Index page
../
[Root community]
Community members, in decreasing PageRank scores:
Compensatory Education offers supplementary programs or services designed to help children at risk of cognitive impairment and low educational archievement reach their full potentialKaty Independent School district: Compensatory EducationGarbner, Howard L. (1988): Milwaukee Project: Preventing Mental Retardation in Children at Risk
:For the Australian television series, see Head Start (TV series) Head Start (42 USC 9801 et seq.) is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families.
Head Start began in 1964<ref name=Difference></ref> and was later updated by the Head Start Act of 1981.<ref name=FDAMemo>FDA. Memorandum of Understanding.</ref> It is the longest-running program to address systemic poverty in the United States. , more than 22 million pre-school aged children have participated in Head Start. The $6.8+ billion dollar budget for 2005 provided services to more than 905,000 children, 57% of whom were four years old or older, and 43% three years old or younger. Services were provided by 1,604 different programs operating more than 48,000 classrooms scattered across every state (and nearly every county) at an average cost of $7,222 per child. The staff consists of nearly 212,000 paid personnel in addition to six times as many volunteers.
Phonics refers to a method for teaching speakers of English to read and write that language. Phonics involves teaching how to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters (e.g., that the sound can be represented by c, k, ck, or ch spellings) and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words.
The Carolina Abecedarian Project was a controlled experiment that was conducted in 1972 in North Carolina, United States, by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute to study the potential benefits of early childhood education for poor children to enhance school readiness. It has been found that in their earliest school years, poor children lag behind others, suggesting the fact that they were ill-prepared for schooling. Alexander, K. L., & Entwisle, D. R. (1988). Achievement in the first 2 years of school: Patterns and processes. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 53 (Serial No. 218) The Abecedarian project was inspired by the fact that few other early childhood programs could provide a sufficiently well-controlled environment to determine the effectiveness of early childhood training.
The High/Scope early childhood education philosophy is a method of running a preschool, kindergarten, or elementary school developed in the United States in the 1960s. It is now common there and in some other countries.
The philosophy behind High/Scope, based on Jean Piaget's ideas, is that children should be involved actively in their own learning. They "learn by doing", often working with hands on materials and carrying out projects of their own choosing. The adults working with the children see themselves more as facilitators or partners than managers or supervisors. High/Scope's approach encompasses all aspects of child development and involves teachers and parents in supporting and extending children's emotional, intellectual, social, and physical skills and abilities.
In a High/Scope school, different areas of the classroom are designated for different activities, for example water play, reading, sand play, art, writing, dramatic play, etc. Children are intended to be able to access all facilities independently and be able to take some responsibility for use of these areas.
An important part of the High/Scope approach is the plan-do-review sequence. Children first plan what materials they want to work with and what they want to do (this can be done formally or informally in small groups). Only once they have made a plan, however vague, of what they want to do can they go and do it. Then, after this choice worktime, the children discuss what they have been doing and whether it was successful.
Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness in which listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can differentiate meaning. Separating the spoken word "cat" into three distinct phonemes, /k/, /æ/, and /t/, requires phonemic awareness skill.
The National Reading Panel has found that phonemic awareness improves children's word reading and reading comprehension, as well as helping children learn to spell. Phonemic awareness is the basis for learning phonics. This relationship is explained in the What Works Reports and illustrated in the Reading Skills Pyramid.
Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are often confused since they are interdependent. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual phonemes. Phonological awareness includes this ability, but it also includes the ability to hear and manipulate larger units of sound, such as onsets and rimes and syllables.
Phonemic awareness relates to the ability to distinguish and manipulate individual sounds, /f/, /ʊ/, and /t/ in the case of foot. The following are common phonemic awareness skills practiced with students: * Phoneme isolation: which requires recognizing the individual sounds in words, example, "Tell me the first sound you hear in the word paste" (/p/). * Phoneme identity: which requires recognizing the common sound in different words, for example, "Tell me the sound that is the same in bike, boy and bell" (/b/). * Phoneme substitution: in which one can turn a word (such as "cat") into another (such as "hat") by substituting one phoneme (such as /h/) for another (/c/). Phoneme substitution can take place for initial sounds (cat-hat), middle sounds (cat-cut) or ending sounds (cat-can). * Oral segmenting: The teacher says a word, for example, "ball," and students say the individual sounds, /b/, /ɑ/, and /l/. * Oral blending: The teacher says each sound, for example, "/b/, /ɑ/, /l/" and students respond with the word, "ball." * Sound deletion: The teacher says word, for example, "bill," has students repeat it, and then instructs students to repeat the word without a sound. * Onset-rime manipulation: which requires isolation, identification, segmentation, blending, or deletion of onsets (the single consonant or blend that precedes the vowel and following consonants), for example, j-ump, st-op, str-ong. For example, the teacher might say, now say bill without the /b/." Students should respond with /ɪl/. There are other phonemic awareness activities, such as sound substitution, where students are instructed to replace one sound with another, sound addition, where students add sounds to words, and sound switching, where students manipulate the order of the phonemes. These are more complex but research supports the use of the three listed above, particularly oral segmenting and oral blending.
This category is for articles which are relevant to the field and practice of early childhood education.
SAIL, Storybook Activities for Improving Literacy, was an intervention where Head Start teachers were trained to use storybook reading to improve the literacy skills, particularly vocabulary skills, of preschool children. All of the children were enrolled in Head Start classrooms in Lane County, Oregon who were also participants in Project STAR a larger study conducted by the University of Oregon. The intervention included activities that targeted vocabulary, comprehension, and narrative ability. It was conducted for 20 minutes a day, approximately four days a week for eight weeks.
The trained teachers were instructed to read assigned storybooks to their classrooms for the allotted period of time. The storybooks used in the intervention were age appropriate, had numerous distinct sequence events, and varied vocabulary. Three vocabulary words were assigned per book to be introduced to the preschoolers that were related to the story and likely to be unfamiliar words. Some examples of selected words were ukulele, magician, optometrist, flashlight, crane, and restaurant. Activities were planned for all four days the book was assigned.
Dick and Jane were the main characters in popular basal readers written by Dr. William S. Gray and published by Scott Foresman, that were used to teach children to read from the 1930s through to the 1970s in the United States. There is controversy as to plagiarism of another work however, with Dr. Gray accused of copying Sir Fred Schonell's similar Dick and Dora readers found in his Happy Venture Playbooks. It is known that the original premise of Gray's readers were in fact appropriated from his Australian contemporary Schonell. The main characters, Dick and Jane, were a little boy and girl. Supporting characters included Baby (or Sally), Mother, Father, Spot the dog, Puff the cat, Jack the clown and Tim the teddy bear. They first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers used in the 1930s. The books relied on whole language theories (or "whole word reading") and repetition, using phrases like, "Oh, see. Oh, see Jane. Funny, funny Jane," and they ignored phonics. For this reason, they came to be used less and less as studies supported phonics as a more effective method of gaining literacy.
The simple but distinctive illustrations for the books were done by artists Eleanor Campbell and Keith Ward. Robert Childress did the illustrations during the 1950s.
Black characters and characters from other races and cultures were not introduced until 1965, when Dick and Jane books were already declining in popularity. In 1955 Rudolf Flesch criticized the Dick and Jane series in his book, Why Johnny Can't Read, and the push for multiculturalism, and stronger presentation of other races and cultures was partially a reaction to the cultural homogeneity of the series.
First editions of the books are now worth as much as two hundred dollars. The books were reissued in 2003 by Grosset & Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) and over 2.5 million copies were sold, but this time the publishers had warned against using them to teach reading to children. Related merchandise, such as shirts and magnets, also gained wide popularity, particularly among people who had never been exposed to the original series but were familiar with catch phrases like "See Spot run!"
The title of one of the books, Fun with Dick and Jane, inspired a 1977 film of the same title, and its 2005 remake.
Whole language describes a literacy instructional philosophy which emphasizes that children should focus on meaning and moderates skill instruction. It can be contrasted with phonics-based methods of teaching reading and writing which emphasize instruction for reading and spellingVol 34 No 2, April - June 1996 Page 28<!-- Bot generated title -->. It has drawn criticism by those who advocate "back to basics" pedagogyor reading instruction based on scientific research. eBooks.com - In Defense of Good Teaching: What Teachers Need to Know About the eBook<!-- Bot generated title -->.
Janet and John are the main characters in a series of reading books for children aged 4-7 years.
Peter and Jane are the main characters in a series of 36 British early readers for the English language published by Ladybird Books. The first book in the series, Ladybird series 641, was published in 1964, and the series was completed by the first publication of the 36th book in 1967. The books are also known as Peter and Jane after the characters, although the series is more properly referred to as the Key Words Reading Scheme. Over 80 million books in the series have been sold worldwide, and the books remain in print in 2006.
The books were designed as materials for teaching a small child to learn to read, using a system of key phrases and words devised by teacher William Murray. Murray was an educational adviser at a borstal and later headmaster of a "school for the educationally subnormal" in Cheltenham. From research undertaken in the 1950s by Murray with Professor Joe McNally, an educational psychologist at Manchester University, Murray realised that only 12 words account for ¼, 100 words account for ½, and 300 words account for ¾, of the words used in normal speaking, reading and writing in the English language.
Starting with book 1a, a budding reader of primary school age, from 3 to 5 year old, is introduced to brother and sister Peter and Jane, their dog Pat, their Mummy and Daddy, and their home, toys, playground, the beach, shops, buses and trains, and so on. The first book uses the 12 key works which are used repeatedly ("Here is Peter", "Peter is here", "Here is Jane", "Jane is here", "I like Peter", "I like Jane"). Additional words are introduced gradually, page by page, to expand the reader's reading vocabulary, with the new words on each page set out in a footnote. The reader can consolidate their learning with books 1b, or practise writing in book 1c, all with the same vocabulary; or progress to book 2a (and 2b and 2c), and so on, with 12 sets of three books in all.
All of the books are small, thin hardback volumes with 56 pages, measuring 112×170 mm. Each book has text on a left page and an illustration on the facing right page, drawn by artists Harry Wingfield, Martin Aitchison, Frank Hampson, Robert Ayton and John Berry. The illustrations vary in style from books to book, depending on artist, but Peter and Jane are recognisable throughout. The clear sans serif typeface used in the books starts at a large size and gradually becomes smaller as the reader progresses through the books. The sentence structure also becomes gradually more complex.
The books were first published in 1964, with a firmly 1950s feel to the illustrations provided by the furniture and clothing depicted, and the social context reflecting the life of a white, middle-class family. The books were revised and updated in 1970, and again in the late 1970s, to reflect changes in fashions and in social attitudes. For example, golliwogs were airbrushed out; Daddy takes a more active domestic role; and Jane moved out of skirts and dresses into jeans, and abandoned her dolly for rollerskates. However, it remains notable how often Peter goes out to help Daddy, or actively plays with a ball, for example, while Jane stays at home to help Mummy, passively watches Peter, or plays with her doll.
Few changes have been made to the books since the 1970s, and they may be considered a source of social history. The books make use of the whole word or "look and say" technique which is generally considered outmoded as a method of reading education when not used in conjunction with phonics. Nevertheless, the books remain on sale in 2006, priced relatively cheaply at around £2.50 per book.
In some Asian countries, particularly those which are also part of the British Commonwealth, the books are still widely used as a teaching aid in nurseries, preschools and kindergartens.
Synthetic Phonics is a method of teaching reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words. The method relates to the English language only.
Reading education is the process by which individuals are taught to derive meaning from text.
Government-funded scientific research on reading and reading instruction began in the U.S. in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers began publishing findings based on converging evidence from multiple studies. However, these findings have been slow to move into typical classroom practice.
The Ant and Bee stories were a collection of small format hardback books produced in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s. Then reprinted by Trafalgar Square Publishing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were designed to teach pre-school children about the alphabet, shapes and colours. The author was Angela Banner.
The principal characters were Ant (the naughtier and more adventurous half of the duo) and Bee (more sensible and better behaved). On occasions they were joined by the Kind Dog and/or the zoo man. The primary lure of these books is that simple three and four-letter words are texted in red so children can associate the print with the pictures.
There is a relatively small body of very complete programs that have been widely used in schools and clinics that teach students with reading difficulty. These are listed below. There is an increasing number of programs available for computers and online. The quality of these products varies dramatically.
Samuel Torrey Orton (October 15, 1879–November 17, 1948) was an American physician who pioneered the study of learning disabilities. He is best known for his work examining the causes and treatment of reading disability, or dyslexia.
Orton's interest in learning disabilities stemmed from his early work as a pathologist in Massachusetts, where he worked with adult patients with brain damage. This led him to study why some children with apparently intact neurological functioning have language disabilities. In 1919, Orton was hired as the founding director of the State Psychopathic Hospital in Iowa City, Iowa, and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. In 1925, Orton set up a 2-week mobile clinic in Greene County, Iowa to evaluate students referred by teachers because they "were retarded or failing in their school work." Orton found that 14 of the students who were referred primarily because they had great difficulty in learning to read, in fact had near-average, average, or above-average IQ scores.<ref name=Hallahan2001></ref>
Orton's study of reading difficulties in children led him to hypothesize that these individuals have failed to establish appropriate cerebral organization to support the association of visual words with their spoken forms.. He termed this difficulty strephosymbolia, meaning "twisted symbols". This term stemmed from Orton’s observation that many of the children he worked with tended to reverse letters or transpose their order. Orton also reported that some of his research subjects could read more easily if they held pages up to a mirror, and a few were rapid mirror writers.
Working in the 1920’s, Orton did not have access to modern brain scanning equipment, but he knew from his work with brain damaged adults that injuries to the left hemisphere produced symptoms similar to those he observed in children. Many of the children Orton studied were also ambidextrous or had mixed handedness. This led Orton to theorize that the children's reading problems stemmed from the failure of the left hemisphere to become dominant over the right. Some of Orton's theories about brain structure and organization would later be confirmed by modern brain researchers, such as Dr. Albert Galaburda, who compared the brains of deceased dyslexic and non-dyslexic adults in the late 1970s.
Dr. Orton’s key contribution to the field of education was the concept of “multisensory” teaching–integrating kinesthetic (movement-based) and tactile (sensory-based) learning strategies with teaching of visual and auditory concepts. Dr. Orton wanted a way to teach reading that would integrate right and left brain functions. He was influenced by the work of fellow psychiatrist Grace Fernald, who had developed a kinesthetic approach involving writing in the air and tracing words in large written or scripted format, while simultaneously saying the names and sounds of the letters.
Later, Orton began working with psychologist Anna Gillingham, who introduced a systematic and orderly approach of categorizing and teaching a set of 70 phonograms, single letters and letter pairs representing the 44 discrete sounds (or phonemes) found in English. In the years since Dr. Orton's death in 1948, his name has come to be strongly associated with the Orton-Gillingham teaching method, which remains the basis of the most prevalent form of remediation and tutoring for children with dyslexia.
A nursery school is a school for children between the ages of three and five, staffed by qualified teachers and other professionals who encourage and supervise educational play rather than simply providing childcare.Encarta definition of nursery school, accessed August 1, 2007 It is generally considered part of early childhood education. In some jurisdictions the provision of nursery school services is on a user pays or limited basis while some governments fund nursery school services.
Childcare (also written child careBoth childcare and child care are common, acceptable spelling of the word. Child care is the preferred spelling in accordance with AP Style. and babycare) is the act of caring for and supervising minor children. (In Australia, daycare is referred to as "childcare"—cf.)
The Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction was developed in the early-20th century. It is language-based, multisensory, structured, sequential, cumulative, cognitive, and flexible.
Orton-Gillingham techniques have been in use since the 1930s. These techniques are taught in only a very small number of public school systems today, and then only within special education classes; they are used much more often in private one-on-one tutorials. An intensive, sequential phonics-based system teaches the basics of word formation before whole meanings. The method accommodates and utilizes the three learning modalities, or pathways, through which people learn—visual, auditory and kinesthetic.
Day care or child care is care of a child during the day by a person other than the child's parents or legal guardians, typically someone outside the child's immediate family. The service is known as child care in the United Kingdom and Australia and day care in North America. Child care or day care is provided in nurseries or creches or by childminders caring for children in their own homes.
Babysitting is the occasional temporary care of a child during the absence of his or her parents. Child care or day care is ongoing care during specific periods, such as the parents' time at work. Child care can also take on a more formal structure, with education, child development, discipline and even preschool falling into the fold of services.
Some childminders care for children from several families at the same time, either in their own home or in a specialized child care facility. Some employers provide nursery provision for their employees at or near the place of employment.
Child care in the child's own home is traditionally provided by a nanny or au pair, or by a extended family member including grandparents, aunts and uncles.
The Spalding Method is a program for teaching students to read by first teaching them to write, hence the name of the Spalding text, The Writing Road to Reading. Students first learn Phonograms. Phonograms are the written form of the sounds used in the English language. In English there are 26 letters of the alphabet, but there are 70 phonograms that represent 45 English sounds. Some examples of these phonograms are "a" which makes the sounds a as in cat,ay, and ah, also there are blends such as "sh" and "ch" and "wor". Students learn these sounds by looking at flash cards which show the phonogram, listening to a teacher, parent, tutor, or CD say the sound, the child repeats the sound back and writes it. Spalding is phonics based but is more than just phonics, it is a total language arts approach which integrates instruction in speaking, spelling, writing, listening, and reading comprehension.
In the Spalding Method students say the sounds of words before, while, and after they write words on paper. Students embrace quality literature and reading comprehension is facilitated by the internalization of high frequency words and the skills to sound out unknown words. In the Spalding Method students are taught the proper way to form their manuscript and cursive letters so that they can form the letters properly as they write them and therefore will recognize the letters in print, handwriting is also important because once students know the proper way to form letters they no longer worry about their writing and are able to focus their attention on reading and spelling. Direct, sequential instruction is in place to explicitly teach each skill and proceed from simple to complex. Multisensory instruction is achieved by providing visual, auditory, and kinesthetic activities. The Spalding Method is ideal for teaching students to read and write because it develops skilled readers, critical listeners, accomplished speakers, spellers, and writers who are life long learners.
The method was developed by Romalda Spalding, along with educator and psychologist Anna Gillingham, who were mentored by Dr. Samuel Orton, a key early researcher in the area of dyslexia.
A Wood Kindergarten is a type of preschool that was first conceived in Scandinavia. A Wood Kindergarten is a daycare for children between the ages of three and six that is held exclusively outdoors, in nature. It is also known as an outdoor preschool (British English), a Waldkindergarten (German), a nature preschool, or a forest kindergarten.
A sight word is any word that is known by a reader automatically. Sight words are pronounced without decoding the word's spelling. A common first sight word is a child's given name. Beginning readers are at an advantage when they learn to read sight words that occur frequently in print such as those included on the Dolch and Fry word lists. However, it is possible to read a word on sight but not know the meaning of the word. For example, a child might be able to read on sight "there, their and they're" but not understand the differences in meaning. Thus learning words by sight only should not be seen as a complete reading solution. In phonics instruction, sight words refer to common words where one or more phonemes in the word has a unique spelling that cannot be sounded out using common phonics rules (for example: aunt, friend, and sieve). Reading researcher Diane McGuinness estimates that there are approximately 100 common words in English which fit this description, and require specific word-level memorization. McGuinness, Diane. "Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How To Teach Reading", page 58. MIT Press, 2004. This amount is far less than the 220 sight words listed on the Dolch word list.
Reading Recovery is a supplementary education program that aims to offer the lowest-achieving first-grade children an effective method of English language reading and writing instruction.
The program was developed in the 1970s by New Zealand educator Dr. Marie Clay. After lengthy observations of successful early readers Dr. Clay defined reading as a message-getting, problem-solving activity, and writing as a message-sending, problem-solving activity. Dr. Clay suggested that both activities involved linking invisible patterns of oral language with visible symbols. (Clay, 2005)
In 1984 Dr. Gay Su Pinnell and Dr. Charlotte Huck of Ohio State University introduced the method to the United States. "Reading Recovery" is a registered trademark of Ohio State University in the U.S.
Reading Recovery sites operated in eight Canadian provinces and one territory, 48 U.S. States, and the District of Columbia. Approximately 60,000 North American children were served by Reading Recovery educators during the 1993-94 school year. In California alone, more than 500 school districts served approximately 5000 children. (Swartz & Klein, 1996) The program is also implemented in Australia, Canada, and England. According to its inventors and advocators, Reading Recovery combines extensive teacher education with an emphasis on the development of phonological awareness and the use of contextual information to assist reading. They claim it to be an educationally sound and cost-effective early intervention program for helping children who are at-risk of early reading failure.
Gio-Key-Board or GioKeyBoard is a multimedia literacy "Initial-Sound-Keyboard" (synthetic phonics) with integrated word processor for children. The freeware is useful for pupils in improving primary reading and writing skills (reading education, literacy).
Gio-Key-Board is multilingual and language-independent. All sounds, graphics, keyboard layouts, options (100) and dictionary-words of the program can be changed and adapted. The free software can read and speak all written texts by speech synthesis. The "Child-Write-Program" also has a speaking dictionary to insert words into the text.
Handicapped persons (special education) can write texts using either a single keyboard-key, mouse-button or the joystick.
Preschool education is the provision of education for children before the commencement of statutory education, usually between the ages of two and five, dependent on the jurisdiction. Preschool is also known as nursery school,day care or kindergarten.
Preschool work is organized within a framework that professional educators create. The framework includes structural (administration, class size, teacher-child ratio, etc.), process (quality of classroom environments, teacher-child interactions, etc), and alignment (standards, curriculum, assessments) components that are associated with each individual unique child that has both social and academic outcomes.
Decodable text is a type of text often used in beginning reading instruction. With this type of text, new readers can decipher words using the phonics skills they have been taught. For instance, children could decode a phrase such as “Pat the fat rat” if they had been taught the letter-sound associations for each letter -- that 'p' stands for the sound /p/, 'a' for the sound /a/, etc.
Generally, decodable text is used in programs that have a strong phonics emphasis. Geoff, Patrick, Decodable Words Versus Predictable Text, National Right to Read Foundation. Retrieved August 30, 2007. Whole-language and whole word methods of instruction generally use stories with familiar high-frequency words arranged in predictable and repetitive patterns. Topics, National Right To Read Foundation, Retrieved August 30, 2007.
The BCD decodable text system has the most number of levels. BCD decodable text, kidslike.info, Retrieved Dec. 5, 2008 Having more levels means a child faces fewer challenges in progressing to the next level.
In the United States, certain states dictate that a very high percentage of the words in the earliest texts be decodable according to letter–sound correspondences that children have been taught. Advocates argue that this kind of text enables students to practice the phonics skills they have been taught. Critics argue that this kind of text is stilted and unnatural. In California, using the Whole Language approach was blamed for the drop in student reading scores and the California legislature mandated a renewed emphasis on decodable texts. Reading, How to teach -- decodable texts versus predictable texts, kidslike.info, Retrieved Oct. 22, 2008.
:"Reader (book)" redirects here. Basal readers are textbooks used to teach reading and associated skills to schoolchildren. Commonly called "reading books" or "readers" they are usually published as anthologies that combine previously published short stories, excerpts of longer narratives, and original works. A standard basal series comes with individual identical books for students, a Teacher's Edition of the book, and a collection of workbooks, assessments, and activities.
Writing process is a pedagogical term that appears in the research of Janet Emig who published The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders in 1971. The term marks a shift from examining the products of writing to the composing process of writers. This focus on process encourages composition students to see writing as an ongoing, recursive process from conception of the idea through publication. It asserts that all writing serves a purpose, and that writing passes through some or all of several clear steps. It was part of the general whole language approach, championed most prominently in Australia, New Zealand and the United States K-12 educational system.
Generally the writing process is seen as consisting of five steps: *Prewriting: planning, research, outlining, diagramming, storyboarding or clustering (for a technique similar to clustering, see mindmapping) *Draft: initial composition in prose form *Revision: review, modification and organization (by the writer) *Editing: proofreading for clarity, conventions, style (preferably by another writer) *Submittal: sharing the writing: possibly through performance, printing, or distribution of written materialThe Writing Process Notebook.Ideas for Teaching the Writing Process. Kim's Korner for Teacher TalkWriting Process.The Writing Process.
These steps are not necessarily performed in any given order. For example, the skills used in the prewriting process can be applied any time by writers seeking ideas throughout the process. It is not necessary to go through each step for every writing project attempted. The steps make up a recursive process.The Writing Process. MIT Online Writing and Communication Center. 1999.
The instructional theory behind the model is similar to new product development and life cycle theory, adapted to written works. By breaking the writing cycle into discrete stages and focusing on strategies at each stage, it is hoped that writers will develop an appreciation for the process of seeing an idea through to successful completion in a logical way. Rather than presenting written works as acts of genius that emerge fully formed, they are shown as the result of several distinct and learnable skills.
Analytical Phonics refers to an approach to the teaching of reading in which the phonemes associated with particular graphemes are not pronounced in isolation. Children identify (analyse) the common phoneme in a set of words in which each word contains the phoneme under study. For example, teacher and pupils discuss how the following words are alike: pat, park, push and pen. Analytic phonics for writing similarly relies on inferential learning: realising that the initial phoneme in /p i g/ is the same as that in /p æ t, p a: k, p u ƒ/ and /p e n/, children deduce that they must write that phoneme with grapheme.National Literacy Trust Today, Analytical phonics is referred to as Implicit phonics. This is because it signifies the analysis (breaking down) of the whole word to its parts (an analysis only necessary when a child cannot read it as a whole word).Education News
Infant education is the education of children before they would normally enter school. "Infant" typically describes a child under two years old.
Note that in some countries/states, and especially in the United Kingdom an infant school caters for the earlier years of primary or elementary education, typically catering for children aged between four and seven years of age. These schools separate children into age groups, teaching the youngest in a separate building from the older pupils.
Many believe that education at pre-school ages can significantly affect a person's ability to deal successfully with later life. Some studies supporting this point of view are detailed below.
"Why Does Infant Attention Predict Adolescent Intelligence?" by Sigman, Cohen, and Beckwith. This study found that speaking often to children between the ages of 8 and 24 months of age could significantly improve intelligence later in life. It appears in volume 20 (1997) of the journal Infant Behavior and Development.
A report by Rose and Feldman, August 1997 edition of Child Development suggests that visual recognition skills and tactile-visual skills at ages 7 to 12 months are a significant indicator of later IQ scores.
Visual stimulus and response time as early as 3 months is an indicator of verbal and performance IQ at age 4 years: Dougherty and Haith of the University of Denver, "Infant Expectations and Reaction Time as Predictors of Childhood Speed of Processing and IQ", published in volume 33 (1997) of the journal Developmental Psychology.
Otitis media (a condition that affects hearing) significantly impacts the advancement of infants. "The Effect of Otitis Media with Effusion (ie., with fluid accumulation) on Infants' Detection of Sound" by Lynne Werner and Jeffrey Ward from the University of Washington, Infant Behavior and Development, 20 (2), 1997.
Robert Titzer, of Southeastern Louisiana University, reported on a longitudinal case study in which an infant who was exposed to an interactive video involving words was able to visually recognize more than 100 words by 12 months of age and more than 500 words by age 15 months.
Baby music is the term used to describe music activity classes aimed at pre-school children and their parents, currently popular in the United Kingdom.
In these classes, usually lasting about an hour, the children are encouraged to participate in singing and percussion activities led by a musician-animateur who will often play an acoustic guitar. Percussion instruments may also be provided. Typically baby music classes take place in a community hall or other subsidised venue.=
In this stage, babies and children are very receptive to music. Toddlers are specially receptive to music cartoons and videos.
Kindermusik is a method of early childhood education in music and movement. It combines the early learning music methods of Carl Orff, Zoltan Kodaly and Suzuki method with early childhood development research. The Kindermusik philosophy is founded on the following fundamental beliefs: every parent is the child's most important teacher, every child is musical, the home is the most important learning environment, music nurtures a child's cognitive, emotional, social, language, and physical development.
The phrase derives from the German for Children's Music.
Kindermusik International is a company based in the United States that delivers kindermusik programs.
Universal Preschool is the notion that access to preschool should be available to families similar to Kindergarten. Child advocates have different definitions of the definition of who is included and how it is to be funded. There has been a move to change the name to Preschool for All. Like Kindergarten, the concept is to have a voluntary program, unlike compulsory education, that is mandated by law in the United States with exceptions to allow for homeschooling and alternative education. Advocates have argued over: *the age of children eligible for the service of preschool, with some taking the more traditional view that priority should be provided to children four years of age and others believing that brain development dictates that learning begins at birth and declines significantly by age eight. *Other child advocates believe that children, except for those in institutions, are in a family, whether it be a two parent family, single parent family, foster care, guardianship, or kinship care that often requires a full day rather than a part day preschool. *Child advocates point to the head start model as ideal, with parent involvement and education, social services and a family focus as critical to a quality preschool. *A last issue for child advocates is whether the preschool should be provided by government, usually through public school systems or the existing diverse delivery system. Currently most preschool used by families consists of public, nonprofit, church related, private for profit and in home settings (family day care).
Jolly Phonics is a systematic, sequential, phonics program designed to teach children to read. Children learn 40+ sounds of the English language, rather than the alphabet. They are then taken through the stages of blending and segmenting words to develop reading and writing skills.
Letterland is a system for teaching children basic literacy: how to read, write and spell using a synthetic phonics approach. It is set in an imaginary Letterland, populated with pictogram-based characters . These characters are a fusion of letters and animated characters. It was originally developed by Lyn Wendon, and first published in 1985. It is available in English and Spanish.
The Wilson Reading System is a research-based reading and writing program designed for students (grades 2-12 and adults) who have difficulty with decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling). It is a complete curriculum that has 12 steps, beginning with phoneme segmentation. Its main goal is to teach students language and word structure through a carefully planned program. The program was developed in Massachusetts in the 1980s by Barbara A. Wilson, based on knowledge gained from working with adults with dyslexia using Orton-Gillingham methodology at Massachusetts General Hospital's Language Disorders Unit, and with students in an after-school reading clinic founded with her husband, Ed Wilson. The Wilson Reading System, published in 1989, is now commonly used in various settings throughout the United States and several other countries.
Hooked on Phonics is a commercial brand of educational materials, originally designed for reading education through phonetics.
Hooked on Phonics was developed in the 1980s by a father who wanted to help his son overcome his reading problems. First marketed widely in the 1990s, it used a particular instructional design to teach letter-sound correlations (phonics) as part of children's literacy. The program has since expanded to encompass a wide variety of media, including computer games, music, and flash cards in addition to books in its materials, as well as to include other subject areas. The target audience for this brand is primarily individuals and home school parents. The product was advertised extensively on television and radio.
The product along with its catchphrase, "Hooked on Phonics worked for me!" (spoken by happy children in the product's television ads) and its telephone number "1-800-ABCDEFG" (1-800-222-3334), became widely recognized during the mid-1990s. The phrase was used widely in pop culture to make pejorative tongue-in-cheek jokes about not being able to read or for making incidental reading errors. Modifications (typically phonetic misspellings) to the catchphrase also abound for both comic as well as promotional purposes.
Adventure Links (AL) is an ACA-Accredited experiential education organization located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Paris, VA near Washington, DC. With an emphasis on youth development, Adventure Links facilitates summer camps, high adventure outings and team building programs to schools, youth organizations, corporations and adult groups in the local metro area as well as the neighboring states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
A picture dictionary is a dictionary that uses photos or drawings to illustrate what the headwords mean. Picture dictionaries are useful in a variety of teaching environments, such as teaching a young child about their native language, and in foreign language instruction for children and adults. Picture dictionaries are often organized by topic instead of being an alphabetic list of words. Picture dictionaries are almost always minimizing dictionaries, and only include a small corpus of words.
A similar but distinct concept is the visual dictionary. A picture dictionary is usually made up of a set of basic vocabulary. A visual dictionary attempts to be a complete dictionary with an alphabetized index allowing you to find an illustration. In that illustration you can find the specific word you are looking for.
The Dolch Word List is a list of frequently used words compiled by Edward William Dolch, PhD. The list was prepared in 1936. The list was originally published in his book Problems in Reading in 1948. Under the copyright laws in affect during the time of publication, the dolch word list is out of copyright and can be posted here.
Dolch compiled the list based on children's books of his era. The list contains 220 "service words" that have to be easily recognized in order to achieve reading fluency. The compilation excludes nouns, which comprise a separate 95-word list.
Many of the 220 Dolch words can’t be “sounded out” using common sound to letter phonics patterns and have to be learned by sight; hence the alternative term, “sight word." Although the list is divided into grades, for native English speakers, all the words in the Dolch should be mastered by the end of 1st grade.
"Whole language" is a method of teaching reading that emphasizes literature and text comprehension. Students are taught to use critical thinking strategies and to use context to "guess" words that they do not recognize. In the younger grades, children use invented spelling to write their own stories.
In contrast, "Phonics" emphasizes the alphabetic principle -- the idea that letters represent the sounds of speech, and that there are that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken words. Children learn letter sounds (b = the first sound in "bat" and "ball") first and then blend them (bl = the first two sounds in "blue") to form words.
Both instructional methods use elements that are emphasized in the other; the differences between the methods are largely related to what is emphasized and the sequence of skill instruction.
Baby videos are educational tools which can be used for teaching babies as young as six months, introducing the alphabet, different sights, shapes and colors, numbers and counting. Baby videos can be used for helping babies learn important educational skills, comprehension, introduction to the environment, as well as music. Some parents use baby videos to help develop their kids motor skills and open their young minds to the world. Certain preschools, educators and care givers find baby videos to be a useful tool.
Several baby videos are available in the market today including videos which introduce letters, music videos or videos that teach babies to communicate when they are young such as signing videos.