchy, very noisy, delicate like mice in a box, overpowering, buzzing like honeybees, harmonized, impressive like thunder and lightening. It might sound like jazz or like a city street.)
3. Because of their revolutionary technique, paintings like Cathedral were called "Drip Paintings" or "Action Paintings." Why do you suppose critics came up with these names? (Answers will vary.) Think about how a traditional painter works. He/she uses brushes and a stretched canvas that is placed on an easel. Jackson Pollock's painting was not created by this time-honored method. How could you create a painting like Pollock's? (You could drip the paint onto the canvas. You might put the canvas on the floor, and drip lines of paint on it. You could use a brush, a stick, or even a turkey baster to apply the paint.) Imagine Pollock painting. First, he spread very large pieces of raw, unprimed canvas on the floor. Using industrial paints, he moved all around the canvas, dripping and spattering paint onto the surface in rhythmic, almost dance-like gestures. The paint made a record of Pollock's movements around the canvas.
4. Jackson Pollock wanted his painting to be automatic, made without rational control and therefore open to inspiration from his own inner impulses and feelings. This emphasis on the creative possibilities of the inner, or subconscious mind came from the European Surrealists, many of whom were living in New York. Talking about his work, Pollock stated, "When I'm in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of `get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because
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the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through" (Crofton, p.147). Have you ever gotten so into something that you forgot to think about people watching you? Were you carried away with a special, creative energy? How did you feel? (People might relate similar experiences when they danced or when they played sports or read a story.)
5. As you traced the poured lines with your finger, were you able to find a beginning or an end? (Answers may vary.) Pollock once stated, "There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. It was a fine compliment" (O'Connor, p.125). Why do you think Pollock would be glad there was no beginning or end to his painting? (Maybe he wanted the painting to be unified. Maybe the painting was meant to be timeless. Perhaps he wanted to shock art viewers.) As a result of his technique, no one part of the painting seems any more important than another, and the lines look as though they continue past the edge of the canvas. The painting has a strong, all-over quality.
6. The title of this painting is Cathedral. What ideas or feelings do you think the artist wanted to "come through" to us? (Perhaps this image is like stained glass, and light or energy comes through. Maybe it is meant to convey an idea about all religions becoming one. Perhaps this is meant to convey something the artist was feeling. Maybe he thought the process of making art was spiritual.) When you get to the Museum, find the artist's signature at the bottom of the painting.
Mark Rothko
Page 1 of 1
(American, born Russia, 1903-1970)
Orange, Red and Red
,1962
Oil on canvas; 93 1/8 x 80 1/8 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the
Meadows Foundation, Incorporated, 1968.9
© 2002 Mark Rothko-Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Not all Abstract Expressionist painters applied their paint in linear, overall patterns. One group, including Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Adolph Gottlieb, and to some extent Robert Motherwell, explored the expressive use of large areas of color.
1. Translate this painting into words. Start by describing exactly what you see, and be sure to record all you can about the colors and the shapes. (There are two rectangular shapes with blurred edges. One soft-edge shape is dull red; the other one is a bright, intense orange. The orange shape on top is almost square. These two shapes are set in a blurry haze of grayish brown. The orange and red colorforms are stacked one above the other, and they just fit inside the perimeter of the painting, making their edges vertical and horizontal.) Add adjectives that describe this painting. (Adjectives might include big, blocky, quiet, unmoving, warm.) How would this picture change if the orange and red shapes were set at a diagonal? (The painting would not seem so calm and balanced.)
2. Generally, when we look at a painting, some parts look like "figures," and the rest looks like "background." The figure-part seems to advance toward us and to be in front of the background. This is known as the figure-ground relationship. With abstract art, this relationship can be perplexing. Look at Rothko's painting. Are the orange and red shapes the "figures" or the "background"? (Answers may vary.) Try to look at the painting both ways, flipping the figure-ground relationship. How does your reaction to the painting change as the relationship alternates? (When the orange/red shapes are the figures, they look more like paint that's spread out with a spatula. When the orange/red areas are the background, the grayish brown edge becomes a window frame and the orange gets really bright.) Does this bother you that Rothko doesn't seem to make the painting one way or the other? (Answers may vary.) What other experiences or situations does this back-and-forth movement bring to mind? (It's like a doorway. It's something like breathing.)
3. Midway in his career, Rothko began making his paintings very large. This one is nearly eight feet tall. Talking about size, Rothko said, "Painting a small painting means placing oneself outside the experience. When we paint a large painting, we are in it" (Ferrier, p.519). What do you think this statement means? (Big paintings affect us more strongly simply because they are bigger than we are. A big painting pulls us into it.) In your mind, make the grayish brown area the frame and the orange square the background. Now, "walk into" that orange-square background. How would this feel? (It might feel warm, alive, tingly, fiery, happy, intense, bright, "orangey," like swimming in the sun, like turning orange.) Considering its size, this painting has very few parts. Why has Rothko made his painting so "simple"? (Maybe he is suggesting that the simple things are the important things. Maybe he wants us to focus on the colors or to think about the shapes. Maybe he means for us to take our time and investigate our responses.) Abstract Expressionists believed their works could communicate directly with viewer's unconscious. For these artists, shapes and colors alone could convey deeply felt personal feelings.
4. Now finish your translation of this painting into words by explaining what the painting "means" to you.
Franz Kline
(American, 1910-1962)
Slate Cross
,1961
Oil on canvas
111 1/4 x 79 1/4 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated, 1968.18
© 2002 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Franz Kline came to New York City from central Pennsylvania in 1938.
His early paintings were filled with scenes of working people in industrial settings. Kline translated this interest in urban structures into a bold,
gestural abstraction that was heavily influenced by drawing.
Slate Cross is an example of this later,
more confident stage of Kline's career.
1. Franz Kline said "...painting is a form of drawing and the painting that I like has a form of drawing to it" (Johnson, p.26). Look carefully at this painting by Franz Kline. How could this painting be like a drawing? Explain your answer. (It looks like a drawing because it appears to be made entirely of lines on a white background. It looks like a drawing that has been blown up or enlarged. The surface still looks like thick paint.) Do you think Kline's statement describes Slate Cross?
2. Imagine making the lines you see in this painting. Describe the kind of movement you would need to make these forms. (You might need a big, confident, aggressive, bold, sweeping, two-handed, stretching, determined movement to make these forms.) The physical act of putting paint on the canvas was very important to painters like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. The term "Action Painting" is often used to identify their work. The shapes and lines on his canvas may look as though they were done very quickly, but details on the surface show that the artist took some time to make them. When you get to the Museum, look closely at the surface, and you will find that some of the black areas were painted over with white. This overpainting shows that Kline carefully considered the look of his marks and spent a considerable time "fine-tuning" his images.
3. Which areas are more important, the black ones or white ones? (Answers may vary. Some may say the black areas suggest forms, while others may point out that the white areas suggest space.) Kline has taken care to balance the two, so that one depends on the other. How would this painting change if it were made in colors instead of whites and blacks? (It would be lighter in mood. It would be less serious. It might seem less important. It might seem more emotional.)
4. What do these shapes look like? (They might look like beams in a building, like charred logs in a forest, like girders from a construction site, or stacks of railroad ties.) Slate Cross may remind us of urban structures and movements or, for different reasons, a geological formation. It can also cast a certain mood. Kline has said that he tries to create a painting "...so that the overall thing has a particular emotion" (Johnson, p.26). Think about the title. What emotions or ideas do you find in this painting? Explain your answer.
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Page 1 of 1
Robert Motherwell (American, 1915-1991)
Page 1 of 1
Elegy to the Spanish Republic (The,
Barcelona Elegy)
1966
Oil and acrylic on canvas; 84 x 147 in. Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League Fund, 1967.7 © 2002 Dedalus Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Robert Motherwell became friends with a number of the European artists who emigrated to the United States, especially the Surrealists. Besides being influenced by their ideas about the creative role of intuitions and feelings in making works of art, he was also very sensitive to their political problems in Europe and especially what these problems might mean to all peoples.
1. What is the most important part of this painting? (Many may say the large black shapes, but some may mention the bright areas of white and color.) Is this painting totally flat, or does it seem to have space? (It looks flat because there are no shadows and because there are no recognizable objects to tell us about distances. On the other hand, it seems to have space because the black shapes overlap the colors and shapes in the background.)
2. Look at the black shapes. Are they standing still or moving? How can you tell? (They look like they are moving because the tall ones bend toward the left, because the bottoms of the tall shapes look like footsteps, because the black shapes don't seem to be stuck to the "ground," because these shapes form a rhythmic pattern of "talls and shorts" across the front of the painting.) If they are moving, how would you describe their movement? Explain why you say this. (The movement is slow because the shapes are so big and lumpy. It looks like they are marching because they are in order.) Suppose these shapes were people. Where would you see a group of people dressed in black and marching solemnly? (You might see public officials marching in a parade. You might also see mourners marching in a funeral.)
3. Now, look at the areas behind the black shapes. Imagine you are in that area. What kind of "place" is it? (It looks sunny and warm with no shadows. There is a bright, almost brilliant sunlight. The colors are pure and simple.) The look of white-washed buildings and bright sunlight reminds many viewers of Mediterranean village scenes.
4. Look at the title. Use a DICTIONARY to find the meaning of the word "elegy." The Spanish Republic existed from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was destroyed during a bitter civil war and was replaced by the Dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1892-1975) with the aid of war supplies from his fascist supporters, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The city of Barcelona was one of the last strongholds of the Republican forces. Now that you know the meaning of the word "elegy" and some of the history of Spain, how do you think Robert Motherwell felt about the Spanish Republic? What do you think he felt about warfare and repression in general? When you have finished discussing this among yourselves, look again at the painting. How could this non-realistic, abstract painting convey Motherwell's feelings about the Spanish Republic? Explain your answers.
David Smith
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(American, 1906-1965)
Cubi XVII, 1963
Polished stainless steel; 107 3/4 x 64 3/8 x 38 1/8 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund,
Inc., 1965.32 McD
© 2002 Estate of David Smith / Licensed by VAGA, New York, New
York
Using steel to create fine art sculptures was considered very innovative in the 1930s and 1940s. Up to then, most art audiences expected to see
sculpture made of more traditional materials, like bronze or marble. To David Smith, the use of steel was natural. Smith had worked in an automobile plant where he learned metal-working techniques, such as riveting and welding. He constructed his first welded sculptures from agricultural machinery and other objects.
1. Does this nine-foot tall sculpture look heavy and massive or light and airy to you? Give reasons for your answer. (The work looks heavy because it is made of all those strong, blocky shapes. Since it is made of metal, it must weigh a lot. The work looks light because its surface is so shiny and wavy. The way the forms are "thrown out" in space makes them look weightless.) Do you think it is a good or bad thing that this sculpture might look heavy and light at the same time? Explain why.
2. Do you think these forms are balanced? (Answers may vary.) Explain why or why not. When you come to the Museum, walk around this sculpture and notice how the appearance of the forms and the spaces, or voids, between the forms shift and change as you move.
3. Describe the forms the artist has used. (They are geometric. They are like building blocks or boxes. Except for one cylinder, all the shapes are rectangular.) These forms are made of steel. What kinds of objects are usually made of this material? (Steel is used to make cars, bridges, large ships, skyscrapers, handtools, stoves.) The use of steel is associated with the industrial world of the 20th century. These hollow steel boxes were welded together. That means the edges of the plates were heated red-hot so that the pieces of metal would fuse. Look for these once-molten seams when you can get close to the sculpture.
4. The surfaces of the forms were polished with an abrasive disk grinder. Look at the lines made by the grinder. How do the lines compare to the boxes? (The lines are uneven and squiggly, while the boxes are firm and geometric.) Smith once said, "I like outdoor sculpture and the most practical thing for outdoor sculpture is stainless steel, and I make them and I polish them in such a way that on a dull day, they take on the dull blue, or the color of the sky in the late afternoon sun, the glow, golden like the rays, the colors of nature....They are colored by the sky and the surroundings, the green or blue of water....They reflect the colors" (McCoy, p.184). Do you think Cubi XVII would blend or contrast with an outdoor, natural setting? Explain your answer. (The shapes and material would look very different from the hills and trees. The shiny surface of the sculpture would reflect and blend with the atmosphere.) When you are in the Museum, see if you can find David Smith's signature on the piece. How do you suppose he "wrote" his name?
Lee Bontecou
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(American, born 1931)
Untitled
,1961
Welded metal and canvas; 48 1/2 x 56 x 38 1/8 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, Gift of an anonymous foundation, 1963.92.FA
The art world of the later 1950s was a time of transition. Abstract Expressionist goals and techniques became too familiar to many artists. Some younger artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg or Jasper Johns, reacted by turning to new subject matter. Lee Bontecou, on the other hand, continued to work in an abstract manner and to express powerful emotions and ideas. Her innovation was the choice of materials.
1. Is this supposed to look like something that is made by man or something that is made by nature? Defend your choice. (It looks like it is nature-made because its form is irregular and round like some kind of star or growing thing. It looks like it is man-made because parts of it look like metal or some kind of machine.) What does it look like to you? (Answers may include a star, an eye, a volcano, a map, a porthole, the side of a tank, a festering wound, a cell, a mouth, the plan of an ancient castle, something from a Sci/Fi movie.)
2. This work is made of gray steel angle iron, steel rods welded together, canvas fabric, and reddish copper wire. Look carefully at the image and locate where the artist has used these different materials. You may have to look up "angle iron" in the dictionary. (The image cuts off some of the picture, but the edges look like angle iron. The dark lines are the metal rods that are welded together. You can just make out the welded joints where the rods meet. The canvas, which looks like it must be painted in places, is stretched between the rods. The copper wire is used to tie the canvas to the rods.)
3. Think about how this work was made and list the stages in its production. (The artist probably welded the big pieces together first and then the smaller rods to form a skeleton. Then she could have cut the pieces of canvas to fit the different spaces. She would have to cut the wire into little pieces and then use them to tie down the canvas shapes. Maybe she painted the canvas last.) Does this sound like the way to make a painting? Explain your answer. (No, paintings are made with paints and brushes and stretched canvases. The process for making this piece sounds more like a model project. Yes, if you throw out traditional methods of painting, then this could be a painting if the artist says it is.) Much modern art does not fit easily into traditional categories of art-making. Bontecou's Untitled is hung on the wall like a painting. However, it is clearly an object that has been constructed as well as painted. If it is a sculpture, then it is very untraditional because it is assembled instead of carved or cast and because it is made of machine age materials instead of marble or bronze.
4. Imagine the dark core of this work as a doorway. How would it feel to go in this opening? (It might feel unsettling, scary, exciting, creepy, or weird to go in.) Now, what could come out of it? (Polluted fumes, exhaust, liquids, big insects, or spaceships might come out.) This work was made at the height of the Cold War period when relations between the Communist and Western alliances of countries were competitive and tense. The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in 1962. World-wide atomic destruction was a possibility. Furthermore, Americans were just beginning to take a closer look at the effects of industrial pollution upon the environment. How could Untitled relate to this period? (Like that period
of history, this work looks unsettling, soiled, war-like or war-torn, and somewhat dangerous. Also, the work has a hidden quality of things being tensely guarded, hidden, or held secret, even the title is anonymous.) Lee Bontecou's work remains abstract, but it is still able to communicate powerful emotions. When you get to the Museum and see Untitled, you will encounter other aspects to this work. The metal and canvas surfaces look like they would be interesting to touch, but touching the copper wires looks dangerous. Perhaps most surprisingly, Untitled is very three-dimensional and juts dramatically out from the wall.
Robert Rauschenberg (American, born 1925)
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Skyway, 1964
Oil and silkscreen on canvas; 216 x 192 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, The Roberta Coke Camp Fund, The 500, Inc., Mr. and Mrs. Mark Shepherd, Jr., and the General Acquisitions Fund, 1986.8a-b
© 2002 Robert Rauschenberg / Licensed by VAGA, New York, New
York
Perhaps one of the most important influences on the career of Texas-
born Robert Rauschenberg was his interaction with the avant-garde composer John Cage. At the time of their meeting at Black Mountain College, Rauschenberg painted white canvases enlivened only by the shadows of the viewers. Cage encouraged the artist to be more sensitive to the everyday world of common objects, noises, and images and to include these in his work.
1. Carefully list the images you see in this painting. (The list will probably include President Kennedy, space capsules, an American eagle, city scenes with people and stop/go lights, a female nude from an old painting, a diagram of the earth and moon from outer space, three-dimensional drawings of boxes. Some lists may include a star surrounded by red paint next to the image of Kennedy and a statue of President Washington that is upside-down.) Where do you think the artist saw these images? (He might have seen them in magazines, newspapers, on TV, or in books. He probably found these images in the everyday world.) Because of these images, can you guess what year this painting was made? Defend your choice. You may need an ENCYCLOPEDIA to pinpoint the facts and deduce the date.
2. Some of the images in this painting appear more than once. Are all the versions the same or different? First, find the images that have doubles. Then investigate their similarities and differences to decide how closely they repeat. (a. The Kennedy image repeats. The two look like the same picture, but they have been printed in different colors, and the one on the left has a white oval painted around the pointing hand. b. The eagle image repeats. The two images are the same, but the one in the upper lefthand corner is on its side, and the other one further to the right has part of the corner painted over with white. c. The female figure looking in the mirror repeats, but the one on the left has unimportant areas painted over in bright, flat blue and red.) Silkscreening is the name of a technique that is used to print images, often from photographs. This technique is very similar to using a stencil. Companies that print images on T-shirts use silkscreens to transfer pictures to cloth. Perhaps you have used this process in school. If not, check the word in a DICTIONARY. Rauschenberg used the silkscreen technique to make the repeating images of Skyway. See if you can find areas that were not silkscreened. Here is a hint: hand-painted areas will show brushstrokes, uneven edges, and sometimes drippy spills. Why would an artist use silkscreening to make part of his or her painting instead of doing it all by hand? (Maybe he wants to make the images quickly. Maybe he wants to be an artist of his time and use images that are familiar to people. Maybe he wants his work to look like the evening news on TV, or like newspapers and magazines.)
3. Do you think this painting has a central focus? Explain your answer. (No, there are a lot of places to look, and no single image dominates. No, the colors and shapes are all equally interesting. Yes, it is focused on a particular time period and the things that were happening then.) Think about the way
Rauschenberg has arranged, or not arranged, his picture. What other kinds of things or experiences look and feel like this? (Answers may include bulletin boards, sketch pads, doodles, scrapbooks, or walking around a mall, switching channels on TV, thumbing through a magazine.
4. When he was interviewed, Robert Rauschenberg once said, "My paintings are invitations to look somewhere else" (Crofton, p.156). How could this statement relate to Skyway? (Maybe he means for us to look at the world around us. Maybe Skyway is supposed to make us think about what happened in the U.S. in the 1960s. Maybe the painting is supposed to make us look inward and think about our lives.)
5. Imagine you are a critic for a New York City art journal of the 1960s. You are used to seeing the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and you like Abstract Expressionism. You think paintings are meant to be very personal, both in the way they look and how they are made. You think paintings are supposed to convey deep and important emotions simply through shapes, colors, and lines. Now imagine being confronted with this new painting Skyway by the young artist Robert Rauschenberg. How would you react? Why would you feel this way? (I might feel shocked because this painting uses common, popular imagery. I might be irritated that the artist has used a rather commercial technique like silkscreening to create a large part of the painting. On the other hand, I might feel excited because a new artist has embraced popular culture and made painting look new. I might like Skyway because it captures the experiences I have when I watch TV or read the newspaper.)
6. Did you notice that this painting is in two parts? That horizontal line in the center is where the two pieces fit together. When you get to the Museum and look at the real objects that are illustrated in this packet, see how many works of art have more than one piece.
Jasper Johns
(American, born 1930)
,
Device
1961-62
Oil on canvas with wood and metal
72 1/8 x 48 3/4 x 4 1/2 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of the Art Museum League, Margaret J. and
George V. Charlton, Mr. and Mrs. James B. Francis, Dr. and Mrs. Ralph
Greenlee, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. James H.W. Jacks, Mr. and Mrs. Irvin L. Levy,
Mrs. John W. O'Boyle, and Dr. Joanne Stroud in honor of Mrs. Eugene
McDermott, 1976.1
© 2002 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA, New York, New York
This painting is part of a series of works by Jasper Johns called the "Devices." They all contain actual objects which were used to make parts of the pictures. In these works Jasper Johns explores the possibilities of painting.
1. Look carefully at this oil painting and describe the different parts. (#1. One area consists mainly of bold, paint strokes. Most of these strokes are made with the colors, red, yellow, and blue, but others are mixtures. The paint seems to be applied in random, irregular patches which overlap and intersect. #2. Another area is defined by two bars attached near the top of the canvas, one on each side. The bars have been pushed through the paint to form parts of circles. #3. In a third area, stenciled letters spell out the word "DEVICE".) Red, yellow, and blue are the building blocks of color. Check a color wheel to investigate their relationship to each other and to other colors. Each of the "bars" in area two is a stretcher bar, a specially-cut board used to make the frame on which canvas is stretched for paintings. Since it is supposed to be a support on the back of the canvas, it is not normally meant to be seen by the viewer.
2. Concentrate on areas #1 and #2, and imagine the physical motions that were used to apply and mix the paint. Describe these motions. (Area one motions are irregular. They go in different directions for different distances. Area two motions are geometric, smooth, circular.) Which set of motions are "personal" and which are "mechanical"? Explain your choice. (The first set are more "personal" because the artist decides where each one will go. The second set is more "mechanical" because it is made with an instrument.) Each area has a different feel. But whether it is the artist's hand or a stretcher bar, Johns seems to be saying they are both useful ways of applying paint. This attitude toward applying paint is very different from that of an Abstract Expressionist like Jackson Pollock. Pollock felt that his method of applying paint could express inner emotions and creativity. Johns, on the other hand, does not seem to mind having a mechanical device do the painting for him.
3. Is the use of stencils to write the word "DEVICE" also "mechanical"? Explain your answer. (Yes it is because anyone could use a stencil and the letters always take the same shape. No it is not, because you can choose the order of the letters and the colors that are used. The e's in "DEVICE" aren't the same.) Johns chooses something that everyone is familiar with, in this case stencils, and then uses them in a way that is very individual.
4. The title of this work is Device. What does the word "device" mean? (A "device" is a thing someone makes. It's supposed to do something. It's a tool.) You may want to check the dictionary to catch all the possibilities. It can also mean "...a plan, scheme or trick for effecting a purpose" (Random House).
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How does this title relate to the painting? (The word "device" is written on the canvas. Johns has used those stretcher bars at the top as "devices" to mix paint. He used the stencils as "devices" for making the letters. The circles in the paint are symmetrical "devices" for creating a sense of balance.) The use of these "devices" seems odd, foreign, and even shocking when compared to traditional painting. However, traditional artists also use "devices" like paint brushes, stretched canvas, picture frames, and the symmetrical placement of images. Why would Johns call our attention to such "devices"? (He might want us to think about how art is made. Maybe he wants us to investigate what is "behind the devices." Maybe he is trying to get to a deeper level of meaning.)
5. Device demands a lot of analysis and thinking. It also seems to play a lot of games. What do you think about a painting that teases us and makes us think? Defend your choices. (I like it because it isn't always so emotional and it has a lot of levels. I don't like it because it doesn't seem to say one thing and it's hard to understand.) Whatever the exact meaning of the painting, Johns seems very clearly to be making a different kind of painting than the Abstract Expressionists.
Tom Wesselmann (American, born 1931)
,
Mouth # 11
1967
Oil on canvas; 68 x 152 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection
Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Marcus Fund, 1968.7.FA
These bold lips are modeled after those of Peggy Sarno, the model and friend of artist Tom Wesselmann. He focused on her mouth while she was taking a cigarette break and created a number of sketches. These sketches inspired a whole series of paintings on the same theme.
1. When we visit museums, we sometimes go expecting to see a certain kind of picture. What makes this painting different from traditional painting? (It's a picture of a woman smoking. It looks big. The painting is just of the lips and the cigarette; it's been cut out of a face. It doesn't have a frame, and so it looks like the picture is the same shape as the image. The painting looks like it came out of an advertisement or commercial.) This painting is big. By moving the projector closer or farther away from the wall, make the projected image of Mouth # 11 the same size as the original.
2. In the 1960s when this painting was made, cigarette commercials were shown on TV. Today they are not. How have attitudes toward cigarette smoking changed since then? (This discussion may tie in with studies in other areas such as science or history.)
3. Traditionally, oil paintings are painted on canvas, a cloth woven of cotton or linen, that is stretched over a rectangular wooden frame and held in place by tacks. This painting really does have the same shape as its image. How do you suppose the artist went about making the support for this shaped canvas?
4. Usually, we must be very friendly with someone to get this close to his/her mouth. Does this image seem "friendly"? (Answers may vary. However, the hard-surfaced lips and the aggressive or confident grip on the cigarette do not make this person sweet, innocent, or nurturing.) Although the rest of the face is missing, describe the person smoking the cigarette. (She might be unfriendly, sophisticated, snotty, confident, mean, sure of herself, hard, fashionable, sexy, distant.)
5. During the 1960s, artists in the United States and Britain started looking to the world of popular culture, with its comic books, advertising, and TV, to find images for their art. This style is called Pop Art. Looking at this painting, Mouth # 11, as an example of that style, do you think Pop Art celebrates or criticizes popular culture? Or, is it neutral?
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James Rosenquist (American, born 1933)
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Paper Clip, 1973
Oil and acrylic on canvas; 102 1/4 x 224 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of the 500, Inc., Elizabeth B. Blake, Mr. and Mrs. James H.W. Jacks, Mr. and
Mrs. Robert M. Meltzer, Mr. Joshua Muss, Mrs. John W. O'Boyle, Dr. Joanne Stroud and two anonymous donors in honor of Robert M. Murdock, 1978.28.A-D.
© 2002 James Rosenquist / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
While struggling to make it as an artist, James Rosenquist painted billboards in New York, at times while being suspended 20 stories above the city. Rosenquist felt that creating paintings like Paper Clip was a way to bring the excitement of working on a billboard into a room. This painting is nearly eight feet tall and eighteen feet wide, which led him to compare the feeling he had while painting such works to the way a fly might feel on a sheet of paper.
1. What objects do you recognize within this painting? (There is a wallet, a paper clip, a roll of register tape, a Mobil petroleum sign, a section of something with words on it, a pair of hands, and a sketched triangle and rectangle.) In terms of size, what is unusual about how these things relate to one another? (The paper clip is larger than the hands that would use them. It is also bigger than the wallet and the register tape which would normally be larger than the paper clip. The Mobil sign, which would be big in actual life, is smaller than the wallet and the paper clip.)
2. Describe the hands in this painting. (They look like a woman's hands. They appear to be cut off, like they are from a magazine.) For Rosenquist, hands like these are meant to refer to those found in advertisements, which present items in an attractive way so that people will be interested in buying them. What are these hands doing? (They seem to be measuring something. They are holding a strip of something with words on it.) Can you identify what the hands are holding? (It is difficult to tell. It looks like a ruler with no numbers on it. It could be a piece of a sign.) If the other half of the words were filled in, what would they say? ("This is love in 1971.") How does this relate to the inch that the fingers seem to be showing us? (Maybe the artist thinks love is small in 1971.)
3. You have already explored the unusual way in which the objects within this painting relate to one another in size and scale; now see if you can discover a connection that might exist between these items as far as their use is concerned. (Most of the things are objects that have something to do with money, business, or advertising. The section with the statement on love seems out of place.) What connection, if any, do you think there is between the items that deal with business and the statement about love in 1971?
4. Early in 1971, Rosenquist was involved in a car accident that left his wife and eight-year old son hospitalized and the artist greatly in debt. Based on what you have seen in the relationships between objects in this work, what effect do you think this event might have had on Rosenquist's painting?
Morris Louis
(American, 1912-1962)
Delta Kappa, 1960
Acrylic on canvas; 103 1/2 x 146 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, Given in memory of Mary Seeger and John William O'Boyle by their children and grandchildren, 1984.14.FA
Many painters in the 60s continued to believe in abstraction but wanted to purge their art of what they saw as excessive, individual emotion. These artists, including Morris Louis, reduced painting to its most essential properties of color, line, and shape.
1. Look at the areas of color. Louis applied the paint by pouring it across the canvas fabric. This pouring process could be difficult. Can you imagine what might go wrong? (The colors might spill off the canvas or might pour in the wrong direction. The colors might mix with each other. The colors might get too diluted.) Look at the shapes the colors form. How do you think Louis poured these shapes? Be sure to include the role of gravity in your explanation. (Explanations will vary.) The paint was poured across the canvas fabric before it was stretched upon the wooden support that keeps it taut and rectangular.
2. Many people like to look at the way artists brush their paint onto the canvas. Brushstrokes can be choppy and excited or long and elegant. Brushstrokes can be very personal. They are a record of the artist's physical gesture as he/she applies paint. Some people can even guess who made an unsigned painting by studying the way the paint strokes are applied. How does Louis' way of applying paint change all this? (There are no brushstrokes to see. We can't tell anything about how he moved or felt when he applied the paint. He doesn't leave a personal mark.) When you get to the Museum, look closely at the edges of the paint and notice how it has soaked through the canvas. Instead of staying on the surface, the paint has actually dyed or stained the unprimed, or raw, canvas. The idea of staining unprimed canvas came from Helen Frankenthaler, an artist who had worked with Jackson Pollock.
3. Look at the large area of canvas that has been left unstained. Why would an artist leave so much open space? (Maybe he likes the shape. Maybe he wants to contrast canvas and color. Maybe he wants this area to seem like open space. Maybe we could walk in here and be surrounded by the colors.) Notice that Louis almost equally divides the area of the painting into unstained and stained, allowing one area to balance the other.
4. Morris Louis made many of his paintings in a series. All the paintings in one series used the same composition, and only the colors and sizes varied. This painting is from a series that Louis called the "Unfurleds." You may have to look this word up in a dictionary. How does this title relate to the look and feel of this painting? (The color-areas look like they are rolled out onto the canvas. Since the color-areas defy gravity, they look like flags uncurling in the wind, and this feels light, airy, open. The color-areas could be like flowers with clear, intense colors that open up.)
Page 23 of 42
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Frank Stella
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(American, born 1936)
York Factory Sketch, No. 1
,1970
Acrylic on canvas; 54 1/8 x 163 3/8 x
3 1/8 in.
Dallas Museum of Art; Gift of the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated, 1981.135
© 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY
The Abstract Expressionists investigated strong emotions and the hidden springs of creativity; they often applied paint in ways that emphasized the gestures and actions of the painter. Frank Stella, like many artists of the "next generation," wanted to paint differently. By painting flatly, he took the personal, "signature" quality out of his brushwork. By eliminating the connections to his own emotional state, he made his paintings "stand on their own."
1. Look carefully at the image. Mark off the length of this painting on the floor so that you can know its true size. What is the most important part or feature of this painting, the size, the colors, or the shapes? Defend your choice. (The size is the most important because it is so much bigger than regular paintings or people. The colors are the most important because they are bright, flat, and "fluorescent." The shapes are the most important because they take up the entire painting.) When you get to the Museum, look carefully at the surface of the painting and see if you can find the places that are not covered by paint.
2. Why would an artist want to make a painting this size? (He/she might want to get our attention, might want to make the painting more impressive, might want to make the painting something we can't ignore.) Many public works of art, memorials, or signs are purposely made large and grand.
3. Describe the shapes in this painting. (They look like circles. They look like machines. They look perfect because their edges are so smooth. They look like the little plastic protractors we have in school.) Can you find a mathematical relationship among the different shapes? (Example: The painting is one and one-half "protractors" long.) Space can be suggested by overlapping shapes and by warm/cool color combinations. Warm colors appear to come forward, while cool colors seem to recede. Does Stella use overlapping and warm/cool color combinations in this painting? (Students may point out a number of instances.) Explain why these spatial illusions don't work in this picture. (They are used inconsistently.) Why do you think Stella would do this? (He might want to play games with our sense of depth. He might want us to keep returning to the flat surface of his painting. He might want us to have fun looking.) Since we are on the subject of "flatness," notice the lack of shading and the DayGlo, sign-like quality of the colors.
4. Read the title of the painting. Frank Stella has consistently chosen titles for his paintings, which, #1, are not well-known, and #2, refer to places, things, or animals that no longer exist. For example, this title, York Factory Sketch, No. 1, refers to a settlement of the Hudson's Bay Company in northeastern Manitoba that had become a ghost town by the late 1950's. Why do you think Stella would name this painting after an extinct community? (Maybe Stella likes creating mysteries. Maybe he wants us to think of the painting as a thing on its own without a connection to something we know about. Maybe the artist wants us to enjoy the qualities of the painting, like the geometry, or the blues' "blueness.")
Ellsworth Kelly
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(American, born 1923)
Red Panel
,1980
Oil on canvas; 118 1/2 x 130 1/4 in.
Dallas Museum of Art; General Acquisitions Fund and a gift of Robert
Meltzer, by exchange, 1985.99
© 2002 Ellsworth Kelly
My Paintings are like fragments of something you see out of the corner of your eye. -- Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly attempts to show the viewer the way the eye actually sees the world -- in fragments. The artist has said, "I try to see the corner of a table as it would look to me before my brain telegraphs the message TABLE...as a shape [rather than as] part of a table" (Merleau-Ponty, p. 29). He often takes his "fragments" and paints them a solitary color in order to make the finished piece seem whole.
1. How is the shape of this painting different from most paintings you may be familiar with? (Many paintings are rectangular, but this one is nearly diamond shaped.) Kelly is very interested in the appearance of fragments of furniture, shadows from buildings, and buildings themselves. What fragment do you think Kelly had in mind for Red Panel before he painted it red? (It could be a fragment of a shadow from a table top, a car's reflection, or maybe a street sign.)
2. In paintings with no image and only a single color, the eye travels quickly to the edge of the canvas. Imagine that Kelly changed the shape of this work from the irregular diamond shape to a traditional rectangle. Would it still be like a fragment? Explain your answer. (No, it would look like a regular, rectangular picture. It would look like a color block.)
This is a photograph of the Kelly painting Red Panel on the wall of one of the galleries at the DMA. In the foreground is the sculpture Untitled by Robert Morris.
3. Many artists attempt to paint objects or scenes as they appear in nature. As you look at this image, it becomes obvious that Kelly did not intend to paint a recognizable object in this painting. Knowing this, what visible qualities do you think are most important to the artist? (He appears to be
primarily interested in color and shape.) Artists interested in portraying nature accurately, often create paintings of objects. Kelly, however, creates paintings that are meant to BE objects themselves and nothing more.
4. Traditional paintings have subjects and backgrounds. In a naturalistic painting of a bowl of fruit, the bowl of fruit would be the subject of the painting, and the space painted around it would be the background. If, for Kelly, the painting itself becomes the subject of the painting, what might you consider to be the painting's background? (The wall that it is placed on can be seen as the painting's background. The museum is the background.) The French writer Merleau-Ponty said that there will be a third important element besides the painting and its background that will make this work significant. This third element will be you. When Merleau-Ponty stood in front of Ellsworth Kelly's paintings he said that he became very aware of himself in relation to the painting and that this realization turned out to be an important part of experiencing the work. Keep this in mind when you view Red Panel in person.
Robert Morris (American, born 1931) Untitled, 1965-66
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Fiberglass and fluorescent light; 24 x 14 x 97 in. Dallas Museum of Art, General Acquisitions Fund and matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1974.145
One concept that is important for understanding Robert Morris' sculpture is the idea of GESTALT. The word "gestalt" (ge stahlt') refers to a 'shape,' 'configuration,' or 'structure' made of individual parts that forms a complete unity that cannot be expressed simply in terms of the parts. For example, a melody forms a whole that cannot be perceived simply by looking at the individual notes that make it up.
1. Imagine what it would feel like to touch this sculpture. Would it be hot or cold? (It might have the temperature of a machine that has been left on. It has a surface that looks cool.) From what you can see from this image, name other things that you think might have the same texture as this work. (A kitchen counter top, a filing cabinet, curved walls in a room all might have the same texture.) If this sculpture were capable of making a noise, what kind of sound would you expect to hear coming from it? (It looks like it might hum or make a pulsing noise. It might play strange music.)
2. Compared to Red Panel, which appears above the sculpture, how important do you think color is to Morris? (The sculpture is not nearly as colorful, so color may not be as important to Morris.) Morris feels that color has no place in sculpture. He believes that the addition of color might have an emotional and spiritual impact on the viewer that would take away from his emphasis on form, which would in turn destroy the gestalt of the work.
This is a photograph of the Morris suclpture Untitled in one of the galleries at the DMA. In the background is the painting Red Panel by Ellsworth Kelly.
3. This sculpture is actually made up of two semi-circular pieces. When you first began to look at this work, did you think of it as being one or two sculptures? Explain your answer. (It appeared to be one sculpture. The pieces are placed so near to one another that they almost look to be connected by the light. It seemed to be one sculpture, but with two parts.) Think back on the idea of gestalt. What role does the light coming from inside the sculpture play in forming the gestalt of this work? (It looks as if the light is the energy source that connects the two pieces, yet it also makes the separation of the two pieces more noticeable.)
4. Picture yourself in a room with a person who sits alone and does not speak. If you were assigned to learn about this person, how would you go about doing it? (I might walk around them, look at them, or wait for them to do something.) One person compared Minimalist sculpture with just such a silent person. Visual information concerning the Morris sculpture can be gathered by walking around the piece, and looking at it from close up and far away.
5. When you come to the Museum, the light in the room, the walls around you, everything in your sight, all are meant to affect the experience you have with Robert Morris' sculpture. The artist does not intend to set up the surroundings in which you will view the work, but he does hope that the environment in which the piece is placed will be altered in certain ways by his work. Do you think works of art should be dependent on their surroundings? Why or why not?
Dan Flavin
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(American, 1933-1996)
alternate diagonals of March 2, 1964 (to Don
Judd)
,1964
Fluorescent tubing and metal, 144 x 12 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Janie C. Lee, 1976.74,a-g
Just as Abstract Expressionism dominated the 1950s, Minimalism dominated the art world of the late 1960s. The influential critic Barbara Rose referred to this later movement as an art that was pared down to the "minimum," and the name stuck. Minimalism continued the goal of much modern art, reducing works to their barest, geometric essentials.
1. Flavin uses two different standardized fluorescent units. One of the units has four light tubes, each four foot long. The other has one light tube eight feet long. Can you discover a mathematical relationship here? (A number of relationships are possible. For example, two of the four-foot units add up to the eight-foot one. The four four-foot units add up to sixteen, which is twice the eight-foot unit.) The parts of this object seem both closely entwined and separate.
2. Fluorescent fixtures have become so common that they are practically unnoticeable. We see them in schools, in businesses, in factories, in hospitals, in the garage. How is this fluorescent fixture different from those? (This one is hung on the wall. This one is hung in a museum. This one is meant to be art. The other ones are used just for lighting a space, but this one isn't necessary for lighting this room.) What is it about a museum space that changes the way we look at things? (A museum makes things special. A museum is a place where lots of people come together to see art.)
3. Paintings are made of oil paints or acrylics. Sculptures are made of stone or metal or wood. Traditionally, these materials are expensive and difficult to use. How is Dan Flavin's choice of materials different from traditional ones? (Flavin's work is composed of the light-making object and the light itself. His material isn't a material; it's fluorescent light. Fluorescent light fixtures aren't that expensive. There is nothing difficult about using a light fixture.) When speaking about art, the word medium refers to the material or process that the artist uses to make the work of art.
4. Investigate how fluorescent light makes you feel. Start by comparing the light from a fluorescent tube with light from a screw-in, incandescent bulb. How are they different? (The fluorescent light is sometimes a bluish tone, while the incandescent bulb is more natural. The fluorescent light is weird because it drains the color out of people. The incandescent bulb is one spot of light. The fluorescent tube is a line of light.) Because it is a line of light, a fluorescent tube wipes out shadows. Now, think about the placement of this light-beam on the wall. It could have been vertical or horizontal, but the artist chose to set it at an angle. What feelings or reactions are special about diagonal lines? (Diagonal lines are active, and they seem to move. Diagonal lines show energy, where horizontal lines seem at rest or asleep. Diagonal lines seem more dramatic because they don't fit into the rectangular grid of verticals and horizontals.)
5. Alternate diagonals of March 2, 1964 is composed of an industrially-made, light-making object, the fluorescent light, the museum space, and you. Why would an artist want to reduce his/her creation
to so few ingredients? (Maybe the artist wants us to concentrate on the way we experience something that we usually overlook. Perhaps the artist wants to shock us. Maybe the artist wants to get to the essence of "experiencing.")
Carl Andre
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(American, born 1936)
Pyramid (Square Plan), 1959 (destroyed); 1970 (remade) Wood (fir)
68 7/8 x 31 x 31 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, General Acquisitions Fund and matching funds from The 500, Inc., 1979.44
© 2002 Carl Andre / Licensed by VAGA, New York, New York
Minimalist sculptors have made a point of excluding certain things: no precious materials, no elaborate narratives, no idealizing qualities, no virtuoso techniques, no emotional displays, no recycling of old forms, no representational imagery, and no pedestals. Although it was originally created much earlier, this sculpture satisfies a number of Minimalist characteristics.
1. Traditionally, artists carve or chisel wood when they use it for sculpture. An artist will choose a block of wood, imagine a figure "inside" the block, and then carve or chisel away all the excess wood. How is this wooden sculpture different from traditional ones? (This sculpture is made of commercially available two-by-fours. The artist may have sawn notches in the blocks, but he didn't carve or chisel the wood. This is not a figure. The artist didn't start with one large block of wood. This sculpture is made of lots of parts that are stacked together. This sculpture could be taken apart and reassembled somewhere else.) What is the advantage of using two-by-fours? (You don't have to shape the wood. All the pieces will be the same size. You can easily buy it.)
2. Is there a front or back to this piece? Explain your answer. (No, all the sides are the same. You could have a "front," if the sculpture was placed close to the wall.) How can you tell all sides are the same? (You could look at each one and compare them. Because of the design, the sides have to be the same.) Symmetry is defined as a similarity of form or arrangement on either side of an imaginary line, or axis. Where do you see examples of "symmetry" in this work? (There is symmetry from side to side and top to bottom.)
3. Which of the following adjectives could be used to describe this work? Explain you decision.
geometric
irregular
precise
unplanned
mathematical
clean
impressive
accidental
emotional
Can you think of other adjectives?
4. Sometimes one part of a work of art is more important than another. If you removed any one piece of this sculpture, would it be the same? Explain why it would or would not. (If you took out one of the pieces, you might still be able to figure out how it was supposed to look, but it would look "broken." It wouldn't be the same because the point of this sculpture is to look complete. We know where all the parts go, so you can't take one out.) Suppose I called this is "single, unified image." Discuss what this means.
Christopher Wool (American, born 1955)
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Untitled
,1990
Enamel and aluminum; 108 x 72 in.
Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Friends of Contemporary Art, 1991.25
At first glance, Wool's painting may look like a Conceptual Art piece; after all, it uses words and emphasizes ideas. However, there is quite a lot going on here visually as well. In fact, one critic even compared Wool's look of "overallness" and visual uniformity to those same qualities in Jackson Pollock's abstract paintings.
1. There are a number of important features to this work by Christopher
Wool. First, do the letters actually make sentences? See if you can translate the letters into thoughts.
THE SHOW IS OVER THE AUDIENCE GET UP TO LEAVE THEIR SEATS TIME TO COLLECT THEIR COATS AND GO HOME THEY TURN AROUND NO MORE COATS AND NO MORE HOME
2. Set aside the meaning of the letters and turn your attention to the visual order of this piece. How have the letters been arranged and painted? (The white background is divided into rectangles. There are eleven rectangles across and eleven up and down. The shape of each small rectangle is similar to the rectangle formed by all the rectangles. There are no empty spaces on the edge. The letters are all painted in the same color. The letters look like they were made with a stencil.) What adjectives would you use to describe the way this painting looks? (It might look orderly, logical, machine-made, impersonal, mathematical.) When you get to the Museum, look at the shiny, appliance-like surface of the paint.
3. For a moment, think about this object as a sign. If a manager were buying a sign for a business, he/she would not accept a print job like this. Why wouldn't this style be acceptable for a business? (There are no spaces between individual words. There are no periods at the ends of the sentences. Everything is capitalized. Instead of going to the next line, words that are too long break in the middle. These words don't break according to syllables.) Christopher Wool seems to break a lot of writing rules. How does this make you feel? (It might be annoying, irritating, funny, challenging, enjoyable.) How did you feel when you realized you could decode/read this painting? How did you feel when you realized what you had read? (You might feel sad, let down, scared, displeased, uncomfortable.) Explain why you felt this way. (The story isn't nice. Something seems to have gone wrong at the end. Maybe an accident or a catastrophe occurred.)
4. There seem to be two parts to this work, the visual look of the painting and the meaning of the words. Each part has a very different feel to it. Why do you think an artist would do this? (It makes the painting more interesting. It surprises you once you think about it. It makes the work of art more complex.) On another level, the use of words to describe an emotional event is also an abstraction.
LCW Chair (Low Chair Wood) Page 1 of 1 Charles Eames (American, 1907-1978) and Ray Eames (American, 1912-1988), designers Henry Miller, Inc., manufacturer Zeeland, Michigan, designed 1946 Walnut, plywood, and rubber; 26 1/4 x 22 x 23 1/2 in. Dallas Museum of Art, General Acquisitions Fund, 1988.48
Ray Kaiser studied painting with the Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann in the late thirties. In 1940, she attended the Cranbrook Academy, an important American design center, and collaborated with Charles Eames on design projects. The two were married the following year. After that point, they worked so closely together (from 1941 to Charles' death in 1978) that most of their creations are best considered a joint effort.
1. From looking at the image, can you tell what material was used to make this chair? Be prepared to support your guess. (Because of the woodgrain on the surface, it looks like it's made of wood. Because of the free-form shape, it looks like it's made of plastic or metal.) It is made of wood. How could the manufacturers get wood to take a shape that we usually associate with materials, like plastic or metal, that can be molded? (They could get a big block of wood and carve it in the shape of this chair. They could cut the wood in these shapes and then mold them. They could cut the shapes from plywood that has been curved this way.) The chair is assembled of pieces that have been molded into compound curves. Each piece is made by laminating thin veneers of wood to layers of glue. Once the mold was made, how many LCW Chairs would it be possible to make? (As many as they could sell. As many as they wanted.) How is the production of this chair typical of the way things are made in industrialized countries? (It is mass-produced. You depend on the market, so you only make as many as you can sell.)
2. In 1946, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented an exhibition entitled "New Furniture Designed by Charles Eames." Why do you think an art museum would display contemporary furniture? (Because it is beautiful. Because it is designed well. Because the chair is a part of a "new look" that has become fashionable. Because it is very commercially successful.) The Eameses wanted their designs to be beautiful as well as serviceable. Do you think this chair looks like art? Try two things. First, turn the image upside down so that you forget that it's a chair and take a moment to look at it in terms of pleasing shape; you may want to blur the focus. Second, look through the other images and see if the LCW Chair looks like the shapes in any of the abstract paintings.
3. An important motto of many modern designers is "Form follows function." Discuss this motto among yourselves and decide what it means. How does "honesty" relate to this motto? When you have finished discussing this, look again at the paintings in these Teaching Materials. Have any of these artists tried to be "honest" with their works? (The Pop artists have made an effort to capture the true look of America. Many of the artists make their paintings look flat; they don't try to make them look like windows onto imaginary reality. Depending on how you think of it, the drips of paint actually could be the subjects of Pollock's painting.)
ACTIVITIES
ART
1. Abstract Expressionism combined ideas and innovations from Europeans and Americans.
A. The Surrealists were fascinated by the effects of accident. Some of these artists developed a game that utilized "chance" for creative interest.
Assign a section of a body to each of four players. Each of the players will draw his/her assigned body part.
a. The Head
b. From the Neck to the Waist
c. From the Waist to the Knees
d. From the Knees to the Ground
When the first person finishes, he/she folds the paper to conceal all but the bottom points of the drawing and passes it to the next person. That person makes his/her addition, conceals the work, and passes it on. When the drawing is finished, have the group choose a title.
B. Artists like Jackson Pollock were much admired for their confident approach to making art and their willingness to take chances. When Jackson Pollock painted Cathedral, he spread out the canvas on the ground and moved all around the painting. As he moved, he dripped his colors in response to an inner feeling of creative release.
Using water-based tempera and a large piece of brown paper spread on the ground outdoors, try to recreate what you think Pollock's gestures might have been as he painted. Before you begin painting, try to clear your mind of rational control, much like you would if you were doodling.
2. VISUALLY COMPARE AND VISUALLY CONTRAST. Divide your class into two groups. Have one group list as many points of similarity as possible between David Smith's Cubi XVII and Franz Kline's Slate Cross. Have the second group list as many dissimilarities as they can find. Have a representative from each group present their findings.
3. Draw a face that might match Tom Wesselmann's Mouth # 11. Use the outline of the mouth provided.
ART ACTIVITY #3:
4. A MODULE is a basic unit. Many artists create works of art using modules. When they do, the dimensions of the major parts of the work are multiples of the basic module.
Using crayons, markers, or colored pencils, apply your own colors to the duplicated image of Frank Stella's Factory Sketch # 1. Cut the different colored sections apart and then arrange them to form a new work of art with a "shaped-canvas." You may want to glue your arrangement to a rigid piece of cardboard to make it more permanent. Or you may want to attempt putting the sections back together in order to reform a rectangle.
As you rework Stella's painting, see if he has used a module. If so, use that basic unit to enlarge, elaborate, or envelope his work.
5. Here is a list of popular American songs with the years they were released:
"Almost Like Being in Love"
1947,
"Exodus" 1961,
"Blowin' in the Wind" 1962,
"From Russia with Love" 1964,
"Born Free" 1966.
Find the paintings in the teaching materials that were made in the same years. Perhaps you can find recordings of these hits. As you listen, see if the songs connect to the paintings.
Instead of using music from the period, make a selection of your own choice. Play the music while the class looks at the slides and decide which selections go together best.
LANGUAGE ARTS
1. Think of Lee Bontecou's assemblage as a passageway. Imagine how you would be drawn into this passage, what life would be like on the other side, and what might happen to you once you got there. Write a short story for each of the three episodes. Think of each of these episodes as a chapter in a book. You may want to add a final chapter that tells how everything turns out. Be sure to choose a title for your book.
2. Write a poem relating to Ellsworth Kelly's Red Panel without using the words red or shape. You might begin by making a list of the feelings you have when you look at the painting. Your feelings may even suggest memories that you want to include.
3. Mark Rothko described the colors that appear within his paintings as characters that might act in a drama. A producer has just asked you to write a play with the characters from Orange, Red, and Red. But before you can do this, you must define the characters. What are these colors' personalities like? What kind of people would they be? What would they look like?
4. You have just been commissioned to write a dictionary of art styles. Write your definition of Pop Art. You will want to include:
a. who was involved,
b. what the goals or characteristics of the style were,
c. when they made their art,
d. where they made their art,
e. how Pop Art compares to other styles.
5. Imagine that Jasper Johns' Device painting and Robert Morris' Untitled sculpture could talk to one another. Write the conversation that might take place between them.
6. Some artworks, such as Christopher Wool's Untitled, use narratives or stories. Write out the text of Christopher Wool's painting. The text almost tells a miniature story with a kind of surprise ending. Using Wool's limitations, create your own story. Your story can only be six sentences long, and it has to have a surprise ending.
When you have finished, see if you can arrange your story in such a way that it is visually interesting as well.
SOCIAL STUDIES
1. James Rosenquist's Paper Clip mixes images from advertising with images of common objects to communicate a message about the state of affairs in the 1970s. Using magazines, newspapers, and other sources of advertisements and images, create a collage that represents the 2000s.
2. As a class, you looked at Robert Rauschenberg's painting Skyway, and talked about how it reflected history. Be an historian and investigate the connections more closely.
a. Make a list of the recognizable elements within the painting.
b. Connect each of these elements to actual historical events or movements.
c. Determine how useful Skyway is to an understanding of the history of the period.
d. Write up your findings.
Finally, discuss the following question among yourselves: "How do works of art bring different times to life?"
3. Robert Motherwell's painting Elegy to the Spanish Republic is in some way connected Pablo Picasso's Guernica. By using the encyclopedia, the dictionary, and other reference materials, find out more about the subject of each of these paintings and then decide how they relate. You can find an image of Guernica on the web at http://www.grnica.swinternet.co.uk or ask your librarian for assistance.
4. James Rosenquist and other Pop artists explored and used the imagery of advertising. People who create advertising affect most of us on a daily basis. We see their work on television, in newspapers, on product packaging, and on billboards. They hope to influence us to buy whatever it is they are selling.
Divide the class into two groups. Assign each group to take part in one side of a debate. Here is the question:
"Is advertising good or bad?"
SCIENCE AND MATH
1. Look again at the definition of "gestalt" and the example of melody/notes. Robert Morris hopes to create a gestalt relationship within much of his sculpture. The solar system could be thought of as a natural gestalt. To what other natural or scientific systems can this idea of gestalt be applied? What about other man-made systems?
,
2. When one side of a thing is exactly the same as another we say the two are equal (ex. 2 + 2 = 4). When this happens with a shape, we say the shape is symmetrical. In the slide of Carl Andre's Pyramid the part of the sculpture that is not visible is exactly the same as the part that is; it is symmetrical. With this information and based on what you can see, try to add up how many triangular surfaces there are in the entire work.
3. As you have seen, Christopher Wool's Untitled is very carefully arranged. Each of the small rectangles measures 6 inches x 15 inches.
What is the perimeter of each small rectangle?
What is the area of each small rectangle?
What is the perimeter of the whole piece?
What is the area of the whole piece?
4. Technology is both a subject and a component in modern art.
a. Discuss the technological aspects of modern art by looking at the Rauschenberg, Bontecou, the Smith, the Flavin, and the Morris. Concentrate on the processes or pieces of equipment that were involved in making these works of art, and talk about where else these processes or pieces of equipment are used in our society.
b. Look up the words "fluorescent," "fiberglass," and "welding." See if you can guess which words apply to which works.
QUOTATIONS
" I had nothing for them (shapes and colors) to do, so I wasn't going to hire them."
Robert Rauschenberg
"The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating."
Jackson Pollock
"It seems to be possible to control the flow of paint, to a great extent, and I don't use...the accident: I deny the accident."
Jackson Pollock
" Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience."
Morris Louis
"All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion."
Frank Stella
" A large picture is an immediate transaction, it takes you into it."
Mark Rothko
"When I begin a sculpture I am not always sure how it will end."
David Smith
"New demands need new techniques."
Jackson Pollock
"The canvas appeared as an arena in which to act...what was to go on the canvas was not a picture, but an event."
Harold Rosenberg, art critic
" I don't decide in advance that I'm going to paint a definite experience, but in the act of painting, it becomes a genuine experience for me... I'm not painting bridge constructions, sky scrapers or laundry tickets."
Franz Kline
"The Spanish Elegies are not political but my private insistence that a terrible death happened that should not be forgotten...The pictures are a general metaphor of the contrast between life and death, and their interrelation."
Robert Motherwell
TIME-LINE
ABSTRACT ART - Abstract works of art can be either non-representational, or can be derived from the real world. In the first case, the work of art is completely invented by the artist, and does not directly reproduce anything in the real world. In the second case, the artist may start with an observation in the real world and then transform that image into a pattern-like shape or form.
ALL-OVER (composition) - First used in connection with the "drip" paintings of Jackson Pollock, the term describes a style of painting in which the whole surface of the canvas is used in a somewhat uniform manner.
ASSEMBLAGE - The technique of creating three-dimensional works of art by combining a variety of material- including "found objects"- into new aesthetic objects.
AUTOMATIC or AUTOMATISM - The practice of automatic drawing, painting, or writing, made in a state of unconscious free association. This was an important method of working for the Surrealist artists.
AVANT-GARDE - A French term meaning "advanced guard," used since the mid-19th century to describe artists, art movements, or ideas that are ahead of their time.
CONCEPTUAL ART- An art form in which the idea or concept and the process by which it is achieved are more important than any touchable product.
EXPRESSIONIST ART - Painting, sculpting, drawing, etc., in which natural forms and colors are distorted or exaggerated to create a personal treatment of thematic material.
FIGURE-GROUND - In a painting, the way in which an object or shape is related to the background against which we see it. Human perception normally operates in such a way that the `figure' seems to advance, and lie in front of the background. In abstract art, this relationship is less clear.
MEDIUM - Generally, the physical substance the artist chooses to use for his/her work of art is the medium. For example, marble is a medium of sculptors.
NON-REPRESENTATIONAL or NON-OBJECTIVE WORKS - Abstract works that make no reference whatsoever to the world of people, places, and the objects associated with them; art from which all identifiable subject matter has been eliminated.
PAINTERLY- A term that describes a painting in which the tactile, fluid quality of the paint and the movement involved in its application become a principal quality of the work.
PRIMARY/SECONDARY COLORS - For paints (as opposed to theater lights), the hues red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors. These building blocks of color are often arranged on a color wheel. From these three colors, with the addition of white or black, it is theoretically possible to mix the full range of colors in the spectrum. Orange, green, and violet are the secondary colors, or those colors that stand mid-way between the primary colors.
RHYTHM - For the visual arts, the regular repetition of a color, shape, or form.
SHAPED CANVAS - A development in painting that enabled artists to depart from the traditional parallelogram canvas and to explore the canvas as a form.
SILKSCREENING - A printing method in which the image is transferred to a surface by forcing ink through a fine mesh screen on which non-printing areas are "blocked out" to prevent ink penetration.
SURREALIST ART - An art style of the early 20th century that focused on fantasy, dream-world imagery, and the irrational juxtaposition of images, words, and things. Surrealists wanted to liberate the riches of the subconscious mind from the "prison" of the rational mind.
UNPRIMED CANVAS - Canvas is traditionally sealed with a primer paint before a painting is made. Sealing the canvas creates an even surface and protects the canvas. Unprimed canvas is not sealed.
WARM/ COOL COLORS - Warm colors are red, orange, or yellow, and cool colors are blue, green, or blue-violet. Psychologically, warm colors tend to be exciting, emphatic, and affirmative; optically, warm colors seem to advance or to project forward to the viewer. Psychologically, cool colors are calming, unemphatic, depressive; optically, they generally appear to recede.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnason, H.H. History of Modern Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981.
Boyd, Ron. "Exhibit Makes Kelly Mystique Less Abstract" in Dallas Times Herald, Saturday, Sept. 12, 1987, Sect F.
Crofton, Ian. A Dictionary of Art Quotations. London: Routledge, 1988
Ferrier, Jean-Louis, Director. Art of Our Century: The Chronicle of Western Art 1900 to the Present. New York: Prentice Hall Editions, 1989.
McCoy, Garnett, editor. David Smith. New York: Praeger, 1973.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phanomenologie der Wahrnehmung, Berlin: 1986.
O'Conner, Francis V. Jackson Pollock. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1967.
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Evaluation Sheet for Dallas Museum of Art Teaching Materials on
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Teaching Resources The Dallas Museum of Art 1717 North Harwood Dallas, Texas 75201
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Artworks:
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Evaluation Sheet for Dallas Museum of Art Docent Tour on
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Teaching Programs The Dallas Museum of Art 1717 North Harwood Dallas, Texas 75201:
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Language Choice & Language Power
Children's Use of Korean & English in a Two-Way Immersion Program
Soyong Lee
Introduction
We have a good mix of Korean children and English children in our [two-way immersion] program but it's extremely difficult to get the kids [both Korean and English] to speak Korean. The Korean kids are learning English so fast and they talk to the English kids in English, and the English kids are speaking English. And, I'll say, "Speak Korean, Speak Korean" and [they will] but that only lasts for that minute until I'm gone, and then they'll go back to English. Even if they would just say a few words to each other in Korean everyday, they would learn more Korean. (Ms. Kim. teacher in a Korean-English two-way immersion program)
Ms. Kim is a kindergarten teacher in a Korean English two-way immersion (hereafter referred to as TWI) program located in a metropolitan area. The TWI program is an instructional approach that aims to provide language minority students and native English speakers with instruction in both English and the minority language (Christian, 2001). According to Garcia (2005), such programs in the United States have three major goals: "to help language minority children learn English and succeed in U.S. schools; to help language majority children learn a foreign language without sacrificing their success in school; and to promote linguistic and ethnic equity among the children" (pp. 47-48).
Despite such program goals, in Ms. Kim's Korean-English TWI classroom where this research was conducted, only one group of the students, the Korean-natives, were learning a new language—English. Both the native Korean speakers and the native English speakers chose to speak in English over Korean, though Korean was used as the language of instruction by the teacher during 70% of instructional
Soyong Lee is an associate professor in the Educational Studies Department at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York.
time. Of more serious concern was the fact that the native Korean speakers were becoming less and less willing and, in some cases, able, to use their mother tongue. This pattern of language use continued to intensify as the children moved up into the upper grades. Ms. Kim's words above are telling of the dominance of English among the children in this classroom.
From a professional standpoint, the phenomenon also raises interest because it makes very little theoretical sense. Peer interaction has been emphasized as a critical, if not essential, component in learning a new language (Fassler, 2003; Gibbons, 2002; Yoon & Kim, 2012) especially in TWI programs (Collier & Thomas, 2004), yet in Ms. Kim's classroom it did not support the children's development of Korean.
Interest in this topic comes from personal experience of being a resource teacher in the same immersion program some years ago. I had experienced such tensions in my own classrooms where the use of English to the exclusion of Korean quickly became the norm among the children. In many cases, the native Korean children catered to the linguistic needs of their native English peers by making efforts to communicate in English and thus the native English speakers did not need to make efforts to use Korean to communicate.
In this article, I explore this phenomenon of children's language choice and language use in a TWI program. I do so by drawing on situations in which the children spoke of the principles guiding their choice of languages, and instances in which they voluntarily adopted Korean as the means of communication and made efforts to use Korean. Instances in which the children voluntarily chose to use Korean amongst themselves were few and far in between, but this latter focus is an effort to understand the contextual features—mainly the linguistic and the social—of language choice, and to see under what conditions Korean was utilized
12
by the children—why it was adopted, and how it was used. This focus is in line with the theoretical argument of this paper that power in language is contextual and its dynamics are defined by the context within which it operates (Foucault, 1978; Genishi, 1999; Sarup, 1993; Tobin, 1995).
The research questions for this project are as follows:
What are the children's understandings of the two languages that guide their choice and use of the languages?
What are the dynamics underlying the children choice of Korean and their subsequent uses of the language?
What are the dimensions of interaction that matter?
And, what can we learn from this study about the nature of language learning that can be applied to other language learning situations?
In closing, I address implications of this research for classroom practice and demonstrate the importance of putting children and their social relationships at the forefront of pedagogical decisions.
The Two-Way Immersion Dilemma
When TWI programs were first introduced in the United States in 1965 from Canada, there was general consensus among researchers in the field of secondlanguage acquisition that immersion education was a radical method of educating second-language learners (Genesee, 1987; Howard, Sugarman, & Christian, 2003; Lambert & Tucker, 1972; Swain & Lapkin, 1982). Genesee (1994) called it one of the most "interesting innovations in second language education during the past three decades" (p. 1).
In the past two decades especially, TWI programs have developed in all parts of the U.S. and many have been successful in educating students from both minority and mainstream linguistic backgrounds
(Lindholm-Leary & Genesee, 2010; Yoon & Kim, 2012). The Center for Applied Linguistics (2010) reports 367 programs in 28 states across the U.S. This number represents the number of programs that meet the criteria (integration, instruction, population, and duration of program) set by the Center and thus the real number of TWI programs in the U.S. is believed to be larger than represented in this data.
For instance, Potowski (2004) was interested in exploring just how much Spanish and English are used in a Spanish-English TWI program by quantifying the students' use of each language over a seven-month period. She reports that the students preferred to use English among themselves, whether it was in the classroom, the playground, or the lunch cafeteria. This held true for all grade-levels. She adds that her findings are in line with other researchers, Fortune (2001) and Carrigo (2000), who also found that the presence of proficient Spanish speakers does not guarantee a high level of Spanish use in immersion classrooms.
Alongside such developments, however, a group of researchers have expressed concern over the complexity of the social, cultural, political, and economic factors involved in language immersion programs and the extent to which such factors influence the balanced use and learning of both the ethnic language and English (Edelsky & Hudelson, 1978; Potowski, 2004, 2008; Valdes, 1997; Vasquez, 2003).
From a sociocultural and political standpoint, Valdes (1997) urges educators to examine the complexity of TWI education. Valdes explains that the complexity inherent in TWI programs lies in the diversity of the students' linguistic and cultural backgrounds as well as in the fact that supporting language study among majority group members who speak English, and providing minority children with access to the curriculum in a heritage language they can understand often pose a dilemma. She advocates for "difficult issues and complex questions" (p. 420) such as the quality of minority languages used within TWI programs, the issue of the children's, the educators' and the public's attitudes towards bilingual education, and issues of language and power, be a part of the conversation for dual immersion programs. To quote her directly,
If we are truthful, perhaps we will admit that supporters and proponents of duallanguage immersion face a dilemma. They want to find ways to support language study among majority group members, and they want to provide minority children with access to the curriculum in a language they can understand. These two objectives, however, have very different agendas. (p.419)
The linguistic and cultural objectives of TWI programs must serve two groups of students who speak two separate first languages and are, in many cases, of different ethnic groups. They must do so in the two languages that the students come with which often, in the larger society, each serve distinct purposes and therefore are loaded with social, cultural, and political baggage. This baggage, together with the languages, is unloaded in the classroom as they become the medium of instruction and the interplay between the cultures and the languages poses a dilemma.
The language that is used to carry on the everyday life of institutions, the language that everyone is expected to learn and is taken for granted, is the unmarked language. It is the language of power. The other language, or languages, are marked. Markedness is a context-specific phenomenon that can only be determined by comparing the status of languages within a particular social domain.
Edelsky and Hudelson (1978), from their study of TWI programs more than 30 years ago, report that the balanced use of both the minority language and the majority language (the language of the society) in TWI classrooms is by no means automatic or the norm. For one, the relative political positions of the native language and English, namely the markedness phenomenon, is an important factor in how the languages are learned or in some cases, not learned. The markedness phenomenon, as the authors claim, comes from the relative political relationship between the languages outside of the school context.
Edelsky (1991), in a chapter reflecting on her initial study of two-way immersion programs more than a decade later, comments that the non-acquisition of Spanish was something that she found in both of her studies of TWI programs that had substantial in-school contextual differences. She adds that because markedness in language originates from speech communities outside of the classroom, primary efforts for change must be made in those communities where it is rooted in.
Schools, though they cannot change power relations between languages, can and must work to understand and make changes to the program as the practices that have become normative in such pro-
13
grams may be rooted in an unnoticeable blanket of resistance.
Understanding Power in Language
During the initial stages of this study, I asked a number of people from the school community—parents, teachers, and administrators—what seemed to many the very obvious question, "Why do so many of the children choose to speak in English over Korean?" Many of them replied that it was because English was the language of power:
We need English to survive here, not like Korean, so I think it's more powerful and they end up using more of it.
Kids who speak English know that they don't really have to learn Korean, but the Korean kids know they have to learn English in this country. It has more power, way more power.
These responses are a part of the grand narrative (Lyotard, 1979) representing the relationship between English and many low-status minority languages in the U.S. According to Lyotard (1979), a grand narrative is an overarching theory on why and how things are the way they are. Grand narratives represent a single truth, often based on the cultural values and political agendas of those in power (Arnold, 2000), and thus they impact or reinforce existing power relations and customs within our society. They do not necessarily explain why things are the way they are, but they function as a tool to legitimize certain types of knowledge or phenomenon (Lyotard, 1979).
For post-structuralists and other scholars who come from a socio-cultural perspective on language learning (Au, 1979; Ballenger, 1999; Cazden, 2002; Dyson, 1989; Gee, 2005; Genishi, 1999; Heath, 1983), power is a phenomenon that is contextualized by the particular conditions in effect. Power as it relates to
In this study, I follow in the theoretical tradition of post-structuralists (Foucault, 1978; Sarup, 1993; Tobin, 1995) who, in understanding the world, replace the notion of grand narratives with small narratives based on localized knowledge. Post-structuralism posits that there is no one truth. There are only multiple truths that exist in relation to other localized truths. Thus, entities such as identity and power are also dynamic terms that can only be located in the social practice of a culture (Foucault, 1978; Sarup, 1993; Tobin, 1995). They are never fixed, but are constantly in motion (Foucault, 1978).
Feature
language, then, can only be recognized by the particularities of its context and there is nothing inherent about the language, or the person using the language, that awards it power. For instance, in a conversation, the relations of power among and between the participants can change at any given moment as conversants pull from different resources, adopt different positions vis-àvis their conversants, and reference various sociopolitical and historical worlds.
As Genishi (1999) put it,
As language, meaning, and subjectivity are never fixed, poststructuralists assume that power, an underlying factor in all social interaction, is not a commodity that some individuals or social groups possess to control others. Drawing on the work of Foucault, poststructuralists replace this static notion of power with a strategic one in which power is conceptualized as circulating throughout social relations so that individuals both enact and undergo the effects of power (Foucault, 1978; Sarup, 1993). (p.289)
According to Genishi(1999), the power that coincides with the use of English in Ms. Kim's classrooms is drawn from the contextual particularities of the situation rather than the English language or the individuals using English. Power is dynamic and it circulates through social relations. The poststructuralists' perspective provides an optimal framework to study the phenomenon of language use in Ms. Kim's classroom as it has the potential to expose the particularities of the context surrounding the children's language choice and language use. Under this framework, the phenomenon under study can not be dismissed by grand notions such as 'English is the language of power' and the focus becomes the contextual particulars and the ideology behind children's choice and use of the language (Fairclough, 1989).
Methods
This study was conducted in a Korean English TWI Program located in an urban metropolitan area in California. The program, at the time of the study, maintained grades from kindergarten through fourth grade with a population of 78 students. This program was initiated by a group of Korean parents who felt the need for an educational program that would offer their children the opportunity to be bilingual in Korean and English while having equal access to the curriculum and educational opportunities offered through the public school system.
This study was conducted in the kindergarten classroom that had a total population of 19 students. The student population was divided into two categories, the native Korean speakers and the native English speakers for the purpose of this study. The two categories are language categories, though they do overlap with ethnicity for a majority of the students. 1 The categories were devised in order to group the students according to the language that they were most proficient in. I did not have focal children, though children who were identified as playing a major role in sustaining or disrupting patterns of language use were followed and observed more than others.
During the data collection period, I observed for two hours a day, twice a week, for a full academic semester. At first, I observed during both Korean and English time. The kindergarten class had a 70:30 division of instructional time for Korean and English. As the scope of the research narrowed down and questions and sub-questions became clear, I only observed during time that was designated for Korean. The two-hour Korean block consisted of a show-and-tell event, one whole group literacy lesson, group work which was organized into centers, and a mid-morning break. During center time, individual literacy activities were planned that reinforced what was discussed during the preceding whole group lesson.
This study employs a qualitative research methodology because the questions I ask in this project "are formulated to investigate the topic in all their complexity" (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992, p. 2) and the nature of this project is one that requires examination of the phenomenon from a multitude of perspectives.
All classroom observations were audiotaped and accompanied by fieldnotes that provided contextual information for each of the observation sessions. In addition to the classroom observations, I talked to the children during class about what they said or put down on paper. Data also came from the classroom teacher, Ms. Kim, whom I observed on a regular basis and interviewed twice during the observation period.
The parents of the children, as well as administrators of the school and teachers from other classrooms, were interviewed informally during lunch breaks and dismissal time. I asked them their thoughts on TWI programs in general and whether they had noticed the phenomenon that I had noticed among the children—the nonacquisition of the minority language. I took down notes of these conversations and used
14
them to contextualize the phenomenon under study.
After the first month, I focused in on when children used Korean to talk to each other or made efforts to engage in conversations using Korean. However, instances in which the native Korean children and the native English children interacted in Korean were scarce. The recorded interactions were transcribed in Korean and English. All Korean interactions were later translated into English for the purpose of write-up. This study is a part of a larger study in which I investigate the development of children's bilingualism and biliteracy.
My role in the classroom was mainly that of a participant-observer (Merriam, 1998), moving along the observer-participant continuum as called for by different situations in the classroom and the needs of the teacher and students.
Data analysis was an on-going process during data collection. The data were coded using strategies outlined by Miles and Huberman (1994). I relied on their concept of "three concurrent flows of activity" (p. 10)—data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification—for data analysis. After each observation, I listened to the audiotapes and looked at the fieldnotes to look for instances that seemed significant to the questions that I was asking.
I ended up with a number of different categories that corresponded to each of my research questions. As a final step, to draw conclusions from the categories, I looked through the data to see what all the categories really meant. I looked for regularities and patterns in the categories to form larger, core-categories (axial-coding) keeping in mind the research questions of the study. I eliminated some categories that were not well supported by the data and ones that seemed minor. This process lent itself to fewer categories that explain the nature of language choice and language use among the children.
I summarized the observations and transcribed parts of the data that seemed most relevant to my research questions to reduce the data. The same process was applied to the two interviews with the teacher, Ms. Kim, and my conversations with the other educators in the school and the parents. Once I had collected a significant amount of data, I displayed the reduced data in organized, compressed ways and I followed this process through until I had collected all the data at the end of the academic semester.
Findings
Norms and Expectations Guiding the Children's Language Choice
The children had an established set of cultural norms and expectations that guided their choice of language in interaction with their peers. They had built-up underlying beliefs about who speaks and does not speak, or does not need to speak the minority language, Korean. The following vignette illustrates this point.
I (Author) am sitting at the Korean alphabet center next to Wayne who is a native English speaker. Wayne is asking me a question regarding one of the Korean words starting with the Korean letter of the day. Wayne's task is to pick a pictureword set from the worksheet and draw the picture and copy the word under it in his Korean alphabet book. Chris soon joins in on our conversation. Chris is a native Korean speaker who also has a good command of English. (E) indicates that the child is a native English speaker and (K) indicates that the child is a native Korean speaker. Korean utterances are capitalized. They have been translated for the purpose of write-up.
Wayne (E): Hey, can I do this one, the fingers? (pointing to the picture on the Korean alphabet board with two fingers crossing)
Author: YOU CAN BUT THAT DOESN'T SAY FINGERS. THAT SAYS YAK-SOK (PROMISE), LIKE WHEN YOU MAKE A PROMISE. YOU CROSS YOUR FINGERS. (I hold up my pinky and gesture him to hold up his to cross fingers).
Wayne (E): Can I do the fingers with the fingers crossing?
Author: THIS SAYS YAK-SOK. CAN YOU SAY YAK-SOK. This says YAK-SOK, promise. YAK-SOK. Can you say that?
Wayne (E): I can do that, the fingers crossing with the pinky. (Chris who is sitting adjacent to Wayne taps me on the arm)
Chris (K): HE'S NOT KOREAN. HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IF YOU SPEAK TO HIM IN KOREAN.
Author: YOU DON'T THINK HE KNOWS ANY KOREAN?
Chris (K): HE KNOWS A LITTLE BIT LIKE A BABY, BUT HE KNOWS ENGLISH.
Author: HOW DOES HE COME TO CLASS EVERY DAY IF HE DOESN'T KNOW KOREAN? I AM SURE HE IS LEARNING SOME KOREAN.
Chris (K): I DON'T KNOW. HE HAS TO ASK PEOPLE, LIKE ME, I HAVE TO
TELL HIM IN ENGLISH BECAUSE HE DOESN'T KNOW.
Author: WELL, SHOULD WE HELP HIM LEARN THE LANGUAGE, SO THAT HE CAN TALK TO ME AND YOU IN KOREAN?
Chris (K): I AM HELPING HIM. I TELL HIM THINGS WHEN THE TEACHER TALKS TO HIM IN KOREAN AND HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SHE'S SAYING AND I TELL HIM WHAT HE HAS TO SAY.
In many situations, native Korean speakers provided assistance for their native English peers like Wayne. Chris's (K) expectation for his native English peer was representative of many of the Korean children's views of their peers as evidenced by remarks during peer conversations and interactions with adults in the classroom.
In the above dialogue, Wayne starts the conversation with me in English. I respond to him in Korean trying to engage him in the language. As is evident, Wayne keeps to English, despite my efforts to engage him in some kind of interaction in Korean. In my response to Wayne's question I switch from Korean to English mid-way through my sentence. I do so to explain the meaning of the word, "yak-sok," which means "promise" in English, hoping to have him say it at least once but my efforts are clearly in vein as Wayne continues to proceed in English.
Clearly, the children's expectations of competency in the Korean language ran along ethnic lines and the children knew who had to know Korean and who could do without the language. The children's language expectations for each other were especially evident in the native Korean children's willingness to code-switch from Korean to English for their native English speaking peers, regardless of their level of competency in the English language.
I am reminded by Chris that Wayne does not speak Korean and that he needs to be helped by his Korean-speaking peers when it comes to Korean. In fact, Chris insists that he does help Wayne by translating for him during lessons when he is addressed by the teacher in Korean. Chris' idea of help is not exactly the kind that we as teachers wish for, nor is it in line with the theoretical basis that TWI programs are built on which is that two groups of children each with a different first language would serve as language teachers and models for each other in their home language. Such theoretical perspectives are not always in the minds of the
15
children in TWI classrooms as illustrated in the above dialogue.
He does, however, willingly accept the language help that is offered by his native Korean peers that comes in the form of direct translation because that enables him to function in his environment and complete the assigned work in expected ways. Such language norms and expectations were shared amongst the children creating a culture that governed the kinds of language choices that they made.
What is more surprising is that the children from the two different languages groups are in agreement when it comes to language expectations. In our conversation above, Wayne turns down my invitation to repeat words in Korean and he shows no signs of hesitation in his speech as he proceeds the conversation in English. He does not see himself in the role of a language learner within the context of the classroom nor does he expect others to teach him a language. He wants someone to respond to his question so he can move on with his work of drawing the picture and copying down the Korean word.
Language Choice and Social Work
Instances in which the native Korean speakers and the native English speakers used Korean in peer interaction were scarce as evidenced through classroom observations. The native Korean speakers did use Korean as means of communication both with adults and amongst themselves in the classroom though this trend also became less observable as the year progressed.
When Korean was used in peer interactions between the native Korean speakers and the native English speakers, it was used to accomplish a certain social goal. The situation called for the use of Korean (rather than English) and the children used the language to reach a social end of some sort. In a number of instances, Korean was used to create a sense of community amongst themselves, whether it was to create a sense of community during a fieldtrip when they were surrounded by people from outside of the school, or to create a community that excluded other children in the school who were not a part of the program. The latter is the case in the dialogue below.
Jonathan who was in one of the monolingual first grade classrooms was a regular visitor in Ms. Kim's classroom. When his teacher felt that he needed some time out he was brought to the kindergarten classroom. Jonathan is sitting by one of the centers and is looking in at the children
writing in their alphabet books. Wayne (E), Tom (E), and David (K), all children in the kindergarten classroom and all seated at the writing center tease Jonathan that he has again been bad in his class and is on time-out. Understandably, this upsets Jonathan and he starts talking to Wayne (E) and Tom (E) in a demeaning tone about how he will stop them from playing with the balls during lunchtime. Korean is capitalized. (E) stands for native English speaker and (K) for native Korean speaker.
Jonathan (E): Yes I can, yes I can, I can do that, me and my friends can, (unintelligible) do it secretly and the teacher doesn't.
Tom (E): We can do secret, we can get the ball from, when . . .
Wayne (E): We can speak in Korean and you don't know Korean. (whispers something in David's ear)
David (K): (in Korean) YEAH, WE CAN GET THE BALL (arms swinging) GET THE BALL WHILE YOU'RE EATING LUNCH AND HIDE IT.
Wayne (E): GET THE BALL (arms flinging).
Tom (E): GET THE BALL, GET THE BALL, GET THE BALL. (starts giggling)
David (K): YEAH, WE GET ALL THE BALLS AND HIDE IT. DO THAT?
Wayne (E): GET THE BALL. ALL. ALL, ALL, BALL.
Tom (E): ALL, ALL, ALL, BALL.
David (K): GET THE BALL, ALL THE BALLS, WE'RE GOING TO DO THAT.
Wayne (E): (GET IT FROM) JONATHAN, GET THE BALL.
David (K): JONATHAN HAS NO BALL IN THE PLAYGROUND.
Tom (E): JONATHAN, ALL, NO BALL.
Wayne (E): NO, NO, NO, ALL.
Tom (E): ALL, NO BALL, NO, ALL.
Jonathan: (Mimics the children, makes faces, and seems displeased)
David (K): HEY MAYBE YOU HAVE TO SIT ON THE CHAIRS, ON THE PLAYGROUND ALL THE TIME. (whispers something in Tom's ear) BECAUSE YOU'VE BEEN BAD, NO BALL, NO.
Tom (E): BAD, NO BALL. ALL.
Wayne (E): NO BALL, NO BALL.
Certainly, the above interactions are not the kinds of interactions that we as teachers condone. They are, nonetheless, interactions that are a part of childhood classrooms on a daily basis as they were on this day of data collection.
David also provides linguistic scaffolding for Tom and Wayne by breaking down the sentences into smaller units, by using hand gesture, and by repeating and exaggerating certain words and phrases to give them meaning in a non-pedagogical manner. Wayne and Tom each repeat after David, "GET THE BALL." David repeats what Wayne and Tom have just said (GET THE BALL), but he adds another word, ALL, to the sentence thereby expanding the repertoire of words associated with the topic and making it apart of his peers' linguistic capital (Ervin-Tripp, 1991). Wayne and Tom adopt the word, ALL, using it to address their inherent purpose of showing Jonathan that they can speak in a language that he does not understand. David adds more words—NO, ALL, BAD—to the conversation towards the end of the dialogue which again, Wayne and Tom gladly use to accomplish their social goal.
The Korean portion of the conversation above is sparked by Wayne whispering something in David's ear. When I later asked David what Wayne had whispered in his ear, he told me that Wayne, his native English peer, suggested they start speaking in Korean so Jonathan, the first-grade visitor who does not understand a word of Korean, would not know what they were saying. In essence, David's first sentence in Korean, "YEAH, WE CAN GET THE BALL, WHILE YOU'RE EATING LUNCH AND THEN HIDE IT," along with his gestures—arms swinging as if trying to hug a ball—provided the appropriate words and expressions that were needed in the conversation. His initial sentence acted as a strong invitation for Wayne and Tom to join him in Korean.
It is not clear if Tom and Wayne know all the words that they are using in the above dialogue but that does not stop them from participating in the on-going interactions. The three children take 16 turns in speech. Their turns do not follow a recognizable pattern of oral interactions in classrooms—they are not asking or responding to questions, disagreeing/agreeing with one another, trying to clarify a point or two in the midst of a conflict, or asking for clarification—nor do they make much grammatical sense, but they are able to sustain the conversation through 16 turns because they have a social goal in mind.
This number of turns in Korean was unusual given the fact that during the data collection period, the longest observed teacher-child or peer conversational turns
16
in Korean during instructional time was 13 for the native Korean children, and five for their non-native Korean counterparts.
The words and sentences used by the children in the above dialogue carry meaning within the immediate context. That is, the words and sentences refer to persons in the contexts (you, Jonathan, we), familiar events (playing ball in the playground), and familiar items and actions associated with the immediate situation (ball, get the ball, hide it, etc). They are also participating in a speech genre (teasing a peer) in which they have shared understanding of the agenda. The situation that the children created themselves is sustained by their inherent interest in each other and the social energy they bring to the event followed by their authentic use of the language. The participants, individually and in union, skillfully orchestrate their resources to circulate the language to reach a particular social end. In essence, their motivation behind the use of Korean in the above dialogue is all social.
Language Play
It is hard not to notice the language play inherent in the above dialogue. The children repeat and mimic each other for the enjoyment of tossing words back and forth at each other, sometimes being amazed at the string of words that they can say. Many adults would easily become tired of such a situation in which repetition and mimicking was required to sustain the conversation (Bell, 2005; Ervin-Tripp, 1991; Fassler, 200; Tarone, 2000, 2006).
In other words, to borrow from Bushnell (2009), the children are not necessarily engaged in a meaning-focused task characterized by a set of conversational moves which work toward mutual comprehension (Lyster, 2002). The three children take 16 turns in speech. It is not clear if Tom and Wayne know all the words that they are using in the above dialogue but that does not stop them from participating in the ongoing interactions.
Most of the dialogue between David, Tom, and Wayne make very little linguistic sense. Words, phrases, and sentences that David utters are repeated by Tom and Wayne in no particular order or form. The two English speakers (Tom and Wayne) take from the target language speaker David (Korean), words and phrases that they are able to say and take turns tossing them back and forth. There are only 11 Korean words being circulated as 11 turns are made among the three children and very little meaning negotiation takes place.
Tarone (2000) reminds us that language play is a large part of language learning. He adds that it provides learners with opportunities to absorb others' voices (Bahktin, 1981) into their own linguistic repertoire and use it for their own will. According to Bahktin (1981) we do not learn words from a dictionary. We learn words and utterance by adopting and adapting them from others and we give them a "blow of intention" to make them our own. Tarone (2000) suggests that language play provides language learners with opportunities to experiment with and practice others' new voices and that is exactly what the children, especially Wayne and Tom are doing in the above speech event. They are playing around with words that David, the native Korean speaker, provides and reinforces and by doing so they are trying out David's new voice in their own ways.
Non-native speaker peer group interactions have not received much attention as contexts for language learning and language development in the field of language learning (Fassler, 2003). In fact, groups absent of native target language speakers have been downplayed as appropriate contexts for language learning. However, as we see in the dialogue above, Tom and Wayne clearly play a role within this setting especially from the perspective of language play. Tom and Wayne toss utterances back and forth with each other thereby creating opportunities for repetition, a component important for language learning.
Language play, however, is happening at a different level. It is also important to note the role that Tom and Wayne, both non-native speakers of the target language, play in the dialogue. For instance, Tom says "JONATHAN, ALL, NO BALL" and Wayne follows with "NO, NO, NO, ALL" selectively choosing from what Tom has just said. Tom then repeats Wayne's words though in a different order. Each of their turns make way for the other person to repeat or reinforce the language that is being circulated. However, inherent in this language play is unintended language learning happening through practice and repetition.
Discussion and Implications
Ovando (1990) reminds us that bilingual education is not just about pedagogical effectiveness and that inherent in the realities of bilingual classrooms are dimensions of political power and cultural identity that affect its outcomes. Learning a second language while still learning and developing your mother-tongue does have a heavy political and sociocultural dimension to it, especially if your mother-tongue is deemed "less powerful" than the other language in your society. Indeed, the underuse of the ethnic language in TWI immersion programs where the ethnic language is competing with a higher status language such as English is not unique to Ms. Kim's classroom. This has been documented in a number of different contexts with various ethnic languages (Carrigo, 2000; Potowski, 2004; Quintanar-Sarellana, 2004; Valdes, 1997; Vasquez, 2003).
This proposal also has the danger of making us think that this is the only thing we can do to bring equity to our language practices and this assumption leaves educators with their hands tied. If English is the language of power, and the power is controlled by the larger society in a static manner, then this is a fixed phenomenon and very little can be done to balance the use of languages among children in classrooms such as the one under study.
As Edelsky (1991) states, it is important to remind ourselves that the status of languages originates from speech communities outside of the classroom and she porposes that primary efforts for change must be made in those communities in which it is rooted. I agree with this proposal. It is critical to work at the macro level of speech communities to bring awareness to the value of ethnic languages and to change attitudes towards minority languages and cultures. It is, in many ways, the only way we will fully resolve the issues at hand such as the phenomenon in this study. This proposal, however, because of all its might, takes time and effort at a grand level. It may take generations to change people's attitudes and to move away from the ethnocentric views of minority languages, let alone bring equity into the equation.
This study is a reminder that in addition to the work that must be done at the macro level, we have work to do at the micro level, at the level of the classroom. This study is also an attempt to remind us that power in language is not a static entity. As the findings of this article illustrate, power is contextual. It is contextualized by the particularities of the situation. It is fluid in nature, moving around as the conditions of the context change and as participants situate and re-situate themselves within the interactions. The findings of this research point to a number of contextual dimensions and language dynamics. In the following sections I discuss the implications of these findings in further detail.
17
The Importance of Social Relationships in Language Learning
The findings of this research point to the importance of placing children's social relationships at the forefront of pedagogical decisions and language policies. The social possibilities that children saw by using Korean or English framed the language choices they made during interactions among themselves and also with adults. Children chose to speak in the language that enabled them to do more in a given situation, for instance, use Korean to form a community that excluded others as in the example presented in this paper, or use it to be the classroom teacher in playing school.
For instance, the policy did not deal with how friendships could be made, reassured, but also at times, be controlled. The policy in and of itself was not capable of doing such work because it was top-down, and thus prescriptive, and it had little to do with the children's language intentions. A close examination of the discursive spaces surrounding peer interactions is necessary in order to understand the dynamics of social interaction at the micro level.
More power was afforded to those who were able to use the language appropriate to the situation. The children's language choices and uses were not guided by the program's language policy, which instituted a 70:30 division of language use between Korean and English. Such a policy had a meager effect on their choice of language because the policy suggested no directions for how the language should be used to channel social energy, nor did it hint at the kinds of possible situations in which social work could be done.
Language Learners as Communicators
According to Lindfors (2008) when adults interact with infants or toddlers, often the adults' speech is modified. However, she reminds us that the purpose of such modifications are not pedagogical in nature. In other words, the adult is not modifying the language as an effort to teach the child the language. Rather, the modifications emerge as an effort to make oneself understood and to have a conversation. The key purpose in such modifications of language, according to Lindfors (2008), is to "help the child participate" (p.43) in the ongoing conversation.
We often forget that language is a tool for communication (Vygotsky, 1969) and that ultimately language learners are communicators. They are participants in
Feature
an on-going language event. These basic rules of language learning are often forgotten, especially when it comes to the field of second language learning. The discourse of second language acquisition has largely been dominated by a focus on pedagogical issues: discussions of teachers and learners, masters and novices, and by the methods of teaching and the efficiency of learning.
In fact, the children's interactions are geared towards each other as communicators who are in the business of participating in an interactional event. Communication is about the transmission of information between and among individuals via language. As was evident in this study, language learning can also happen as children play with language by mimicking each other's utterances or taking turns in what makes very little sense to many adults.
Children, though they do teach and learn from each other, are not always gathered or oriented towards each other in such organized and direct ways, as masters and novices (Vygotsky, 1978), or as teachers and learners. This is true even in instructional settings such as TWI programs that are planned and implemented under such pedagogical assumptions. The children's relationships and their interests guide their motivations to interact or not interact with each other and for what purpose (Dyson, 1992).
In these situations there is no distinction between teachers and learners, but there is learning happening at a very authentic level because language play is a large part of the children's repertoire of communication. Children reinforce the vocabulary being circulated through repetition that is backed up by an intention to be playful and to be connected to others in their surroundings. Language play is safe grounds for all language learners because it is play and it is hard to be wrong in play (Bushnell, 2009).
As teachers and teacher educators we must think about how language play can safely become a part of our classrooms, especially in the earlier grades. Under the current climate of high-stakes testing
Bushnell (2009) notes that prior to the 2000s language play was not taken seriously by the field of language learning. Though now there is more awareness of the importance of language play in many of our early childhood and childhood classroom, language play is still not a concept that is at the forefront of classroom instruction and language development.
and accountability, this is certainly not an easy task. It is a difficult task to find a fitting place for the idea of children playing around with language in a classroom that is dominated by state mandates and standardized exams. The two seem quite incompatible, if not antithetical.
Children reinforce the vocabulary being circulated through repetition that is backed up by an intention to communicate and, therefore, be connected to others in their surroundings. They are speakers, communicators, people who have social work to do, but not necessarily masters and novices working in organized and hierarchical relationships (Vygotsky, 1971). As Birsch and others (1996) remind us, language curriculum development and the implementation of materials must focus on language that has meaning and that is used for meaningful purpose in a real-life context.
However, to exclude it from the classroom where children are learning a language, be it their first or their second, would be to take away a resource that has its roots deep in what is natural to children, and maybe to all human beings. Children's own resources have long been neglected in the traditional curriculum and especially in the field of language learning, which has been dominated by the discourse of methods and more recently by the discourse of assessment and accountability. As educators, we need to redefine what it means to honor what children bring to the table and what it means to use those resources in teaching children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds.
Conclusion
TWI classrooms where more than one language is being learned must take into consideration how power is being circulated in interactions and implement changes that alter the dimensions and dynamics of communication to allow for a balanced use of the two languages. Classrooms, we are reminded once again by Edelsky (1991), can be sites for change, but they can also be sites of resistance and struggle.
If we resist alternative ways of conceptualizing relationships among language learners and alternative ways of thinking about how children learn (or in some cases, do not learn) to communicate in a new language, we will only reinforce the teaching and learning practices already in place and we may not be able to change circumstances such as the ones in this
18
study. Working towards broader and more in-depth understandings of programs for diverse populations is especially important because it is one way of illuminating issues of equity in the classroom that may otherwise be ignored. By "foregrounding the relational and the continually shifting present" (Genishi, 1999, p.291) we may begin to understand TWI programs as sites that are complicated by power play and grand narratives.
Only after acknowledging and accepting such realities can we work towards achieving justice and equity in language education (Potowski & Matts, 2008). Our bilingual classrooms must become places where languages are learned and languages are added. They must not become grounds for language loss, especially not for minority children, families, and communities in struggle to maintain and celebrate their languages and cultures.
Note
1 The native Korean speakers were all ethnically Korean and spoke Korean as their first language. All of the eight children who were not ethnically Korean came from homes that spoke English as their first language and they make up the majority of the native English speaker category. The three bi-racial children who came from homes where one parent was of Korean ethnicity and the other parent was of a different ethnicity all spoke English as their first language and it was the language that they used at home and thus they are all categorized as native English speakers.
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Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. | <urn:uuid:d21e97a7-2533-4d52-89c0-a9c4a10da77c> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1065314.pdf | 2020-09-23T06:09:28+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400209999.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20200923050545-20200923080545-00180.warc.gz | 388,461,671 | 11,522 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.966249 | eng_Latn | 0.998701 | [
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DIRECTORATE FOR QUALITY AND STANDARDS IN EDUCATION
Department of Curriculum Management
Educational Assessment Unit
Annual Examinations for Secondary Schools 2014
FORM 3 TEXTILES STUDIES MARKING SCHEME
1a. Skirt A: Waistband
Skirt B: Facing
Skirt C: Drawstring casing
(½ mark x 3 = 1½ marks)
b. Skirt A
Any one of:
Fabric: Linen / Polyester / Denim, or any other suitable fabric.
(1 mark)
Any one of:
Reason: It is an easycare fabric. / It is long lasting. / Denim keeps its shape well and is suitable for straight skirt.
Accept any other suitable reason.
(2 marks)
Skirt C:
Fabric: Jersey
Reason: It stretches, making the skirt very comfortable.
(1 mark)
(2 marks)
c. Example: Skirt B
Front facing
Back facing
Name of pattern piece:
Front of skirt
Name of pattern piece:
Back of skirt
Name of pattern piece:
Front Facing and
Back Facing
Front
Skirt
Back
Skirt
(1 mark x 3 = 3 marks)
d. Layout for Skirt B on one way 1m 50cm wide fabric. Accept other suitable layouts.
fold
selvedges
Front
Skirt
Back
Skirt
Drawing (1 mark x 3 = 3 marks)
Labelling fold and selvedge (½ mark x 2 = 1 mark)
e. Straight grain is the direction of the straight threads of the material; therefore, the direction 'place to straight grain' of material usually refers to the warp threads. (2 marks)
f. i. Name of seam: open or plain seam
(½ mark)
ii.
- Put right sides together, pin and tack.
- Machine seam, neaten seam edges and press seam open.
(Drawings: 1 mark x 2 = 2 marks)
(Description: 1 mark x 2 = 2 marks)
i. Name:Edge stitching(½ mark)
Use: to prevent the edges from rolling or curling (1 mark)
ii. Name: Bound seam(½ mark)
Use: on items that have a tendency to ravel (1 mark)
g.
h.
i.
j.
- Fold fabric right sides together with fitting lines matching. Pin and tack along the line.
- Machine on stitching line, starting at the wide and tapering to nothing at the point. Press vertical darts towards the centre; press horizontal darts downwards.
(1 mark x 2 = 2 marks)
(1 mark x 4 = 4 marks)
| | | Method of | Characteristic property of the fabric construction | Fabric made |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | fabric | | from this fabric |
| | | construction | | construction |
| i. | Knitting | | Stretches It ladders Resilient Versatile Comfortable and flexible Keeps us warm Any other valid reason | |
| ii. | Weaving | | Firm/ Strong Frays Could be used for different seasons Easy to care for Any other valid reason | |
| iii. | Non-woven/ Felting/ Bonding | | Shapes easily It is firm It is soft Easier to produce Economical (no warp / weft) Any other valid reason | |
(1 mark x 9 = 9 marks)
iv. Possible answers:
- Lace can be used to enhance (decorate) a bridesmaid's dress by covering the bodice of the dress and used on the skirt as well.
- Lace can be used for sleeves and to cover the bodice of a bridesmaid dress. Give credit to other valid answers.
(1 mark x 2 = 2 marks)
2a. 1. Bobbin winder
2. Tension disk
3. Free arm
4. Presser foot
5. Hand wheel/ Balance wheel
(½ mark x 5 = 2½ marks)
b.
Thread breaking
↓
- Needle may be set incorrectly.
- Needle may be bent or blunt.
- Tension may be too tight.
- Machine may be threaded incorrectly.
Needle breaking
Missing stitches
Why do these problems occur?
↓
↓
- Fabric may be too thick for the needle.
- Needle may not be inserted the right way around.
- Needle may be bent or blunt.
Any one from each column above.
3a. Hot wax
b. Tjanting, Iron, Frame and Rubber gloves
Seams puckering
↓
- Needle may be too coarse or stitches may be too long, especially if sewing on fine fabric.
- Tension may be too tight.
(1 mark x 4 = 4 marks)
(½ mark)
(½ mark x 4 = 2 marks)
c.
i. The fabric must be stretched over a frame so that it is not in contact with the surface of the table.
ii. Apply wax.
iii. When the wax has cooled, take the Batik off the frame and put the fabric into dye.
- Needle may be too fine for the thread used.
- Needle not accurately set.
- Needle may be bent or blunt.
iv. When you have completed your design, iron the Batik between sheets of absorbent paper.
v. Finally wash your Batik.
d. Any two of:
- Use rubber gloves to protect the skin against chemicals.
- Work in well ventilated areas.
- Use appropriate utensils to stir dyes.
Accept other valid answers.
(1 mark x 2 = 2 marks)
4a. Plant and Animal.
(½ mark x 2 = 1 mark)
b. The production of natural fibres is subject to outside factors like weather conditions, which affect supply and demand. The production of synthetic fibres from chemicals is not subject to weather conditions and can be geared to the demand much more easily. (1 mark)
c. i. Warmth
(1 mark)
ii. Wool's fibres are of a (continuous, staple) type.
Wool (is very resilient, creases badly) because of its natural crimp.
(Merino, Tussore) wool has fine, soft fibres.
When wool is burnt, there is the characteristic smell of burning (grass, hair).
Wool loses its strength when (dry, wet)
.
White wool will turn (yellow, grey) in prolonged sunlight.
(½ mark x 6 = 3 marks)
d. i. Fill the beaker with water up to the 100ml mark.
Roll a sample of fabric and, holding it with the tweezers, lower it in the water-filled beaker. Soak for 1 minute.
Remove the fabric from the beaker and record the amount of water absorbed (100ml minus water left in beaker) on a bar chart. (1 mark x 3 = 3 marks)
g.
ii. Wool is highly absorbent.
iii.
iv. Mitin/ Dielmoth/ Eulan (To choose one)
v.
Made of 100% Wool
(½ mark x 3 = 1½ marks)
(½ mark)
Wool rich blend
(½ mark x 2 = 1 mark)
5a. On the picture provided students are to draw and name two embroidery stitches.
(Drawings: 1 mark x 2 = 2 marks)
(Naming: 1 mark x 2 = 2 marks)
b. It stretches the fabric to ensure well-formed embroidery stitches.
(1 mark)
c. Beads, sequins, ribbon, decorative buttons.
Other answers possible. Accept any two relevant answers.
(½ mark x 2 = 1 mark)
d. Accept one:
Embroidery needle/Crewel needle. (½ mark)
e. Permanent stitches are those stitches which are left in the garment. (1 mark)
f. i) Even tacking
(½ mark)
ii) Type of thread: Tacking thread
(1 mark)
Reason: It is easily pulled and broken off, which makes it suitable for temporary stitches.
(2 marks)
Sewing thread: To machine pattern pieces of bag together.
Metallic thread: To be used for embroidery stitches.
Accept any other relevant answers.
h. Strong, water proof, easy to care for.
Accept any other relevant answer.
(1 mark x 2 = 2 marks)
(1 mark)
6a. One of:
Nature, plants, animals, history, manufactured products, manufactured forms.
Accept any other relevant answer.
(1 mark)
b. A mood board is a collage of items such as photographs, sketches, clippings, fabric swatches and colour samples. (1 mark)
c. e.g. Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel. She designed the little black dress and introduced trousers to women.
d. Fashion is changing from time to time. On the other hand, fashion trends tend to repeat themselves after so many years with a slight difference. (2 marks)
e. Haute couture: high-class dress making. It is made for a specific customer and is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric.
```
Accept any other relevant answer. (Name of fashion designer: 1 mark) (Reason: 1 mark)
```
Fashion houses: The place where fashion designers work.
Cat walk: A narrow, usually elevated platform used by models to demonstrate clothing and accessories during a fashion show. (1 mark x 3 = 3 marks)
f) i) Students are to draw a labelled front view of an outfit with the theme Animal print. Give credit for design, creativity and neatness (1 mark x 3 = 3 marks)
ii) Students list two fashion features of their drawn outfit.
e.g. Short-sleeved, princess lines, knee length.
Accept other valid answers.
(2 marks)
iii) Students mention a suitable occasion where the drawn outfit would be worn. (1 mark) | <urn:uuid:f71f691f-0fb9-48a3-8084-12debf399a40> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://curriculum.gov.mt/en/Examination-Papers/Secondary-Papers/2014/Documents/textiles_f3_2014_ms.pdf | 2020-09-23T05:56:21+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400209999.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20200923050545-20200923080545-00182.warc.gz | 338,658,198 | 2,155 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.950944 | eng_Latn | 0.982768 | [
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Learn To Swim Pre-Swim 1
DESCRIPTION:
AGES: 3 TO 6
CONTACT
For more information, contact Miranda Buiter at:
firstname.lastname@example.org 304.993.2782
REGISTER
Log in to the Aquatic Center User Portal to Register, if you have never been to our facility, please create a new account, all others will need to contact us for log-in information: 304-933-2782 or email email@example.com
Scan to Register!
Pre-Swim Level 1: This class familiarizes children approximately 3-6 years of age to the aquatic environment and help them acquire basic swimming skills. It is to help participants begin to develop positive attitudes and develop safe practice in and around water.
Pre-Swim Level 1 skills may be performed with support from the instructor.
DETAILS:
LOCATION: Huntington Community Pool INSTRUCTOR(S): 1
PRE-REQUISITES: Little or no experience in swimming classes, or for 3-year-olds who have taken Pre-Swim 1 or comparable experience within water
COURSE OFFERING: 30-minute class offered once per week over the course of 6-8 weeks (dependent on session schedule)
NEXT CLASS LEVEL: Pre-Swim Level 2
Repeated class based on age and progression; must demonstrate competency in all required skills and activities, including in-water skills
OBJECTIVES:
* Entering & exiting water via ramps, steps, or side of the pool
* Breath control
* Submerging under water & retrieving objects
* Gliding on their fronts & back and recovering
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
* Entering & exiting water safely with assistance
WEEK 5
* Combined arm movement
* Combined leg movement
* Opening eyes under water
* Front gliding
WEEK 6
* Rolling from front to back
* Treading water intro
* Rolling form front to back
* Treading in chest-deep water
* Swimming on front
* Water safety components: staying safe around water, recognizing a lifeguard, how to call for help
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
* Back gliding
* Recovering from back float to standing
WEEK 7
* No new skills
* Review of all previous skills
* Alternating leg movement
* Alternating arm movement
WEEK 8
* Exit Skills Assessment
Learn To Swim Pre-Swim 2
DESCRIPTION:
AGES: 3 TO 6
CONTACT
For more information, contact Miranda Buiter at:
firstname.lastname@example.org 304.993.2782
REGISTER
Log in to the Aquatic Center User Portal to Register, if you have never been to our facility, please create a new account, all others will need to contact us for log-in information: 304-933-2782 or email email@example.com
Scan to Register!
Pre-Swim Level 2: This class will involve building on and improving skills learned in Pre-Swim Level 1. It is to help participants begin to develop positive attitudes and develop safe practice in and around water.
Pre-Swim Level 2 skills may be performed with support from the instructor.
DETAILS:
LOCATION: Huntington Community Pool
INSTRUCTOR(S):
1
PRE-REQUISITES: Must successfully demonstrate the skills of the
Pre-Swim Level 1 exit skills assessment
COURSE OFFERING: 30-minute class offered once per week over the course of 6-8 weeks (dependent on session schedule)
NEXT CLASS LEVEL: Pre-Swim Level 3
Repeated class based on age and progression; must demonstrate competency in all required skills and activities, including in-water skills
OBJECTIVES:
* Entering & exiting into shoulderdeep water
* Breath control & bobbing
* Submerging under water & retrieving objects
* Gliding on their fronts/back & recovering
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
* Review of PreSwim Level 1 skills
WEEK 5
* Finning arm actions on back
* Rolling front to back
* Opening eyes underwater with object retrieving
* Back floats
WEEK 6
* Treading water using arms & legs
* Rolling form front to back
* Treading in shoulder-deep water
* Swimming on front
* Water safety components: staying safe around water, recognizing a lifeguard, how to call for help
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
* Gliding on front & back
* Combined arm & leg actions on front
WEEK 7
* Review of all previous skills
* Combined arm & leg action on back
WEEK 8
* Exit Skills Assessment
Learn To Swim Pre-Swim 3
DESCRIPTION:
AGES: 3 TO 6
CONTACT
For more information, contact Miranda Buiter at:
firstname.lastname@example.org 304.993.2782
REGISTER
Log in to the Aquatic Center User Portal to Register, if you have never been to our facility, please create a new account, all others will need to contact us for log-in information: 304-933-2782 or email email@example.com
Scan to Register!
Pre-Swim Level 3: This class aims to increase the proficiency and build on the basic skills learned in Pre-Swim Level 1 and Pre-Swim Level 2. The class will reinforce water safety concepts and skills learned in earlier levels and introduce additional water safety topics.
Pre-Swim Level 3 skills may be performed with minimal support from the instructor.
DETAILS:
LOCATION: Huntington Community Pool
INSTRUCTOR(S): 1
PRE-REQUISITES: Must successfully demonstrate the skills of the Pre-Swim Level 2 exit skills assessment
COURSE OFFERING: 30-minute class offered once per week over the course of 6-8 weeks (dependent on session schedule)
NEXT CLASS LEVEL: Pre-Swim Level 4 / Level 1 (age dependent) Repeated class based on age and progression; must demonstrate competency in all required skills and activities, including in-water skills
OBJECTIVES:
* Entering & exiting into deep water
* Breath control, bobbing, & rotary breathing
* Submerging under water & retrieving objects
* Gliding on their fronts/back & recovering
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
* Review of PreSwim Level 2 skills
WEEK 5
* Changing direction while swimming
* Floating independently
* Recovering from front floats
WEEK 6
* Changing direction while swimming
* Floating face-down & face-up
* Treading in shoulder-deep water
* Swimming on front, back, & changing direction while in water
* Water safety components: staying safe around water, recognizing a lifeguard, how to call for help
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
* Combined arm & leg actions front
WEEK 7
* Treading water
* Finning arm actions
* Back floats & recovery
WEEK 8
* Exit Skills Assessment
Learn To Swim Pre-Swim 4
DESCRIPTION:
AGES: 3 TO 6
CONTACT
For more information, contact Miranda Buiter at:
firstname.lastname@example.org 304.993.2782
REGISTER
Log in to the Aquatic Center User Portal to Register, if you have never been to our facility, please create a new account, all others will need to contact us for log-in information: 304-933-2782 or email email@example.com
Scan to Register!
Pre-Swim Level 4: An advanced introductory course for those who have demonstrated high aptitude for swimming but are below the age threshold for our Youth Learn to Swim Levels for ages 6 -12 .
Pre-Swim Level 4 skills are performed independently by participant(s).
DETAILS:
LOCATION: Huntington Community Pool
INSTRUCTOR(S): 1
PRE-REQUISITES: Must successfully demonstrate the skills of the Pre-Swim Level 3 exit skills assessment
COURSE OFFERING: 30-minute class offered once per week over the course of 6-8 weeks (dependent on session schedule)
NEXT CLASS LEVEL: Level 2 (ages 6 - 12 years)
Repeated class based on age and progression; must demonstrate competency in all required skills and activities, including in-water skills
OBJECTIVES:
* Entering & exiting into deep water
* Breath control, bobbing, & rotary breathing
* Submerging under water & retrieving objects
* Gliding on their fronts/back & recovering
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
* Review of PreSwim Level 3 skills
WEEK 5
* Jumping into water that goes overhead
* Gliding on front and back without assistance
WEEK 6
* Retrieving objects from deep water
* Floating face-down & face-up
* Treading in shoulder-deep water
* Swimming on front/back, & changing direction while in water
* Water safety components: staying safe around water, recognizing a lifeguard, how to call for help
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
* Changing direction while on their front
WEEK 7
* Review of all previous skills
* Treading in chest-deep water
WEEK 8
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Ancient Civilizations Mesopotamia Egypt And The Indus Valley Ancient History For Kids 4th Grade Childrens Ancient History
The First Great Civilizations
The Legacy of Ancient Civilizations: Insights into Early Societies
Economic Life at the Dawn of History in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt
Enemies of Civilization
Everyday Life in Ancient Times
History of Ancient Civilization (1906)
Architecture of the ancient civilizations in color
Civilization Before Greece and Rome
Ancient Mesopotamia
Ancient History Vol. 1
Enemies of Civilization
Ancient Perspectives
Early Civilizations
Hands-on History: Ancient Civilizations Activities
First Civilizations
Geography of Ancient Egypt | Ancient Civilizations Grade 4 | Children's Ancient History
The Birth of Civilization in the Near East
The Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations of the Near East and Mediterranean
Ancient Egypt and the Near East The Great Civilizations of the Ancient East
Architecture of the Ancient Civilizations in Colour
Ancient Civilizations in Asia : India, China, Mesopotamia and Egypt | Ancient History for Kids Junior Scholars Edition | 6th Grade Social Studies
What Makes Civilization?
Ancient Egypt
Greek, Mesopotamia, Egypt & Rome
The Decline of Ancient Mesopotamian Civilization
The Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia
Architecture of the Ancient Civilizations in Colour
Order, Legitimacy, and Wealth in Ancient States
What Were the Ancient Civilizations?
In Search Of The First Civilizations
Technology and Science in Ancient Civilizations
Ancient Civilizations - Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley | Ancient History for Kids | 4th Grade Children's Ancient History
Early Civilizations of the Old World
Ancient Civilizations for Kids: a Captivating Guide to Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Early Chinese Civilization, the Maya, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome
Understanding Early Civilizations
Experiencing Power, Generating Authority
Babylon of Egypt
Geography of Ancient Mesopotamia | Ancient Civilizations Grade 4 | Children's Ancient History
First Civilizations
Ancient Civilizations Mesopotamia Egypt And The Indus
Valley Ancient History For Kids 4th Grade Childrens Ancient
History
PIPER REYNA
The First Great CivilizationsWalter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Why did the Greeks excel in geometry, but lag begin the Mesopotamians in arithmetic? How were the great pyramids of Egypt and the Han tombs in China constructed? What did the complex system of canals and dykes in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley have to do with the deforestation of Lebanon's famed cedar forests? This work presents a cross-cultural comparison of the ways in which the ancients learned about and preserved their knowledge of the natural world, and the ways in which they developed technologies that enabled them to adapt to and shape their surroundings. Covering the major ancient civilizations - those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Greece, the Indus Valley, and Meso-America - Olson explores how language and numbering systems influenced the social structure, how seemingly beneficial construction projects affected a civilization's rise or decline, how religion and magic shaped both medicine and agriculture, and how trade and the resulting cultural interactions transformed the making of both everyday household items and items intended as art. Along the way, Olson delves into how scientific knowledge and its technological applications changed the daily lives of the ancients.
The Legacy of Ancient Civilizations: Insights into Ear ly Societies Shell Education
"An important scholarly contribution not only to the study of early civilizations, but also to archaeological theory. . . . It should be required reading for any course on ancient civilization." --
Kathryn A. Bard, Journal of Field Archaeology
Economic Life at the Dawn of History in Mesopotamia
Sample Text
Enemies of CivilizationSpeedy Publishing LLC
Looks at how foreigners were regarded in three ancient civilizations, finding that cultural, not biophysical, differences were key in distinguishing "us" from "them."
Everyday Life in Ancient TimesSpeedy Publishing LLC
Three manuscripts in one book: Ancient Egypt: An Enthralling Overview of Egyptian History, Starting from the Settlement of the Nile Valley through the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms to the Death of Cleopatra VII Ancient Rome: An Enthralling Overview of Roman History, Starting From the Romulus and Remus Myth through the Republic to the Fall of the Roman Empire Ancient Mesopotamia: An Enthralling Overview of Mesopotamian History, Starting from Eridu through the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Persians to Alexander the Great Explore the interesting journey of the ancient Egypt, from the first unification of its lands up until its most glorious era of the New Kingdom rulers and the fall of the kingdom at the hands of Augustus. In the first part of this book, you'll discover: The mysterious identities of Narmer and Menes, the first pharaoh of Egypt How the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed with human hands The dangerous journey into the realm of the dead How Egypt's religious beliefs played a role in its government The fall of Egypt after the death of Cleopatra VII Rome's astonishing history now spans 28 centuries, growing from obscurity into a massive empire stretching from Britain to the Middle East and south to Africa. Rome's culture and institutions left an enduring legacy that continues to impact civilizations around the world. In the second part of this book, you'll discover: What happened when a goddess met a handsome shepherd on a lonely hilltop? Who escaped from burning Troy to later become a king in Italy? What ill-fated romance impelled Queen Dido of Carthage to commit suicide? How did a Vestal Virgin get
an
d An cien
t Egypt Random House pregnant? Why were the babies floating down the river in a basket - and what happened to them? What strategies did the Romans learn to fight against war elephants? And how did Hannibal get those elephants through the snow and over the Alps? Which disastrous wars led to the term "pyrrhic victory?" Who was the Roman gladiator who led a slave revolt of 40,000 people? What canny strategies led to the conquest of Britain? Which Scottish people were covered with blue tattoos? Which power-hungry Grandma had one of her grandsons assassinated to put another one on the throne? What happened when Diocletian tried to convert or kill all the Christians in the empire? What vision eventually led Constantine to abandon paganism for Christianity? Ancient Mesopotamia's legacy was truly revolutionary. Childlike pictures scratched into wet clay evolved into the first written language. The Mesopotamians wrote the first epic poems, the first hymns, the first histories, and the first law codes. They developed the first wheel for transportation; simple carts that hauled bricks or produce morphed into chariots racing along at thirty-five miles per hour. In the third part of this book, you'll discover: How old is the world's first city? How did the Eridu Genesis compare to Noah and the ark? How fast was the world's first postal system? How many times did Babylon's patron god Marduk get stolen? How did Hammurabi's law code compare to the Law of Moses? Did Xerxes really have a million men in his army? Which empire encompassed 44 percent of the world's population? What eunuch poisoned most of the Persian royal family? And much, much more! Scroll up and click the "add to cart" button to learn the stories of incredible Ancient History! History of Ancient Civilization (1906) Knopf Books for Young Readers
"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.
Architecture of the ancient civilizations in color State University of New York Press Explores the early civilizations that developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia between the start of farming in the Nile Valley around 6000 BCE and the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE.
Civilization Before Greece and RomeThe Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
The Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia offers an overview of the study of emotions in ancient texts and discusses the concept of emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Ancient Mesopotamia University of Chicago Press
Explore the geography of ancient Mesopotamia. Use this book to step back in time and discover the
natural environment of the Tigris and Euphrates River, Babylon, Babylonia, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. How did its geography shape the way of life of ancient Mesopotamia? Grab a copy and start reading today.
Ancient History Vol. 1 SUNY Press
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Enemies of Civilization Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
A vivid new account of the 'birth of civilization' in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia where many of the foundations of modern life were laid
Ancient PerspectivesRoutledge
In this new paperback edition of Early Civilizations of the Old World, Charles Keith Maisels traces the development of some of the earliest and key civilizations in history. In each case the ecological and economic background to growth, geographical factors, cross-cultural intersection and the rise of urbanism are examined, explaining how particular forms of social structure and cultural interaction developed from before the Neolithic period to the time of the first civilizations in each area. This volume challenges the traditional assumption of a band-tribe-chiefdom-state sequence and instead demonstrates that large complex societies can flourish without social classes and the state, as dramatically shown by the Indus civilization. Such features as the use of Childe's urban revolution theory as a means of comparison for each emerging civilization and the discussion of the emergence of archaeology as a scientific discipline, make Early Civilizations of the Old World a valuable, innovative and stimulating work.
Early Civilizations Routledge
Presents full-color illustrated photographs and drawings depicting ancient Egyptian civilization, and examines ancient ruins, works of art, and what life was life in ancient Egypt.
Hands-on History: Ancient Civilizations ActivitiesSpeedy Publishing LLC
Discover Myths, History & More From The World's Most Ancient Civilizations! Within this epic 4 book bundle are vibrant, exciting, and memorable characters - plus places, myths, history, legends and more from Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt & Rome. Included in this Captivating 4 Book Collection are: Ancient Egypt: Discover Fascinating History, Mythology, Gods, Goddesses, Pharaohs, Pyramids & More From The Mysterious Ancient Egyptian Civilisation. Greek Mythology: Explore The Timeless Tales Of Ancient Greece, The Myths, History & Legends of The Gods, Goddesses, Titans, Heroes, Monsters & More Mythology of Mesopotamia: Insights, Myths, Stories & History From The World's Most Ancient Civilization. Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Persian, Assyrian. Roman Empire: Rise & The Fall. Explore The History, Mythology, Legends, Epic Battles & Lives Of The Emperors, Legions, Heroes, Gladiators & More We promise that once you've finished reading you'll not only take away a wealth of information - but you'll own the experience as if you've lived it yourself! That's because we have a passion for presenting factual, enjoyable history and culture in a style that keeps you turning the pages. Our books aim to not only provide you with the knowledge but to create an experience...We want you to feel the mythology and history "brought alive" Allow us then to guide you through the mysterious, fascinating and magnificent histories of Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt & Rome. Gods, goddesses, kings, queens, pyramids, mythology, culture, battles, beliefs, rituals, love, war, and much more. All This & Much More In This 4 Book Collection, including: The Timeline of Roman History - How did it all begin? And how did it end? The Ancient Origins & Story of The Olympics Introduction to the Sumerians, Assyrians, Persians & Babylonians. Egyptian Mythology, Gods & Goddesses - including, Ra; God of The Sun, Seth; God of Chaos, Osiris & more How The Roman Military Became The Most Powerful In The World. How Mesopotamia Laid Foundations for Human Civilization - technology, laws, education, languages & more. Ancient Greek Monsters Medusa, The Hydra, Typhon, Cerberus & More! Love, War, Suicide & Venom - The Cleopatra, Caesar & Mark Antony Love Triangle Mesopotamian epics & myths, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Babylonian Creation Myth, The Enuma Elish & many more. Uncovering The Secrets of The Pyramids & The Mysteries Mummification And much, much more... It's time to pull back the curtain and discover what it was really like back then. Get closer to those fantastic, colorful, and mysterious times. Whether you're a history enthusiast or just a curious reader...Inside you will discover a wealth of history, mythology, culture and more in this book. First Civilizations DigiCat
Why do we have to step back and learn about ancient civilizations? Because these are periods that have shaped modern belief systems and cities. Everything starts from something, and the ancient civilizations are the beginnings of societies. Read about the past to understand the present and predict the future. Get a copy of this book today.
Geography of Ancient Egypt | Ancient Civilizations Grade 4 | Children's Ancient History Yale University Press
The book is a study of the emergence of market economy with modern economic institutions in the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt from the third and early second millennium B.C.E. The study covers the Sumerian, Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian periods. The economic analysis is based on Institutional Economics theory, and the data on the Old Assyrian period is based on the work of many scholars that transliterated, translated and studied many of the 23,000 documents of the Old Assyrian traders found in old Kanesh in Central Turkey. The book includes chapters on the institutions of: property rights; the markets and means of exchange; the organization and finance of trade; and enforcement institutions from the judicial, social and political systems. In addition, it gives a detailed analysis of: the early means of exchange (money) like the use of volume measure of barely and weight measure of copper and silver in Sumer; various instruments establishing property rights such as Kuduru border stones, seals and inserted cones in walls; detailed analysis of the communication system and its components; and the description of the modern financial instruments used to include, for example, limited partnerships. The Birth of Civilization in the Near East University of Chicago Press
Enemies of Civilization is a work of comparative history and cultural consciousness that discusses how "others" were perceived in three ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. Each civilization was the dominant culture in its part of the world, and each developed a mind-set that regarded itself as culturally superior to its neighbors. Mu-chou Poo compares these societies' attitudes toward other cultures and finds differences and similarities that reveal the self-perceptions of each society. Notably, this work shows that in contrast to modern racism based on biophysical features, such prejudice did not exist in these ancient societies. It was culture rather than biophysical nature that was the most important criterion for distinguishing us from them. By examining how societies conceive their prejudices, this book breaks new ground in the study of ancient history and opens new ways to look at human society, both ancient and modern. The Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations of the Near East and Mediterranean Billy Wellman Investigate the geography of Ancient Egypt. Focus on its physical features such as the natural environment of the Nile River Valley and the Sahara Desert. How did its geography influence the cultures and traditions of Ancient Egyptians? How important was the Nile and the Sahara to them? Grab a copy and start reading today.
Ancient Egypt and the Near EastSpeedy Publishing LLC
Journey through time with 'The Legacy of Ancient Civilizations: Insights into Early Societies,' a comprehensive exploration of the world's most influential early cultures. This book delves into the intricacies of ancient societies from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley to Greece, Rome, China, the Americas, and Africa. Each chapter provides detailed accounts of the rise, achievements, and legacies of these civilizations, highlighting their contributions to modern science, art, governance, and cultural practices. Ideal for history enthusiasts, students, and scholars, this book offers a thorough understanding of how ancient civilizations have shaped our present and continue to influence our future. Discover the enduring legacy of humanity's earliest societies and their profound impact on the world today.
The Great Civilizations of the Ancient EastLondon : Thames & Hudson
Ancient Perspectives encompasses a vast arc of space and time—Western Asia to North Africa and Europe from the third millennium BCE to the fifth century CE—to explore mapmaking and worldviews in the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In each society, maps served as critical economic, political, and personal tools, but there was little consistency in how and why they were made. Much like today, maps in antiquity meant very different things to different people. Ancient Perspectives presents an ambitious, fresh overview of cartography and its uses. The seven chapters range from broad-based analyses of mapping in Mesopotamia and Egypt to a close focus on Ptolemy's ideas for drawing a world map based on the theories of his Greek predecessors at Alexandria. The remarkable accuracy of Mesopotamian city-plans is revealed, as is the creation of maps by Romans to support the proud claim that their emperor's rule was global in its reach. By probing the instruments and techniques of both Greek and Roman surveyors, one chapter seeks to uncover how their extraordinary planning of roads, aqueducts, and tunnels was achieved. Even though none of these civilizations devised the means to measure time or distance with precision, they still conceptualized their surroundings, natural and man-made, near and far, and felt the urge to record them by inventive means that this absorbing volume reinterprets and compares.
2
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The Great Wall Of China The History Of Chinas Most Famous Landmark
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French Translation of "the Great Wall of China" | Collins ...
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Marina Abramović walks China's Great Wall only to break up
The Great Wall of China — All You Want to Know
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China's Great Wall The Great Wall of China (In Our Time)
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Was The Great Wall of China Actually Effective? What makes the Great Wall of China so extraordinary - Megan Campisi and Pen-Pen Chen
Children How and Why the Great Wall of China Was Really Built National Geographic - The Great Wall of China Documentary Great Wall of China Facts for Kids!
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The Great Wall of China- Piano Adventures/3A/Lesson Book Great Wall of China for Kids | Facts Video for
The History of the Great Wall of China for Kids - FreeSchool The Great Wall of China in 4k - DJI Phantom 4 BEHIND THE GREAT WALL/Qi Jiguang Documentary Book Review #141 (travel books)-The Great Wall of China: Photographs by Changfen Chen
China's Great Wall The Great Wall of China
(In Our Time)
The Great wall of China (World Wonder) This is the END of the GREAT WALL of CHINA! | Visiting \"The Old Dragon's Head\" in Qinhuangdao The Great Wall of China: History And Facts! Faber The Great Wall of China Performance Book 3A - Piano Adventures Great Wall of China! Vlog and facts The Great Wall Of China Unbelievable Secrets \u0026 Unknown Facts - Part 2 The Great Wall of China | Piano Adventures Performance book level 3AThe Great Wall Of ChinaThe Badaling Great Wall near Zhangjiakou is the most
famous stretch of the Wall, for this is the first section to be opened to the public in the People's Republic of China, as well as the showpiece stretch for foreign dignitaries.Great Wall of China WikipediaGreat Wall of China, Chinese (Pinyin) Wanli Changcheng or (Wade-Giles romanization) Wan-li Ch'ang-ch'eng ("10,000-Li Long Wall"), extensive bulwark erected in ancient China, one of the largest building-construction projects ever undertaken.Great Wall of China | Definition, Length, Map, Location ...The Great Wall of China is an ancient series of walls and fortifications, totaling more than 13,000 miles in length, located in northern China.Great Wall of China - HISTORYThe Great Wall of China is one of the greatest sights in the world — the longest wall in the world, an awe-inspiring feat of ancient defensive architecture. Its winding path over rugged country and steep mountains takes in some great scenery. Beijing Accessibility & Restrictions for VisitorsThe Great Wall of China — All You Want to KnowMost of all perhaps, China believes that having friends on Wall St will be a soft-power relaxant of geopolitical tensions. The timing of the latest push is interesting, though. Some see a...The Great Wall (Street) of China | Financial TimesThe Great Wall of China, the largest man-made project in the world, is a series of ancient fortifications built in northern China.Great Wall of China: Great Wall Tours, Facts, History, PhotosThe Great Wall of China, is the longest man-made masterpiece of engineering, at 21,196 km in length (13,171 miles). That's the same distance as half of the Earth's equator! It's construction started approximately 2,700 years ago! Around 800,000 soldiers and commoners were hired to construct the ordinal Great Wall under Emperor Qin.12 Interesting Facts about The Great Wall of China - FactsThe Great Wall of China is one of the biggest structures ever made by humans. The ancient Chinese built the wall to protect against invading armies. Today it is a tourist attraction and a symbol of China. Workers constructed several different walls in northern China and southern Mongolia beginning in the 600s bc.Great Wall of China - Kids | Britannica Kids | Homework HelpThe Great Wall of China is an ancient series of walls and fortifications located in northern China, built around 500 years ago.10 Facts
3
About The Great Wall Of China HistoryExtraGreat Wall of China location is mainly in northern China, and there are a few sections in southern China called southern Great Wall. The vast majority of the Great Wall we see today was built in Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644); they are mostly preserved in Beijing. Total Length: 21,196 kilometers (13,170 miles)Where is the Great Wall of China located? - In Northern ChinaThis information PowerPoint will help year 1 and year 2 children find out about the Great Wall of China. As well as its history, they learn about its location and some interesting facts. Use this information PowerPoint to introduce the topic of the Seven Wonders of the World or as a way to look at how people have achieved great things in history.KS1 All About the Great Wall of China PowerPointThe Great Wall is called "Changcheng" in Chinese. The Great Wall's Chinese name is "Wanli Changcheng," or simply "Changcheng." The four Chinese characters, "万里长城" (Wanli Changcheng) or Great Wall was written in the biography of General Meng Tian who lived in the late third century BC.50 Great Wall Of China Facts About
This Grand Landmark ...The Great Wall of China is a historic landmark, one that every traveler should add to their bucket list. It made our list of "8 Places in China That Will Take Your Breath Away" and continues to be popular tourist destination, especially in Beijing.Was The Great Wall of China Actually Effective?The Great Wall of China is a barrier fortification in northern China running west-to-east 13,171 miles (21,196 km) from the Jiayuguan Pass (in the west) to the Hushan Mountains in Liaoning Province in the east, ending at the Bohai Gulf.Great Wall of China - Ancient History EncyclopediaAll Over the Place - The Song - The Great Wall of China. Ed and Naomi take us on a musical tour of the Great Wall of China. View comments 1. Catch the all new series of All Over the Place: Asia ...The Song The Great Wall of China - CBBC BBCFrench Translation of "the Great Wall of China" | The official Collins EnglishFrench Dictionary online. Over 100,000 French translations of English words and phrases.French Translation of "the Great Wall of China" | Collins ...Artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay are known in many parts of the world as the lovers whose relationship ended at the Great Wall of China. Initially, when the couple planned the trip, they intended to get married at the center of the wall.Marina Abramović walks China's Great Wall only to break upThe history of the Great Wall of China began when fortifications built by various states during the Spring and Autumn (771–476 BC) and Warring States periods (475–221 BC) were connected by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, to protect his newly founded Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) against incursions by nomads from Inner Asia.
Great Wall of China, Chinese (Pinyin) Wanli Changcheng or (Wade-Giles romanization) Wan-li Ch'ang-ch'eng ("10,000-Li Long Wall"), extensive bulwark erected in ancient China, one of the largest buildingconstruction projects ever undertaken. French Translation of "the Great Wall of China" | Collins ...
hired to construct the ordinal Great Wall under Emperor Qin.
Great Wall of China - Ancient History Encyclopedia
All Over the Place - The Song - The Great
Wall of China. Ed and Naomi take us on a musical tour of the Great Wall of China.
View comments 1. Catch the all new series of All Over the Place: Asia ...
Marina Abramović walks China's Great Wall only to break up
What makes the Great Wall of China so extraordinary - Megan Campisi and PenPen Chen
Reading AZ Level M. The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China, is the longest man-made masterpiece of engineering, at 21,196 km in length (13,171 miles). That's the same distance as half of the Earth's equator! It's construction started approximately 2,700 years ago! Around 800,000 soldiers and commoners were
The Great Wall of China- Piano Adventures/3A/Lesson Book Great Wall of China for Kids | Facts Video for Children How and Why the Great Wall of China Was Really Built National Geographic - The Great Wall of China Documentary Great Wall of China Facts for Kids!
The History of the Great Wall of China for
4
The Great Wall Of China The History Of Chinas Most Famous Landmark
2022-10-02
Kids - FreeSchool The Great Wall of China in 4k - DJI Phantom 4 BEHIND THE GREAT WALL/Qi Jiguang Documentary Book Review #141 (travel books)-The Great Wall of China: Photographs by Changfen Chen
China's Great Wall The Great Wall of China (In Our Time)
The Great wall of China (World Wonder) This is the END of the GREAT WALL of CHINA! | Visiting \"The Old Dragon's Head\" in Qinhuangdao The Great Wall of China: History And Facts! Faber The Great Wall of China Performance Book 3A - Piano Adventures Great Wall of China! Vlog and facts The Great Wall Of China Unbelievable Secrets \u0026 Unknown Facts - Part 2 The Great Wall of China | Piano Adventures Performance book level 3A
The Great Wall of China — All You Want to Know
Artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay are known in many parts of the world as the lovers whose relationship ended at the
Great Wall of China. Initially, when the couple planned the trip, they intended to get married at the center of the wall. Great Wall of China - HISTORY The Badaling Great Wall near Zhangjiakou is the most famous stretch of the Wall, for this is the first section to be opened to the public in the People's Republic of China, as well as the showpiece stretch for foreign dignitaries.
What makes the Great Wall of China so extraordinary - Megan Campisi and PenPen Chen
Reading AZ Level M. The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China- Piano Adventures/3A/Lesson Book Great Wall of China for Kids | Facts Video for Children How and Why the Great Wall of China Was Really Built National Geographic - The Great Wall of China Documentary Great Wall of China Facts for Kids!
The History of the Great Wall of China for Kids - FreeSchool The Great Wall of China
5
in 4k - DJI Phantom 4 BEHIND THE GREAT WALL/Qi Jiguang Documentary Book Review #141 (travel books)-The Great Wall of China: Photographs by Changfen Chen
China's Great Wall The Great Wall of China (In Our Time)
The Great wall of China (World Wonder) This is the END of the GREAT WALL of CHINA! | Visiting \"The Old Dragon's Head\" in Qinhuangdao The Great Wall of China: History And Facts! Faber The Great Wall of China Performance Book 3A - Piano Adventures Great Wall of China! Vlog and facts The Great Wall Of China Unbelievable Secrets \u0026 Unknown Facts - Part 2 The Great Wall of China | Piano Adventures Performance book level 3A
The Great Wall of China is a historic landmark, one that every traveler should add to their bucket list. It made our list of "8 Places in China That Will Take Your Breath Away" and continues to be popular tourist destination, especially in Beijing.
10 Facts About The Great Wall Of China HistoryExtra
The Great Wall of China, the largest manmade project in the world, is a series of ancient fortifications built in northern China.
50 Great Wall Of China Facts About This Grand Landmark ...
The Great Wall of China is an ancient series of walls and fortifications located in northern China, built around 500 years ago.
The Song - The Great Wall of China - CBBC - BBC
The Great Wall of China is a barrier fortification in northern China running west-to-east 13,171 miles (21,196 km) from the Jiayuguan Pass (in the west) to the Hushan Mountains in Liaoning Province in the east, ending at the Bohai Gulf. Great Wall of China - Kids | Britannica Kids
| Homework Help
The Great Wall of China is an ancient series of walls and fortifications, totaling more than 13,000 miles in length, located in northern China.
12 Interesting Facts about The Great Wall of China - Facts French Translation of "the Great Wall of
China" | The official Collins English-French Dictionary online. Over 100,000 French translations of English words and phrases. Great Wall of China | Definition, Length, Map, Location ...
The history of the Great Wall of China began when fortifications built by various states during the Spring and Autumn (771–476 BC) and Warring States periods (475–221 BC) were connected by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, to protect his newly founded Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) against incursions by nomads from Inner Asia.
Great Wall of China: Great Wall Tours, Facts, History, Photos
The Great Wall of China is one of the greatest sights in the world — the longest wall in the world, an awe-inspiring feat of ancient defensive architecture. Its winding path over rugged country and steep mountains takes in some great scenery. Beijing Accessibility & Restrictions for Visitors though. Some see a...
Great Wall of China - Wikipedia Great Wall of China location is mainly in northern China, and there are a few sections in southern China called southern Great Wall. The vast majority of the Great Wall we see today was built in Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644); they are mostly preserved in Beijing. Total Length: 21,196 kilometers (13,170 miles) The Great Wall (Street) of China | Financial Times
This information PowerPoint will help year 1 and year 2 children find out about the Great Wall of China. As well as its history, they learn about its location and some interesting facts. Use this information PowerPoint to introduce the topic of the Seven Wonders of the World or as a way to look at how people have achieved great things in history.
Where is the Great Wall of China located? In Northern China
The Great Wall Of China Most of all perhaps, China believes that having friends on Wall St will be a softpower relaxant of geopolitical tensions. The timing of the latest push is interesting,
The Great Wall is called "Changcheng" in Chinese. The Great Wall's Chinese name is "Wanli Changcheng," or simply "Changcheng." The four Chinese characters, "万里长城" (Wanli Changcheng) or Great Wall was written in the biography of
6
The Great Wall Of China The History Of Chinas Most Famous Landmark
2022-10-02
General Meng Tian who lived in the late third century BC.
KS1 All About the Great Wall of China PowerPoint
The Great Wall of China is one of the biggest structures ever made by humans. The ancient Chinese built the wall to protect against invading armies. Today it is a tourist attraction and a symbol of
Related with The Great Wall Of China The History Of Chinas Most Famous Landmark:
* Texas Cdl Handbook Section 14 Special Requirements Practice Test : click here
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EARLY YEARS FOUNDATION STAGE (EYFS) POLICY
Rationale
We acknowledge the statement that "Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfill their potential. Children develop quickly in the early years and a child's experiences between birth and age five have a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right. Good parenting and high quality early learning together provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up." (DfE 2012)
We believe it is essential to create an environment of emotional warmth, with consistent praise and encouragement, so that each child feels individually valued, motivated and confident to meet new challenges and reach our high expectations with a sense of achievement.
We are in agreement with the Development Matters agenda, as we want all of our children to be successful learners, to be confident individuals and to become responsible citizens.
Aims
- To promote the social, emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual development of each child.
- To provide a stimulating and safe environment for learning where children can engage in first hand experiences.
- To support and extend children's learning through purposeful observation, evaluation and interaction.
Organisation
- The EYFS has one reception class, three nursery classrooms, and an enclosed outdoor area in addition to an accessible outdoor environment that facilitates the learning opportunities created by the natural world. It is staffed by teachers and nursery assistants.
- The EYFS Teacher is responsible for the management of the Foundation Stage in the Reception class.
- The EYFS Nursery Head is responsible for the management of the Foundation Stage team and the Foundation Stage in the Nursery classes.
Role of the Headteacher
The Headteacher has:
[x] appointed a member of staff for the roles of:
o EYFS Reception Class Teacher, Mrs. Pat Collingborn
o Nursery Head, Mrs. Debbie Credicott
Role of the Early Years Foundation Stage Teacher
The Early Years Foundation Stage Teacher will:
[x] lead the development of the Foundation Stage within the Reception Class;
[x] review and monitor by discussion with support staff within the Reception Class;
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Grittleton House School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. It is our aim that all pupils fulfil their potential.
[x] report to the Headteacher on the success and development of the EYFS within the Reception Class;
[x] will complete the EYFS Profile to provide a reliable, valid and accurate assessment of individual children at the end of the Foundation Stage;
[x] liaise with the Nursery Manager and the teaching staff of those children who will be making the transition into Reception;
[x] in conjunction with the Nursery Head review and monitor the policies specific to EYFS;
[x] keep up to date with new developments and resources in regards to the National Framework;
[x] focus efforts to continually review and promote the curriculum;
Role of the Nursery Head
The Nursery Head will:
[x] lead the development of the nursery;
[x] provide guidance and support to all nursery staff;
[x] review and monitor by discussion with nursery staff;
[x] report to the Headteacher on the success and development of the nursery.
[x] keep up to date with new developments and resources in regards to the National Framework;
[x] focus efforts to continually review and promote the curriculum;
[x] oversee the day to day management of the nursery, including staff deployment and housekeeping duties.
Role of Teaching and Support Staff
The teaching and support staff work:
- together as a team in conjunction with the reception Class Teacher and/or Nursery Head
- to promote confident and independent learners;
- to create a learning environment that reflects learning across all seven areas of the Curriculum.
Curriculum
The EYFS is guided by four main principles:
- A Unique Child
- Positive Relationships
- Enabling Environments
- Learning and Development
We believe these overarching principles shape practice and aim at improving outcomes. They reflect that it is every child's right to grow up safe, healthy, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and with economic well-being.
We greatly value the important role that the Early Years Foundation Stage plays in laying secure foundations for future learning and development. Play underpins the delivery of the EYFS Curriculum. We use the document "Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation Stage" to inform planning in the Nursery and Reception classes. Our curriculum for the EYFS reflects the areas of learning identified in the Early Learning Goals from the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Handbook (Standards and Testing Agency, 2012). Our pupils' learning experiences enable them to develop competency and skill across all the learning areas. The Early Learning Goals are organised into seven areas and provide the basis for planning throughout the EYFS, so layering secure foundations for future learning. We support the Characteristics of Effective Learning – Playing and Exploring, Active learning, Creating and Thinking Critically – which enable the child to be an effective and motivated learner. We aim to create an attractive, welcoming and stimulating learning environment that encourages children to explore, investigate and learn through first-hand experiences. Activities are planned for both inside and outside learning. Continuous provision in the EYFS includes water, tactile, sand and creative areas, ICT, math area, drawing, mark making, writing areas, reading, and role-play areas.
The EYFS curriculum is organised into seven areas of learning, three prime areas and four specific areas:
- Three Prime Areas
o Communication and Language
o Physical Development
o Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Four Specific Areas
o Literacy
o Mathematics
o Understanding the World
o Expressive Arts
We believe that learning is holistic and none of the areas of learning can be delivered in isolation. All areas are delivered through a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities. One experience may provide children with opportunities to develop a range of competencies, skills and concepts across several areas of learning. Each area of learning works towards relevant Early Learning Goals, which most children are expected to achieve by the end of the EYFS.
Communication and Language
Communication and language development involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations.
Early Learning Goals (expected outcomes):
1. Children listen attentively in a range of situations. They listen to stories, accurately anticipating key events and respond to what they hear with relevant comments, questions or actions. They give their attention to what others say and respond appropriately, while engaged in another activity.
2. Children follow instructions involving several ideas or actions. They answer 'how' and 'why' questions about their experiences and in response to stories or events.
3. Children express themselves effectively, showing awareness of listeners' needs. They use past, present, and future forms accurately when talking about events that have happened or are to happen in the future. They develop their own narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events.
It is essential that the right environment is created to ensure the pupils use and listen to appropriate language. Children learn about words, sentence structure and use of language through relaxed one to one interaction with friendly, familiar adults. In the early stages nearly all curriculum areas are covered orally. We create a wealth of opportunity for pupils to talk to and listen to each other through, for example role play, circle time, simple drama. Staff help children to develop and feel confident in their communication skills by listening to them and showing a genuine interest in both their verbal and non-verbal interactions. Children have the opportunity to extend their communication skills by speaking and listening to visitors and by taking messages to other people within the school.
Physical Development
Physical development involves providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; and to develop their coordination, control and movement. Children must also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity and to make healthy choices in relation to food.
Early learning goals (expected outcomes):
4. Children show good control and co-ordination in large and small movements. They move confidently in a range of ways, safely negotiating space. They handle a range of equipment and tools effectively, including pencils for writing.
5. Children know the importance for good health of physical exercise, and a healthy diet, and talk about ways to keep healthy and safe. They are helped to manage their own basic hygiene and personal needs successfully, eventually dressing and going to the toilet independently.
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Grittleton House School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. It is our aim that all pupils fulfil their potential.
We encourage children to develop confidence and control in the way they move handle tools and equipment. We give all children the opportunity to undertake activities that offer appropriate physical challenge, both indoors and outdoors, using a wide range of resources to support specific skills. A peripatetic sport The Nursery teacher leads weekly PE lessons in the gym or on the school playing field. The children change into their PE kit in school to ensure that they are able to dress independently. Spontaneous learning opportunities, both indoor and outdoor, are provided to ensure that the children are continuing to development their fine and gross motor skills. Pupils' fine motor skills are developed through a range of experiences, such as the use of dough, clay, cooking, threading, sewing, small construction, planting seeds and weeding.
Dressing and undressing is a vital life skill which we feel is an essential part of the curriculum. From an early age children are encouraged to manage their own shoes, coats and clothing. In Reception children take responsibility for changing into their PE kit. Staff members assist where necessary, but do all they can to encourage children to change independently.
Our outdoor environment is used as valuable tool to develop children's awareness of a healthy lifestyle. Vegetables and herbs are grown in our courtyard garden and the playing fields and school grounds are used for walks and all kinds of physical games and activities.
Personal, Social, and Emotional Development
Personal, social and emotional development involves helping children to develop a positive sense of themselves and others; to form positive relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their own abilities.
Early Learning Goals (expected outcomes):
6. Children learn to play co-operatively, taking turns with others. They take account of one another's ideas, the impact their behaviour has on their peers, about how to organise their needs and feelings, and form positive relationships with adults and other children.
7. Children are confident to try new activities, and encouraged to say why they like some activities more than others. They gain confidence to speak in a familiar group, will talk about their ideas, and will choose the resources they need for their chosen activities. They indicate and then say when they do or don't need help.
8. Children talk about how they and others show feelings, talk about their own and others' behaviour, and its consequences, and know that some behaviour is unacceptable. They work as part of a group or class, and understand and follow the rules. They adjust their behaviour to different situations, and take changes of routine in their stride.
Small class sizes and excellent staff child ratios operate within an effective daily routine, which enable children the time, space and opportunity to participate, contribute and become independent learners.
Through Circle Time activities children can develop social skills, acquire interpersonal relationship skills, increase awareness of their feelings and become more responsible for their behaviour. It is a time to foster a caring group feeling where each member is valued and valuable, where each child gets a chance to speak and to be listened to. For those children not yet able to express themselves parents are encouraged to share events and social occasions with us. This enables staff to talk, if necessary, for the child, identifying an occasion and allowing the individual to be part of the group. Weekly assemblies for reception are also held that include PSHE topics.
Literacy
Literacy development involves encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children must be given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems and other written materials) to ignite their interest.
Early Learning Goals (expected outcomes):
9. Children read and understand simple sentences. They use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read.
10. Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.
In the EYFS Letters & Sounds are used. Letters and Sounds is a six-phase teaching programme designed to help practitioners and teachers teach children how the alphabet works for reading and spelling. Children learn how to use the letter sounds to read and write words. Using a structured approach to phonics has provided a secure foundation for reading and writing.
Before the children begin to learn to form letters it is essential to determine appropriate grip and flexibility of hand movement. The large pencils should be used first since they are more readily gripped by little fingers. Children will learn how to form letters as soon as they are able to control a pencil adequately. Time in the Nursery and Reception is spent in reinforcing the manipulative skills needed to form each letter singularly.
All classes will have a range of appropriate fiction and non-fiction books. In Reception the Oxford Reading Tree series in conjunction with other selected sequential and compatible books. Teachers match the scheme to the reading needs of each child. Children in Reception will be given a reading record along with a suitable book which will be completed and signed by a responsible adult (parent, guardian, grandparent etc.). This will continue throughout their school journey.
Mathematics
Mathematics involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, spaces and measures.
Early learning goals (expected outcomes):
11. Children count reliably with numbers from one to 20, place them in order and say which number is one more or one less than a given number. Using quantities and objects, they add and subtract two single digit numbers or count on or back to find the answer. They solve problems, including doubling, halving and sharing.
12. Children use everyday language to talk about size, weight, capacity, position, distance, time and money to compare quantities and objects and to solve problems. They recognise, create and describe patterns. They explore characteristics of everyday objects and shapes and use mathematical language to describe them.
Young children who are exposed to a range of experiences, where they are able to explore materials that give them direct experiences of size, shape and texture are building foundations for early mathematical understanding. We recognise the value of our daily routine in the development of mathematical concepts and encourage the children to help with the organisation of key parts of their day. For example the children delight in counting the plates for snack, deciding how many are needed, counting out to ascertain whether there are enough or not enough to go round or sometimes even too many! They enjoy sharing out the food and realising when there is no more. These are all practical ways of introducing quantity and opportunity for counting and one to one correspondence.
In Reception each day the children count and record a number of the day and the focus is on formation and counting to that number. The topics that complete the learning goals such as adding one more or one less, are introduced weekly with specific teacher led lessons and activities. Weekly plans review, differentiate and introduce specific skills, preparing the children for the more structured lessons of year 1. Spontaneous learning opportunities, both indoor and outdoor, are provided to promote the social skills and develop mathematical understanding through stories, songs, rhymes and finger games, board games, sand and water, construction on a large and small scale, imaginative play, outdoor play and "playground" games, cooking and shopping, two - and three - dimensional creative work with a range of materials, and by observing numbers and patterns in the environment and
daily routines.
Understanding the World
Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
Early learning goals (expected outcomes):
13. Children talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members. They know that other children don't always enjoy the same things, and are sensitive to this. They know about similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities and traditions.
14. Children know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials, and living things. They talk about the features of their own immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another. They make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.
15. Children recognise that a range of technology is used in places such as homes and schools. They select and use technology for particular purposes.
Early learning for children depends upon their sense of who they are and who is part of their personal world. On entry parents are encourage parents to provide a small album of family photographs for to share with their child. The album accompanies the child on his journey through the under threes and can be added to at any time. Learning opportunities help children develop a sense of self worth; for example sharing stories and role play opportunities using a variety of resources reflect the diversity of children's experiences.
We explore the similarities, differences and features of the local environment; we take regular walks around the grounds to discover the seasonal changes, noting the spring blossom on the trees, the growing summer flowers and vegetables and the falling autumn leaves; we compare our own homes with those of others by strolling down the road and noting the different styles of buildings. Additional learning opportunities include; providing stories that help children make sense of different environments; resources to create and explore maps and plans; well-equipped paintings, modelling and drawing areas for the construction of familiar and imaginary landscapes.
The younger children enjoy a range of activity toys and equipment with buttons and knobs for them to begin to understand the concept of cause and effect. Appliances such as vacuum cleaners, steam cleaners and CD players are also used in view of the children.
Our older children have the use of a CD player to listen to stories and music; they use whisks during cooking activities and investigate the potential of torches when exploring the 'dark dens'. Tablets and computers are introduced in our oldest nursery class and reception and children learn to control the mouse as they complete simple age appropriate programmes.
Expressive Arts and Design
Expressive arts and design involves enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play and design and technology.
Early Learning Goals (expected outcomes):
16. Children sing songs, make music and dance, and experiment with ways of changing them. They safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.
17. Children use what they have learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes. They represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role play, and stories.
We recognise that singing and sound making is a very enjoyable experience for young children. Provision is made for the regular exploration of a wide range of instruments, listening to different styles of music and singing.The
Page 6 of 11
provision of stimuli such as fur and other tactile fabrics, pictures, paintings, poems, music, dance and storytelling extend children's experiences and expand their imagination.
Materials are accessible to enable children to create and develop their ideas and designs. Resources are provided for mixing colours, joining things together and combining materials. Structured creative activities are planned to help children to learn new skills and extend those they already have.
Organisation of Resources in the EYFS
We ensure the safe use and storage of resources. However, to support children's independence and problem solving skills, wherever possible, resources and equipment are clearly labeled and accessible enabling the children to find and return them independently.
Planning in the EYFS
Observation, assessment and planning all feed into one another and contribute to our knowledge of the child. The observations made, together with information from parents and other evidence collected feed into the day-to-day provision, experiences and interactions planned for the children.
To plan for breadth and balance in the curriculum documentation includes long, medium and short term planning. The long term planning provides a structure which helps to ensure all areas of Learning and Development and the principles in the EYFS are covered. The timetables and routines ensure a balance of indoor and outdoor activities with quiet periods and quiet areas and maintain a balance of opportunities for supporting a range of freely chosen play opportunities (key Experiences) with well-planned adult-led activities.
The medium term planning includes types of experiences and activities that are appropriate for the age of the group and which support the EYFS Principles. It also highlights spontaneous learning opportunities, which allow for observation and assessment to further evaluate individual needs within the class.
Short term planning is flexible to enable staff to respond to newly identified interests, needs and learning opportunities in the environment. For example; a new baby in the family, a snowy day, a rainbow. Short term planning is done weekly or even daily and uses as its base the experiences and needs of each child and aspects from the Medium Term Plans. These plans also outline the adult supported learning and activities as well as links to the EYFS. Teachers evaluate their plans weekly and these evaluations are considered for future planning. Outdoor learning is planned on a daily basis so as to reflect the immediate interests and needs of the children.
Assessment and the EYFS profile
We adhere to the Childcare Act Section 39(1)(a) 2006, which stipulates that Early Years providers must ensure that their provision meets the learning and development requirements as specified in the EYFS (Learning and Development Requirements) Order 2007 (amended 2012). We therefore assess each child at the end of the Reception Year against the 17 Early Learning Goals (ELGs) as set out in the Foundation Stage Profile Handbook 2013 (Standards & Testing Agency, 2012). Assessment in the Early Years Foundation Stage is on-going and is an integral part of the learning and development process.
At Grittleton House School we collect evidence and knowledge throughout the year to enable us to be able to assess each child against the ELGs at the end of the year. This evidence is used to produce an Early Years Profile for each child in the summer term. A completed profile contains 20 items of information: the attainment of the child assessed in relation to the 17 ELG descriptors (i.e. whether they are meeting the expected outcome for the end of the EYFS, exceeding the expected outcome, or if the skill is emerging), together with a short narrative describing the child's three learning characteristics. The information in the EYFS profile is passed on to the Year One teacher at the end of the year to allow them to provide an easy transition into Key Stage One. It is also shared with the parents/carers throughout the year, at our formal parent's evening in October and March, and also in our end of year reports.
All assessment in Grittleton House School EYFS is on-going: we collect evidence throughout the year and use the descriptors listed in the document 'Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation Stage' (British Association for
Page 7 of 11
Grittleton House School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. It is our aim that all pupils fulfil their potential.
Early Childhood Education, 2012) to enable us to monitor and assess children's progress continuously throughout the year and best plan for the future learning and development of the children in our care.
We use a range of methods to assess. We capture spontaneous moments of learning using informal methods such as observations, photos, and work samples. We also plan to observe children using running observations, and complete more formal assessments such as Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS), which are completed on a 1:1 basis with each child on entry and at the end of Reception.. Our assessments are always based on our knowledge of the children in our care.
When children enter the Grittleton House School reception we assess their knowledge of letters and sounds. This enables us to teach each child to read in a way which best suits their learning style and needs. We assess reading continuously.. This is recorded in a Reading Record, which each child takes home with them on a Friday evening. The children's parents may also then comment on their child's progress in reading, so as to better inform the teachers, and provide an alternate perspective on each child's abilities.
At Grittleton House School we are mindful of the fact that the EYFS profile should not be completed solely with the knowledge of a single practitioner. As such we take into account a range of viewpoints when making our final judgements for the EYFS profile in order to build a more holistic view of each child's skills and achievements. This will include information from other adults who are in contact with the children: teaching assistants, peripatetic teachers and support staff (e.g. speech therapists) where applicable.
Involving and consulting children and their parents
Children are involved in their own assessment at Grittleton House School. Each child has a 'Learning Journey' (blue in nursery and green in reception), a file which they take ownership of. They assess their learning by talking about what they have done, what they liked or disliked. In reception children begin to take responsibility for their learning and set personal challenges.
We also welcome and utilise the input of parents to the EYFS profile. This may be from sources such as the reading record, which charts informally achievements which children make at home, or more formally, through parent meetings and parents' evening.
All assessment at Grittleton House School is completed with a view to informing our future planning so that we may best meet the individual needs of each child in our care.
Marking in the EYFS
In Reception EYFS 'marking' involves going through activities with each child, providing verbal feedback on any written work that they may have produced. Where there has been a whole class activity, the teacher will look through each child's work with them on a 1:1 basis and correct any misunderstandings or errors that may have arisen. We believe that marking at Grittleton House School EYFS should not be solely to focus on errors; therefore teachers will identify strengths of the work with the child, and may suggest to the child what to focus on in the future, for e.g. 'I like the way you have remembered to use finger spaces. That's great! Next time, let's also try to remember to sit our letters on the line'. In more informal, small group work, the teacher or TA will work with the child, providing feedback as the child works through the set activity.
In Reception EYFS the teacher will date the work, and where appropriate will indicate if the work has been completed independently, or with teacher assistance. When providing feedback to the child, the teacher may add a sticker/stamp/smiley symbol to reward the child for good work.
Role of Parents in the EYFS
We ask all parents to:
[x] work in partnership with the school;
[x] attend the induction process talks which are given to Nursery and Reception parents;
[x] attend parent-teacher consultation meetings;
[x] work with their children at home on relevant learning activities initiated by the school.
[x] Provide input relating to their child's learning and development to give the school a more rounded view of each child's skills and achievements.
Behaviour in the EYFS
At Grittleton House School EYFS we recognise that behaviour management techniques must be adapted to take into account the development of young children in the foundation stage. Our behaviour management strategies in the EYFS are based upon the whole school behaviour policy, but with adaptations to account for the children's young age. In the EYFS our behaviour management strategies are, where possible, positive. It is expected that all staff members who work at Grittleton House School EYFS will use and promote positive language with children where possible. Our behaviour management strategies at Grittleton House School EYFS are based on the following key principles:
1. We model expected behaviour
2. We use eye contact with children
3. We use our body language as well as our words
4. We use specific praise to reward positive behaviour
5. Where possible, we ignore negative or attention seeking behaviour
6. We phrase our requests in a positive manner
7. We promote independence and responsibility
8. We use our knowledge of each child as an individual
9. We do not make assumptions about young children's understanding
10. We empower children to choose the right course of action.
EAL in the EYFS
In the EYFS we plan opportunities for children to develop their English, and we provide support to help them take part in activities. The EYFS helps children learning English as an additional language by:
- building on children's experiences of language at home and in the wider community, so that their developing uses of English and of other languages support one another;
- providing a range of opportunities for children to engage in speaking and listening activities in English with peers and adults;
- ensuring that our teaching and learning environments are supplemented with visual aids and timetables;
- providing a variety of writing in the children's home language as well as in English, if requested;
- providing opportunities for children to hear their home languages as well as English, if requested;
- providing school information in the language of the parent's choice, if requested;
- If necessary, we also ask parents to furnish us with and continually update us with a list of key words and phrases that they and their children use in their native language so that if the child communicates with us in their native tongue at school we can support and reinforce this communication.
SEND and Inclusion
At Grittleton House School EYFS we believe that all our children matter. We give our children every opportunity to achieve their potential by taking account of our children's range of life experiences when planning for their learning. In the EYFS we set realistic and challenging expectations that meet the needs of our children, so that most achieve the Early Learning Goals by the end of the foundation stage. Some children progress beyond this point. For these children we differentiate within the classroom in order to stretch them, where necessary planning more advanced activities which build upon and advance the work that the rest of the class is completing.
At Grittleton House School, we are aware that some children may not progress at the expected rate as outlined in the document 'Development Matters in the EYFS' (Early Education, 2012). We identify those children who do not meet these developmental milestones through a range of methods, including:
- Information from parents
- Information/records from Playgroups/Nurseries/Pre-Schools
- Information from outside agencies
- On-going teacher observations
- Foundation Stage Profile
- Annual school reports
Those children who may need additional help to meet the Early Learning Goals are largely supported in the EYFS through in-class strategies that are implemented by the class teacher. These may include:
- Planning opportunities that build upon and extend children's knowledge, experience and interests, and develop their self-esteem and confidence;
- Using a wide range of teaching strategies based on children's learning needs;
- Providing extra time/ 1:1 activities with the class teacher or teaching assistant that focus on key areas for development.
- Providing a wide range of opportunities to motivate and support children and to help them to learn effectively;
- Providing a safe and supportive learning environment in which the contribution of all children is valued;
- Using resources and activities which meet as many of the seven areas of learning as possible: this allows children with different learning styles to engage to their fullest potential;
- Planning challenging activities for children whose ability and understanding are in advance of their language and communication skills;
- Monitoring children's progress and taking action to provide support as necessary. This involves speech therapy for some of our children.
For further information please see Grittleton House School SEND policy.
Accessibility in the EYFS.
Children from two years of age to seven are accommodated on the ground floor of Grittleton House. The Nursery classrooms and Reception are accessed via a side door from the outside area. Parents can park on the drive at the front of the building. There is a level entrance at the rear of the building and ramps are available for access through the main entrance.
Safeguarding in the EYFS
If a member of staff suspects abuse e.g. through physical injury etc. they must:
1. Record their concerns
2. Report it to Mrs Debbie Credicott or Mrs Debbie Shipp immediately.
3. If there is a requirement for immediate medical intervention, assistance should be called for.
4. Make an accurate written record (which may be used in any subsequent court proceedings), within 24 hours of the disclosure, of all that has happened, including details of:
- what they have observed and when
- injuries
- times when any observations / discussions took place
- explanations given by the child / adult
- what action was taken.
The records must be signed and dated by the author
Following a report of concerns from a member of staff, the Headteacher/DMS must:
1. Decide whether or not there are sufficient grounds for suspecting significant harm
2. If there are grounds for concerns they must contact the Local Authority Designated Officer(LADO) and make a clear statement of:
- the known facts
- any suspicions or allegations
- whether or not there has been any contact with the child's family
The Grittleton House School EYFS Department ensures that the safeguarding policy which applies to the rest of the school also applies to the EYFS.
Grittleton House School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. It is our aim that all pupils fulfil their potential.
- inform Ofsted of any allegations of serious harm or abuse by any person living, working or looking after children at the premises (whether that allegation relates to harm or abuse committed on the premises or elsewhere), or any other abuse which is alleged to have taken place on the premises, and of the action taken in respect of these allegations.
- Inform Ofsted as soon as is reasonably practicable, but at the least within 14 days.
Designated Member of Staff (DMS) and Contact Details
- Mrs Debbie Shipp is the DMS (Designated Member of Staff) for the whole school Mrs Debbie Credicott is the Designated Member of Staff (DMS) for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).
For further information, please see Grittleton House School Safeguarding Policy.
Effectiveness
We believe this policy will be effective only if we ensure consistency across the school by regular monitoring.
Signed
Date: January 2016
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SEN and Inclusion Policy
Progressive Sports values the individuality of all our children with an ethos of: Fun, Safely, Learn, Respect.
We are committed to giving all our children every opportunity to achieve their very best. We do this by taking account of a child's varied life experiences and needs. We offer a broad and balanced array of activities to keep children healthy, active, and engaged. The achievements, attitudes, and well-being of all children matter. The policy helps to ensure that Progressive Sports promotes the individuality of all children, irrespective of ethnicity, attainment, age, disability, gender, or background.
Aims:
* Regularly talking to parents/carers about the individual needs of each child
As a registered childcare provider, we aim to follow the principles of the EYFS and provide an inclusive environment for children and their families. We will do this by:
* Talking to children about their likes/dislikes
* Providing a wide range of resources and activities which will encourage children to achieve their
* Encourage parents/carers to tell us about family culture/religion/beliefs.
* potential
* Promoting diversity through activities and appropriate resources
* Focusing on the positive things that each child can do.
* Leading by example and challenging any form of prejudice
* Regularly observing children and planning for their needs based on these observations.
* Providing resources which challenge stereotypical ideas.
* Sharing information with parents/carers
* Attending appropriate training
* Seeking permission to get support from outside agencies where appropriate.
* Encouraging children to respect each other as individuals.
Teaching and learning style:
We aim to give children in our care the opportunity to succeed and reach the highest level of personal achievement.
During curriculum teaching we also make ongoing assessments of each child's progress.
Coaches use this information when planning their lessons. It enables them to consider the abilities and specific progress of all of their children.
The National Curriculum is our starting point for planning activities that meet the specific needs of individuals and groups of children. We meet these needs through:
* Setting suitable learning challenges
* Working closely with parents and schools to overcome potential barriers to learning for individuals and groups of pupils.
* Responding to children's diverse learning needs
* Providing other curricular opportunities outside of the National Curriculum to meet the needs of individuals or groups of children.
Progressive Sports staffensure that children:
* Feel secure and know that their contributions are valued.
* Take responsibility for their own actions.
* Appreciate and value the differences they see in others.
* Participate safely in clothing that is appropriate to their religious beliefs.
* Use materials that reflect a range of social and cultural backgrounds without stereotyping.
* Are taught in groupings that allow them all to experience success.
* Have a common curriculum experience that allows for a range of different learning styles.
* Participate fully, regardless of disabilities or medical needs.
* Children with additional needs
When children attending our provisions have disabilities, we are committed to meeting the needs of these children as best as we can and within our staffto child ratio. All reasonable steps are taken to ensure that children are not placed at a disadvantage compared to children without a disability.
Progressive Sports are committed to providing an environment that allows children with a disability access to all areas of learning, where possible. Whilst we aim to provide opportunities to all children, the safety and wellbeing of all children and staffis paramount.
Progressive Sports Staffmodify teaching and learning expectations as appropriate for children with disabilities. For example, they may give additional time to complete certain activities, or they may modify teaching materials and activities.
In their planning coaches ensure that they give children with disabilities the opportunity to develop skills in practical aspects of the curriculum.
It is important that we are fully informed of any child with additional needs so we can support them in the best way possible.
If your child requires 1 to 1 support, we will need prior notice to try to arrange this.
Progressive Sports do not offer 1 to 1 support as a standard, so this would be chargeable at an hourly rate as well as the cost of the session/s. If required, we suggest you speak with your local authority who may be able to help you access local funding. Use of external agencies to support children on a 1-1 basis may be possible on application.
Progressive Sports staffensure that the work undertaken by children with a disability:
* Takes account of the effort and concentration needed when participating in activities.
* Takes account of their pace of learning and the equipment they use.
* Use assessment techniques that reflect their individual needs and abilities.
Personal care and toileting:
Progressive Sports staffare not trained in personal care and are not expected to be involved in any areas of personal care or toileting that compromises our Safeguarding policy.
Children who are not toilet trained and/or in pull ups/nappies cannot be assisted in any toileting care by our staffand unfortunately, will not be able to attend our sessions.
Where young children may have occasional "accidents" parents should inform staffduring the booking process and devise a plan for such eventualities and how they will be dealt with. In general, the principal in these circumstances will be that staffverbally support the child to clean themselves.
Therefore, it is expected that parents/carers will have trained their children to be clean and dry by the time they arrive at the setting.
Inclusion and racism
The diversity of our company is addressed through our schemes of work, which reflect the programmes of study of the National Curriculum.
Our coaches are flexible in their planning and offer appropriate challenges to all pupils, regardless of ethnic or social background.
All racist incidents would be recorded and reported to the Lead Safeguarding Practitioner by the staffmember. The Lead Safeguarding Practitioner would contact parents or carers of those children involved in racist incidents.
Additional support requirements for children who require additional or 1-1 Support aim to provide care that is as inclusive as possible.
The needs of each child vary, and we aim to support as fully as we can so they can enjoy our services.
It is important that we are fully informed of any child with additional needs, whether that be behavioural, medical, or physical so we can try and support them in the best way possible before your booking is made.
We ask that you make us aware of these needs by notifying us when registering online and by contacting our office team before placing your booking.
We do not offer 1 to 1 support as standard service. I
if your child requires 1 to 1 support at school, we will need prior notice to try and arrange this.
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#ZeroHungerGeneration #ZeroHunger A NEW oBJECTIVE TOWARDS A UnITED WORLD!
To all teens of the Focolare Movement
It is critical to mobilize as many teens and youth as possible, because only through awareness and sensitization can this goal become a reality. Today's teens can be the first generation to eradicate hunger in the world!
We have wonderful news to tell you!
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) called us to their international headquarters in Rome for a very special request - to collaborate with us in order to reach a very important objective: that is, to ensure that no one in the world will ever have to suffer hunger.
The United Nations put together 17 important goals (to be accomplished by 2030) to making a better world. Goal Number 2 is focused on eliminating hunger in the world.
The United Nations is asking our help to achieve this objective.
Why did they ask us?
Because two of the present directors, originally from Spain, were Gen and they know very well that the Teens for Unity are spread throughout the world and that they are especially committed in working for a united world.
What to do?
The problem that we want to resolve is very complex. In these recent years, hunger in the world has increased because of wars, migration, climate change, injustices... If people will adopt a new lifestyle in which love for others and for creation is put at the center, only then can we hope for a new world. The Charism that God gave us is the answer: every aspect of life is based on love.
This invitation of the UN to collaborate towards #ZeroHunger encourages us to deepen the eight pathways (see attachment) that Chiara gave to the Teens for unity in order to build a united world. Let's go through them with renewed energy, staying connected among us more than ever.
Ideas to start with right away
1. STUDY Dedicate some days to study, in order to inform yourselves and gain awareness on the roots and causes of hunger problem in the world.
2. COMMUNICATE to the Teens for Unity center email@example.com (as soon as possible but no later than 1.31.2018) photos taken and experiences made going in this direction (for example, how you lived the communion of goods in a radical way, your love for the poor, for the homeless…; how you commit yourself personally or as a family to living a sober lifestyle, your fight against wastefulness; what you are doing to promote peace and dialogue among religions, in favor of migrants, what you've done for ecology, etc.). Your experiences will help us to write a book that FAO will make available to schools all over the world. (We want to remind you that we need your parents consent to be able to publish your photos and experiences).
3. OBSERVE the situation in your city.
4. THINK The 6x1 method can help you decide together where to start.
5. ACT Think globally and act locally: work on a plan of action, taking first concrete steps in your city or your region.
6. NETWORK Communicate (also with photos and videos), through the Facebook page or Instagram of the United World Project, the reflections, commitments, plan of actions that you worked on for your city as your contribution in eliminating hunger in the world. This will keep us united and make even the smallest activity important because it's tied to a larger network. By March, with the help of some Gen 3 and Teens for Unity in throughout the world, we will work on a Pledge of Commitment to spread on all social media. This will help us involve many teens in our #ZeroHunger objective.
7.
CURRENTLY IN THE WORLD there are 800 million people who suffer hunger, approximately 1 in every 9.
MORE THAN 600 MILLION people in the world suffer obesity .
MALNUTRITION, lack of micronutrients and obesity represent the three aspects of malnutrition.
TO RID THE WORLD of hunger and of malnutrition, it is necessary to make changes and take measures on all levels of society, in its structures, but also in us - the consumers, and in our politicians. If we do not manage our natural resources well and we do not promote sustainable lifestyles, we will not achieve it.
The role of cities is a key role in the 2030 challenge to promote local sustainable models aimed at eradicating world hunger and extreme poverty.
Data provided by FAO – October 2017
8. EVALUATE periodically how your plan of action and your collaboration with others is going in order to revive and keep the level of joy in this commitment always high.
9. CELEBRATE October 16th is the United Nations' World Food Day. That week (from 13 to 21 October) will be an opportunity to gather the first fruits of our common commitment. We can get together to thank all those who have committed themselves and let everyone know what has been achieved worldwide to encourage one another and relaunch together.
INVOLVE in this objective many teens, youths, and adults, as well as raise awareness in schools, parishes, associations, various groups in your cities, regions or nations.
10. TEENS To help you talk to your classmates and get a lot of people involved in this fight against hunger in the world, the Gen 3 of Teens editorial staff will be close by dedicating on this issue (November-December 2017) a heading for #ZeroHunger #FameZero. Furthermore, the March-April 2018 magazine will be dedicated entirely to this topic.
Let's start right away so that ours can really be the first Generation #ZeroHunger!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!
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Security & Protective services
capstone: wbl internship
wbl (work-based learning) connects skilled, knowledgeable and driven students to local businesses every year. Students who participate in the Law & Public Safety program and have been selected to participate in WBL will leave school early to work with our fantastic business partners. Benefits to students in clude a chance to put skills learned in the classroom to use in an authentic setting, getting a competitive advantage on their career and networking with industry leading profession als all while still in high school. www.hallcowbl.org
Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security workers plan, manage, and provide legal, public safety, and security and protective services. Occupa tions are numerous and represent multiple levels of education and skills. Occupations fall into major categories based on common knowledge and skills: correction services such as officers and jailers; emergency and fire management services such as fire fighters, EMTs, paramedics, and public safety communications; security and protective services such as informa tion security IT specialists; law enforcement such as criminal investigators, police officers, special agents; and legal services such as a court reporters or lawyers.
Workers in the Forensic Science area collect, identify, classify, & analyze physical evidence related to criminal investigations; perform tests on weap ons or substances, such as fiber, hair, and tissue to determine significance to investigation; may testify as expert witnesses on evidence or crime laboratory techniques; fingerprinting, handwriting, or biochemistry.
High School Pathway Classes
Intro to law/public safety/corrections/security
examines the basic concepts of law related to citi zens' rights and the responsibilities; instruction in critical skill areas including: communicating with diverse groups, conflict resolution, ethics, CERT (Citizens Emergency Response Training, or sim ilar program), basic firefighting, report writing, terrorism, civil and criminal law. Career planning and employability skills will be emphasized.
Criminal Justice Essentials provides an overview of the criminal justice system. Starting with historical per spectives of the origin of the system, the course reviews the overall structure. Students will become immersed in criminal and constitutional law and will review basic law enforcement skills. The course ends with a mock trial to provide partic ipants with a first-hand experience of the criminal justice system.
Security & Protective services provides an analysis of the various careers in Security and Protective Services, including the history, procedures and objectives. Topics include: history and evolution of private security and private security services; regulatory and organizational guidelines; the impact of fed eral, state and local laws on security and protective services; public relations; strategies; supervision and management; intelligence analysis; and staffing.
Career Tech Student Organizations
SkillsUSA is a partnership of students, teachers and industry working together to ensure America has a skilled workforce. We help each student excel.
SkillsUSA's mission is to empower its members to become world-class workers, leaders and respon sible American citizens. We improve the quality of our nation's future skilled workforce through the development of SkillsUSA Framework skills that include personal, workplace and technical skills grounded in academics. Our vision is to produce the most highly skilled workforce in the world, providing every member the opportunity for career
success.
Potential careers
* Gaming Surveillance Officers
* Animal Controllers
* Intelligence Analysis
* Crossing Guards
* Loss Prevention Managers
* Security Guards
* Private Detectives & Investigators
* Sheriffs & Deputy Sheriffs
* Transit & Railroad Police
© 2021 HCSD All Design Rights Reserved
* Homeland Security
* Lifeguards, Ski Patrollers
* Hospital Security
* Government Security
* Event Security
* Secret Service
* Campus Security Officer
Security & Protective Services
Career Pathway - plan of study
Graduation Requirements
Personal aptitudes
English/Language Arts
4 Units Must Include: 9th Grade Literature & American Literature
Social Studies
3 Units Must Include:
World History, US History, Government & Economics
Mathematics
4 Units Must Include:
GSE Algebra I, GSE Geometry & GSE Algebra II
+
one additional GSE/AP/IB/DE Math course
OR
GSE Accelerated Algebra I/Analytic Geometry A,
GSE Accelerated Geometry B/Algebra II, GSE Precalculus
+
one additional GSE/AP/IB/DE Math course
Science
4 Units Must Include:
Physical Science or Physics; Biology;
Chemistry, Earth Systems, Environmental Science or AP/IB course
+
one additional Science course
Health & Personal Fitness
1 Unit Must Include: 1/2 unit of each
Career, Technical & Agriculture Education (CTAE)
3 Units Must include:
Intro to Law/Public Safety/Corrections/Security, Criminal Justice Essentials, Security & Protective Services
Electives
4 Units *Students planning to attend most post-secondary institutions must take 2 units of the same modern language.
Total Units Required
Activities that describe what i like to do:
* Work under pressure in the face of danger.
* Be in positions of authority.
* Make decisions based on my own observations.
* Respect rules & regulations.
* Observe & analyze people's behavior.
* Debate & win arguments.
Personal qualities that Describe me:
* Adventurous
* Decisive
* Community-minded
* Optimistic
* Dependable
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NATURE| NEWS
Electronics' noise disorients migratory birds
Man-made electromagnetic radiation disrupts robins' internal magnetic compasses.
Jessica Morrison
07 May 2014
Delpho/ARCO
European robins are among the bird species that orient by detecting magnetic fields.
Interference from electronics and AM radio signals can disrupt the internal magnetic compasses of migratory birds, researchers report today in Nature 1 . The work raises the possibility that cities have significant effects on bird migration patterns.
Decades of experiments have shown that migratory birds can orient themselves on migration paths using internal compasses guided by Earth's magnetic field. But until now, there has been little evidence that electromagnetic radiation created by humans affects the process.
Like most biologists studying magnetoreception, report co-author Henrik Mouritsen used to work at rural field sites far from cities teeming with electromagnetic noise. But in 2002, he moved to the University of Oldenburg, in a German city of around 160,000 people. As part of work to identify the part of the brain in which compass information is processed, he kept migratory European robins (Erithacus rubecula) inside wooden huts — a standard procedure that allows researchers to investigate magnetic navigation while being sure that the birds are not getting cues from the Sun or stars. But he found that on the city campus, the birds could not orient themselves in their proper migratory direction.
"I tried all kinds of stuff to make it work, and I couldn't make it work," Mouritsen says, "until one day we screened the wooden hut with aluminium."
Peace at last
Mouritsen and his colleagues covered the huts with aluminium plates and electrically grounded them to cut out electromagnetic noise in frequencies ranging from 50 kilohertz to 5 megahertz — which includes the range used for AM radio transmissions.
The shielding reduced the intensity of the noise by about two orders of magnitude. Under those conditions, the birds were able to orient themselves.
When the team disconnected the grounding, the aluminium plates failed to keep the artificial noise out, and the robins
could not find their way. To further test whether electromagnetic noise was responsible, the researchers simulated it using a commercially available signal generator. The birds again became disoriented.
Before sharing the results, the team spent seven years conducting double-blind tests, independently replicated by different generations of students. "We wanted to make sure that we could really document that what we were seeing was real," says Mouritsen.
Navigational error
The findings imply that the birds' navigation is controlled by a biological system sensitive to artificial electromagnetic noise, but the biophysical mechanism is unclear. Even so, the work raises the controversial prospect that it might be necessary for humans to stop using the relevant part of the electromagnetic spectrum, says Joseph Kirschvink, a geobiologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and the author of a commentary accompanying the paper 2 .
Roswitha Wiltschko, a bird navigation researcher at the University of Frankfurt in Germany, has not seen the effect in her own work. "We never used any shielding, and our birds were perfectly oriented," she says. "This is really a surprising thing for me that there can be such a strong disrupting field."
Wiltschko cautions against concluding that electromagnetic noise affects migratory birds in all cities, but other researchers report seeing evidence of the phenomenon. "These effects are real," says John Phillips, a sensory biologist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Phillips conducts behavioural studies related to navigation and spatial memory in other species, including mice and newts, and shields them from electromagnetic interference that he contends could skew experiments. "You wouldn't study a vision mechanism with flashbulbs going off at irregular intervals," he says.
Mouritsen plans further work on the effects of electromagnetic noise, in part to examine the precise workings of the birds' magnetic sense. But he says that noise could already be causing practical problems for birds: "If birds can't use one of their most significant compasses when they are in towns, what effect will that have on survival?"
Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2014.15176
References
1. Engels, S. et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13290 (2014).
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BE A READY CONGREGATION
Vulnerable Populations & Disaster
Your whole community benefits when people with particular vulnerabilities are supported. Accommodating their needs, especially during disasters, allows families to stay together, preserves natural support systems, prevents or mitigates acute medical conditions, and permits you as a leader to focus your community's limited resources on the people who need these resources most.
TYPES OF VULNERABILITIES (ALSO CALLED "SPECIAL NEEDS")
HEARING
VISION
Over 30 million people across the country are hearingimpaired (deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf/blind). Some do not speak; some use American Sign Language or another sign language; some of them wear hearing aids; some do not.
Particular needs during an evacuation or disaster:
* May not have access to hearing aids or proper batteries
* May not be able to receive information audibly from the television or radio
* May not be able to engage in two-way communication in person or over the telephone without an interpreter or assistive communication device
Responses:
* Relay all information visually, before, during, and after a disaster (sign language or posted text).
* Go out of your way to alert the hearing-impaired of a coming disaster, perhaps including personal visits or asking someone to help interpret important messages.
MOBILITY
Over 14 million Americans are mobility-impaired. Some use a wheelchair; others use a cane, crutches, or a walker .
Particular needs during an evacuation or disaster:
* May struggle to leave a damaged building or a dangerous geographic area; in power outages may not be able to use stairs or find adequate exits
* May not be able to get to necessary services because of debris or blocked access
* May or may not be able to dress themselves or cook and clean for themselves and may require assistance doing everyday tasks
Responses:
* Physically help people navigate a particularly damaged building or area of a city.
* Ensure that all facilities provided are accessible to all people regardless of mobility vulnerabilities.
===============================================
SPEECH
Approximately two million Americans have a speech impairment that interferes with inter-personal communication. Some who do speak are hard to understand. Others do not speak at all; use communication boards; or use Speech-toSpeech relay services.
National Disaster Interfaiths Network|
© All Rights Reserved
Over 10 million people in America are vision-impaired (blind, low-vision, deaf/blind). Some use service animals; some use white canes; some read Braille; some with low vision can read a document with a large bold typeface.
Particular needs during an evacuation or disaster:
* Cannot see a map or a television that shows evacuation routes of a building or city, away from a fire, flood, or violence.
* May have reduced mobility in dangerous areas
* May need help with a service animal (food, water, space)
Responses
* Communicate alerts and warnings as audible or tactile information in multiple formats.
* Provide extra help navigating areas rendered dangerous due to a disaster.
* Provide care for service animals (food, water, space, etc.).
* Connect them with their usual resources when possible.
COGNITIVE, INTELLECTUAL, & MENTAL HEALTH
Over 16 million Americans have a cognitive, intellectual or mental health vulnerability (over 7% of the population).
Particular needs during an evacuation or disaster:
* Need early and timely, accurate, and accessible information in plain language.
* May be separated from their family and/or the people that usually care for them.
* May be especially stressed and confused
Responses:
* Be prepared to offer extra guidance and care in a compassionate and respectful manner.
* Connect them with their usual resources when possible.
===============================================
Particular needs during an evacuation or disaster:
* May be without the equipment or speech relay services that they normally use.
* May be hampered in expressing their needs and questions
Responses
* Take extra care to understand what they need.
|email@example.com|
Continued on reverse
TYPES OF VULNERABILITIES CONTINUED
HEALTH MAINTENANCE VULNERABILITIES
Nearly half of all Americans say they are currently taking prescription medications. One in three Americans (34%) take prescription drugs to treat a long-term illness or condition. Among children younger than 12, 5.7% were on bronchodilators for asthma. For those 20 to 59, antidepressants were the most commonly prescribed drug, with 10.8% of this population taking them. During a disaster, these drugs along with other necessary medications may have been left behind, or have become unavailable through the normal procedures. As a religious leader you can be a source of information as to where people in your community can access their necessary medications and medical procedures. Contact your local OEM to learn what services can be provided and through what organizations.
PREPAREDNESS
Here are some ways to prepare yourself to serve vulnerable populations in your community during a disaster
* Ensuring you know beforehand who in your community is vulnerable will help you when a disaster strikes.
* Work with members of your congregation and the local OEM to identify people with special needs in your community.
* Recommend that all vulnerable members of your community speak with the local OEM for tips on disaster procedures.
* Encourage vulnerable members of your community to have a plan for disaster situations, including evacuation routes of buildings and a disaster kit which provides basic needs, such as food, water, medicine, and clothing for a few days.
* Develop a community disaster plan which includes accommodating the particular needs of vulnerable people.
* Speak with the local OEM to ensure that you are doing everything possible to help vulnerable individuals.
* Consider using a special needs registry or phone tree to effectively communicate during disasters.
RESPONSE
* Check on vulnerable people first after a disaster.
* Sometimes, all that is needed is a phone call. However, depending on the disaster and their specific vulnerability, phone communication may be impossible or impractical. In these cases home visits may be necessary.
* Remember that people with vulnerabilities may not have access to information in typical media outlets such as radio and television. Never assume that they have seen or heard warnings of coming disasters.
* You may have to help them evacuate a building or an area of town. Door-to-door pick-ups may be necessary. Make sure you bring the appropriate personnel with you to transport them.
* When speaking with or transporting people with vulnerabilities, always treat them with respect and dignity.
* When offering public service after a disaster, always attempt to be as accommodating as possible to vulnerable individuals. The following tips are good to keep in mind:
* All service locations must be accessible with parking nearby and near accessible transit.
* Some vulnerable people may require assistance to travel to and from points of emergency and recovery services or to transport food and water to their residences.
* Avoid using outdoor areas that are muddy, sandy, or covered by thick grass.
* Permit people with mobility impairments the option of going to the head of long lines.
* Train staff to realize that some people have the physical ability to ride buses, but do not have the cognitive ability to learn new routes established because of a disaster.
* Train staff to realize that some people with emotional or developmental vulnerabilities may be too unsettled by the disaster to return to their safe residences unless accompanied by a counselor familiar with their particular needs.
* Some people with special needs may require assistance understanding and filling out emergency paperwork.
* Train staff to know that even normal amounts of background noise may prevent a person with impaired hearing from understanding spoken instructions.
* Train staff in the essentials of sign language.
* Forms and explanations for FEMA and other assistance should be available in Braille, large print, and on audio tape.
* Stock bicycle tire-patch kits for use on wheelchair and scooters with flat tires.
*
Realize that a Food Stamp application question such as "Do you buy and prepare your own food?" yields a misleading answer when asked of individuals who use home attendants.
The Information in this tip sheet was adapted and sometimes taken directly from the sources below.
OTHER RESOURCES
* Centers for Disease Control—http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/vulnerabilityandhealth/emergencypreparedness.html
* Disabled Persons & Disaster Planning: DP2— http://www.citycent.com/dp2/service.htm
* FEMA— http://www.fema.gov/pdf/about/odic/all_hands_0411.pdf
* National Organization on Disabilities— http://nod.org/assets/downloads/Guide-Emergency-Planners.html
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