tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60045825732592063542024-03-13T23:31:59.069+02:00Fun and Creative ideas for Teaching EnglishNatasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comBlogger580125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-82626504367912032162017-08-28T10:50:00.000+03:002017-08-28T11:00:49.985+03:00Wild things: how ditching the classroom boosts children's mental health<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Three years ago teacher Simon Poote spotted a disused strip of land on the grounds of <a href="http://www.longcrendon.bucks.sch.uk/">Long Crendon school</a> in Aylesbury. Instead of giving over the 15-metre square lawn to recreational use, or simply ignoring it, Poote saw potential for creating an outdoor learning space for the primary’s year 1 to 6 students. The only snag was how to pay for the plot’s transformation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“We have lots of space but not much money,” says headteacher Sue Stamp. The school therefore appealed to parents, local businesses and the community to donate everything from landfill material to create small hills, to unwanted play equipment to build a trim trail and tunnels for the children to explore. Help came thick and fast, and the area now boasts a fully equipped thatched mud kitchen and a system of pipes and pulleys to transport water around the site.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Stamp insists outdoor learning has become more than just a project for the school, “it’s a way of life” she explains. The whole ethos of the school is to <b>be outdoors as much as possible, rain or shine,</b> so that students of all ages also take part in forest school activities in a wooded area alongside the playing field two days a week, learning skills such as fire lighting and making charcoal, as well as being allowed to climb trees, all under supervision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Many of the outdoor activities they undertake are linked to curriculum subjects, and complement classroom lessons rather than detract from them. A factor which Stamp believes has played a part in the school’s continuing exam success. But outdoor learning is far more than an academic exercise – the head claims<b> the impact on children’s mental health and wellbeing is undeniable.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“We have seen an amazing difference in some children,” she says. “Children who just didn’t engage in the classroom suddenly come into their own when they get outside.” Students who are less academically inclined gain in confidence and Stamp claims she has seen them step up as leaders in practical group activities for the first time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Importantly, students are encouraged to take ownership of their own learning during outdoor learning sessions and teachers ask the children to set personal targets such as improving resilience, problem solving and working with others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Giving pupils the freedom to make decisions about their own learning is incredibly empowering for children</b>, claims <a href="http://creativestarlearning.co.uk/about-juliet/">Juliet Robertson</a>, an education consultant and outdoor learning expert. Not every child will be motivated by the promise of getting their hands dirty, so it’s vital they are given a choice. The teacher therefore needs to take a back seat from initiating and directing the lesson and place trust in the student to lead instead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The author of <a href="https://bookshop.theguardian.com/dirty-teaching.html">Dirty Teaching</a>, and former headteacher, first observed the benefit of outdoor learning as a 19-year-old gap year student volunteering at an urban environmental education centre in Philadelphia in 1987. She was working with a group of 11 to 14-year-old boys who were considered successes because they weren’t addicted to crack cocaine. Although the centre had very little budget and the rundown area had few nearby parks, they would take the teenagers outdoors as frequently as possible. Over time they noticed these boys began to thrive and flourish.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">She says: <b>“The more we took them into natural spaces, the calmer they became, the more concentrated they were and the less paper tiger talk – the big talk from the hood – there was.” It was a classic “Xbox detox”</b>, Robertson adds, and is something that researchers have observed repeatedly when studying the effect of nature on the brain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A 2010 <a href="http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3639">study from the University of Rochester</a> found that spending time outdoors not only makes you happier, it can lead to an increased sense of vitality. It has also been found to have a <a href="http://willsull.net/resources/KaplanS1995.pdf">calming effect on the mind</a>, ease <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/walk-nature-depression_n_5870134.html">depression</a>, spark <a href="http://psp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/03/15/0146167212436611.abstract">creativity</a> and <a href="http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/?page=full">improve attention and focus</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A five-year study, which examined 500 children from 14 primary schools across Melbourne, Australia, found that those children who spend break times in more natural playgrounds as opposed to asphalt ones <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/learning-comes-naturally-for-some-20100123-mrnw.html">feel better rested</a> and therefore more able to concentrate back in the classroom. The researchers discovered that had a direct correlation to exam results and attainment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But despite these findings, a recent survey of parents revealed that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/25/three-quarters-of-uk-children-spend-less-time-outdoors-than-prison-inmates-survey">three-quarters of UK children spend less time outside than prison inmates</a>. This means schools have an opportunity to make a huge difference to young people’s mental health by increasing time spent outdoors. Where, though, should a teacher approaching outdoor learning for the first time start?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">According to Robertson “there are many ways to skin the outdoor cat” and no perfect formula. However, there are a few practical steps teachers can take which will help them get projects off the ground.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">First of all, taking part in a scheme such as the <a href="https://www.johnmuirtrust.org/john-muir-award">John Muir award</a> – which encourages people to get involved in environmental activities – works as an incentive for both teachers and students. The organisation also provides useful advice and resources for participants, giving teachers the knowledge they need to get projects off the ground. Robertson also recommends sticking to very straightforward activities and points to the <a href="https://www.missionexplore.net/">Mission Explore</a> website for lesson ideas. The <a href="http://www.ltl.org.uk/">Learning through Landscapes</a> site is another mine of helpful resources, particularly for schools interested in running horticulture projects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Schools in urban areas with little or no nearby green spaces can, however, feel limited by the opportunities for outdoor learning. Stephen Lockyer, deputy head at <a href="http://www.meadschool.info/">The Mead School</a> in Tunbridge Wells, does not believe that location is a barrier though.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By getting his students involved in geocaching, children have found themselves embarking on real world treasure hunts around the country. The activity which started in 2001 involves hiding containers filled with small gifts in all manner of places, uploading the coordinates to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/apr/04/www.geocaching.com">the official website</a> and then leaving them for others to find using GPS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lockyer explains that there are often hundreds of geocaches hidden in urban centres and their hunts have taken them as far as Hadrian’s Wall. The potential for other schools to get involved is therefore enormous and claims students feel a sense of ownership from secretly planting something in public spaces.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He says some students do feel stifled and restricted by the classroom. The outdoors however can feel a lot less threatening or uncomfortable for those children and he has noticed pupils with behavioural challenges are particularly receptive to the freedom which that environment brings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">With exam season now in full swing, there is the temptation to spend more time indoors revising and swotting for tests. However, Lockyer insists there has never been a better time to take lessons outside.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“It’s de-stressing by deception,” he says. “You are taking them out on the premise of learning something, but actually it’s a much more relaxing environment than the classroom for lots of children, especially at this time of year.”</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/jun/02/children-outdoors-boost-wellbeing-learning">https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/jun/02/children-outdoors-boost-wellbeing-learning</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-44564707135125897312017-06-17T20:16:00.000+03:002017-06-17T20:16:38.201+03:00Talking to Boys the Way We Talk to Girls<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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At a Father’s Day breakfast, my 5-year-old son and his classmates sang a song about fathers, crooning about <b>“my dad who’s big and strong”</b> and <b>“fixes things with his hammer”</b> and, above all else, <b>“is really cool.”</b></div>
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Now, there’s nothing wrong with most of these qualities in and of themselves. But <b>when these lyrics are passed down as the defining soundtrack to masculine identity, we limit children’s understanding not just of what it means to be a father but of what it means to be a man — and a boy, as well.</b></div>
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When fathers appear in children’s picture books, they’re angling for laughs, taking their sons on adventures or modeling physical strength or stoic independence. There is the rare exception in children’s books where a father baldly demonstrates — without symbolic gestures — his love for his son (a few are “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Guess-How-Much-Love-You/dp/0763642649">Guess How Much I Love You</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Oh-Baby-Boy-Janine-Macbeth/dp/0985351403/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1497361059&sr=1-1&keywords=oh+oh+baby+boy">Oh, Oh, Baby Boy!</a>”). <b>Just as women’s studies classes have long examined the ways that gendered language undermines women and girls, a growing body of research shows that stereotypical messages are similarly damaging to boys.</b></div>
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A <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/134/6/e1603">2014 study</a> in Pediatrics found that mothers interacted vocally more often with their infant daughters than they did their infant sons. In a different study, a team of British researchers found that <a href="http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00670/full">Spanish mothers were more likely to use emotional words</a> and emotional topics when speaking with their 4-year-old daughters than with their 4-year-old sons. Interestingly, the same study revealed that daughters were more likely than sons to speak about their emotions with their fathers when talking about past experiences. And during these reminiscing conversations, fathers used more emotion-laden words with their 4-year-old daughters than with their 4-year-old sons.</div>
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What’s more, <a href="http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bne-bne0000199.pdf">a 2017 study led by Emory University researchers</a> discovered, among other things, that fathers also sing and smile more to their daughters, and they use language that is more “analytical” and that acknowledges their sadness far more than they do with their sons. The words they use with sons are more focused on achievement — such as “win” and “proud.” Researchers believe that these discrepancies in fathers’ language may contribute to “the consistent findings that girls outperform boys in school achievement outcomes.”<a name='more'></a></div>
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After visits to the emergency room for accidental injuries, another study found, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jpepsy/article/41/2/256/2579803/Parent-Child-Injury-Prevention-Conversations">parents of both genders talk differently to sons</a> than they do to daughters. They are nearly four times more likely to tell girls than boys to be more careful if undertaking the same activity again. The same study cited earlier research which found that parents of both genders used “directives” when teaching their 2- to 4-year-old sons how to climb down a playground pole but offered extensive “explanations” to daughters.</div>
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Even boys’ literacy skills seem to be impacted by the taciturn way we expect them to speak. In his book “Manhood in America,” Michael Kimmel, the masculine studies researcher and author, maintains that “the traditional liberal arts curriculum is seen as feminizing by boys.” Nowhere is this truer than in English classes where, as I’ve witnessed after more than 20 years of teaching, boys and young men police each other when other guys display overt interest in literature or creative writing assignments. Typically, nonfiction reading and writing passes muster because it poses little threat for boys. But literary fiction, and especially poetry, are mediums to fear. Why? They’re the language of emotional exposure, purported feminine “weakness” — the very thing our scripting has taught them to avoid at best, suppress, at worst.</div>
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Women often say they want men to be emotionally transparent with them. But as the vulnerability and shame expert Brené Brown reveals in her book, “Daring Greatly,” many grow uneasy or even recoil if men take them up on their offer.</div>
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Indeed, a <a href="http://news.ubc.ca/2014/02/19/study-finds-nothing-so-sweet-as-a-voice-like-your-own/">Canadian study</a> found that college-aged female respondents considered men more attractive if they used shorter words and sentences and spoke less. This finding seems to jibe with Dr. Brown’s research, suggesting that the less men risk emoting verbally, the more appealing they appear.</div>
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Such squelching messages run counter-intuitively to male wiring, it turns out: Guys are <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/dev/35/1/175/">born more emotionally sensitive</a> than girls.</div>
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For three decades the research of Edward Tronick explored the interplay between infants and their mothers. He and his colleagues in the department of newborn medicine at Harvard Medical School discovered that mothers unconsciously interacted with their infant sons more attentively and vigilantly than they did with their infant daughters because the sons needed more support for controlling their emotions. Some of their research found that boys’ emotional reactivity was eventually “restricted or perhaps more change-worthy than the reactivity of girls,” Dr. Tronick noted in an email. Mothers initiated this — through physical withdrawal.</div>
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“So the ‘manning up’ of infant boys begins early on in their typical interactions,” Dr. Tronick said, “and long before language plays its role.”</div>
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Judy Chu, a human biologist, conducted a two-year study of 4- and 5-year-old boys and found that they were as astute as girls at reading other people’s emotions and at cultivating close, meaningful friendships. In her book “When Boys Become Boys” she maintains that by the time the boys reached first grade, sometimes earlier, they traded their innate empathy for a learned stoicism and greater emotional distance from friends. Interestingly, they adopted this new behavior in public, exclusively, but not at home or when their parents were around.</div>
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<b>Why do we limit the emotional vocabulary of boys?</b></div>
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We tell ourselves we are preparing our sons to fight (literally and figuratively), to compete in a world and economy that’s brutish and callous. The sooner we can groom them for this dystopian future, the better off they’ll be. But the Harvard psychologist Susan David insists the opposite is true: “Research shows that people who suppress emotions have lower-level resilience and emotional health.”</div>
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<b>How can we change this?</b> We can start, says Dr. David, by letting boys experience their emotions, all of them, without judgment — or by offering them solutions. This means helping them learn the crucial lessons that “Emotions aren’t good or bad” and that “their emotions aren’t bigger than they are. They aren’t something to fear.”</div>
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Say to boys: “I can see that you’re upset,” or ask them, “What are you feeling?” or “What’s going on for you right now?” There doesn’t have to be any grand plan beyond this, she says. “Just show up for them. Get them talking. Show that you want to hear what they’re saying.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/well/family/talking-to-boys-the-way-we-talk-to-girls.html?_r=1&utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual">www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/well/family/talking-to-boys-the-way-we-talk-to-girls.html?_r=1&utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-64921061595069989472017-05-28T14:59:00.000+03:002017-05-28T14:59:04.383+03:00Arts education is vital to help foster creativity and innovation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By Susan Davis (Deputy Dean Research for the School of Education & the Arts at CQ University, Australia.)</span></div>
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I have a dream that this nation will achieve its full creative and economic potential and that <span style="color: #e69138;">Arts education </span>will rightfully be seen as central to making this happen. It worries me that current thinking and policymaking around national innovation concentrates on increasing participation in <span style="color: #b45f06;">STEM</span> (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects while the teaching of the Arts (dance, drama, music, media arts and visual arts,) is rarely even on the <a href="https://www.innovation.gov.au/page/agenda">innovation agenda</a>.</div>
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It is not that I begrudge the attention STEM is getting, it is just that I believe if we want to be a truly innovative and creative nation we need to put the Arts, very firmly, back in the mix. We should be talking about STEAM in schools and universities with the Arts very much in the centre of it all.</div>
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There exists a popular narrative, used to drive the STEM education agenda in Australia (and elsewhere), that says there are significantly declining enrolments in the Sciences and other STEM disciplines. However I question this narrative as justification for major initiatives. I will come back to that later.</div>
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First up what are we talking about, when we talk about innovation and creativity?</div>
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<b>Innovation and creativity</b></div>
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Creativity and innovation involves putting things together in new ways, it involves risk-taking, experimenting and refining, valuing the role of productive failure, it involves making and doing, and is often collaborative and co-creative. While creativity is about the capacity to putting things together in new, novel and different ways, innovation is often seen as putting them to work and out into the world so that they meet a need, want or interest.</div>
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However these capacities don’t get switched on when people hit the world of work, they need to be cultivated across the education lifespan in all subjects in as many ways as possible.<a name='more'></a></div>
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Unfortunately the nurturing of creativity and innovation often seems to be at odds with the direction of many current initiatives in education. I have concerns about mandated curriculum and standards and everyone doing the same thing, the same tests, meeting the same benchmarks. I am particularly concerned about certain subjects or areas of learning being valued as more essential or more important than others.</div>
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<b>Why the Arts subjects are important when it comes to innovation and creativity</b></div>
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The focus on STEM, without similar focus being turned to the Arts and Humanities does not appear to be justified by recent research about the impact of technologies on our lives. It is hard to deny that all aspects of life and the world of work are undergoing rapid transformations, many brought about by developments in technologies across nearly all fields of endeavour. Recent <a href="http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf">research from Oxford University</a> notes however, that while robots will assume the role of many people in many sectors, growth continues in those that rely on creative capacity and social interactions, people, services and experiences. They are not optional areas of focus for education, but essential for opening up future study and work opportunities.</div>
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The importance of valuing other areas of learning and related industry sectors is also evident when examining <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/8155.0Main%20Features32014-15?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=8155.0&issue=2014-15&num=&view">economic development within various industry sectors</a>. Industry growth and projection reports identify that education itself is one of Australia’s major export industries. Other <a href="http://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2015/sp-ag-2015-03-11.html">projected growth areas</a> identified by the Reserve Bank include household and business services, food, arts and recreation.</div>
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A Deloitte report also identifies industry sectors such as agribusiness, tourism, international education and wealth management as ones that are growth sectors for the Australian economy.</div>
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To do well in these sectors may require knowledge and skills in some or all of the STEM areas, but also relies on understanding people, design, experience and communications: the Arts subjects.</div>
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<b>Is there really a crisis in the uptake of STEM subjects?</b></div>
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A review of senior secondary enrolments in several states over the past 20 years reveals that in most cases all students have to/or tend to study an English and a Math subject. When it comes to the sciences, Biology is the top or near top elective subject and while there is some drop in the percentage of Physics and Chemistry enrolments it is not perhaps as extreme as we have been lead to believe, and in fact in recent times in Queensland, for example, there has been an increase in the numbers for Chemistry enrolments.</div>
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Enrolments in sciences have not been dropping more substantially than other subjects over the last 20 years using Queensland data as an example. While percentages of total year 12 enrolments might be 5-10% lower, this has to be considered in the context of increased subject choices including vocational training courses. It is clear that the pattern of enrolment of the Arts and Humanities also shows similar decreases in percentages too. When it comes to the most dramatic drop in enrolments over the past 20 years it is actually Accounting (20% to 7%) and Economics (19% to 5%) that have seen the most dramatic declines.</div>
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Similar trends can be identified <a href="http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/bos_stats/media-guide-2016/course.html">in New South Wales</a> and Victorian data, though the strength of Chemistry seen in Queensland is not necessarily reflected in other state data.</div>
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While there is no doubt that there are still issues with enrolments in STEM by different target groups, including girls and students from low SES backgrounds, regional areas and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, these are not new issues. However a focus on increased enrolments in STEM per se is not likely to change that. Other strategies that focus more on pedagogy, combining STEM and arts based approaches are more likely to have impact (and have been the basis for strategies in places such as Korea).</div>
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<b>So what should we be doing?</b></div>
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It is important that capacity building in creativity and innovation be supported across the years of formal education (including early childhood, primary and secondary education) and tertiary study, including teacher education. This requires a shift beyond STEM and the ongoing focus on ‘basic skills’ in major educational drives, and to look at the cultivation of ideas and passions, calculated risk taking, how to work through failure, problem-finding and problem-solving and resolution of ideas into products and forms.</div>
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This requires an approach that recognizes that creativity and innovation can be cultivated across diverse learning and industry fields. If the current obsession with STEM is to continue, as I said previously, it should be converted to STEAM, with the Arts at its centre, at the very least, or perhaps ESTEAM to recognize the importance of Entrepreneurship as well.</div>
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<b>Other key points</b></div>
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Here is my list of other key points and issues we need to tackle.</div>
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We need to see the arts, education and teacher education as being integral to a national innovation agenda</div>
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We should be specifically teaching teachers and children about innovation and creativity and to value the different knowledges and skills that can contribute to innovation</div>
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Include scope for more specialisations in primary education degrees, including in the arts and humanities</div>
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Recognise that there needs to be space for people to develop different interests, depth of knowledge and experience. Some of this can be supported through formal learning programs, but can also be supported through after school programs, partnerships and informal learning</div>
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Reduce the focus in educational agendas on NAPLAN and standardized test instruments and reports. We can’t mandate that everyone learns the same things in the same ways for 10 years of schooling and then expect them to do things ‘differently’. We need room for people to develop interests and expertise in diverse areas, so room for electives, special projects and enterprises.</div>
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If our governments recognize the importance of creativity and innovation for our future national prosperity (as the <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Employment_Education_and_Training/Innovationandcreativity">current parliamentary inquiry</a> would indicate), attention must be paid to learning that promotes problem-solving and inventiveness, social innovation and entrepreneurship, and multiple forms of communication and expression. To do this effectively Australia needs to give just as much attention to the Arts as it is currently to the teaching of and participation in STEM. These areas are all fundamental to cultivating innovation for the future of our economy and our world.</div>
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<a href="http://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=2218">http://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=2218</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-19156875929682531182017-05-22T20:40:00.000+03:002017-05-22T20:40:34.109+03:004 Things Worse Than Not Learning To Read In Kindergarten<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The year Sam started kindergarten, he turned 6 in October. He was one of the oldest children in his class, and he didn’t know how to read. When he started first grade he was almost 7, and he still didn’t know how to read. Fortunately for Sam, he entered first grade in 1999. And his teachers, Mrs. Gantt and Mrs. Floyd, didn’t panic if a child didn’t learn to read in kindergarten. In fact, they expected that most children would learn to read in first grade. (They also supported and encouraged children who learned to read easily in kindergarten, like Sam’s brother Ben.)</span><br />
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<br />If Sam had started first grade this year, however, he probably would have been labelled as “slow” or “behind.” Because <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/01/13/report-requiring-kindergartners-to-read-as-common-core-does-may-harm-some/">the new standard is that children should learn to read in kindergarten</a>. Even though most educators know that many children aren’t ready to learn to read until first grade. Even though countries like <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/the-joyful-illiterate-kindergartners-of-finland/408325/">Finland educate kindergarteners by allowing them to play</a>, not teaching them to academic skills. And even though the new standard causes teachers, parents and even children themselves to worry that something is “wrong” if children aren’t reading when they arrive in the first grade classroom.<br /><br />But guess what? Sam wasn’t “slow” or “behind,” and neither are most of the other children who don’t read in kindergarten. Sam became a fair reader by the end of first grade, and a good reader by third grade. By the time he reached high school he was an honors student. And last weekend, he graduated from college - with a 3.93 grade point average.<br /><br />So what happens when education standards require that children like Sam learn to read in kindergarten and that teachers like Mrs. Gantt and Mrs. Floyd had better make it happen? Many educators say <a href="https://deyproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/readinginkindergarten_online-1.pdf">the result is ineffective and counterproductive classroom practices</a>. Which means that many children actually learn and retain less than they would in a developmentally-appropriate kindergarten classroom.<br /><br />So here’s my advice. (You can take it with a grain of salt if you like, because I’m not a teacher. But I am Sam’s mom.) If your son or daughter doesn’t learn to read in kindergarten, relax. Because <b>many, many things are worse than not learning to read in kindergarten. Here are four of them:<a name='more'></a></b><br /><br /><b>Limited time for creative play.</b> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/01/13/report-requiring-kindergartners-to-read-as-common-core-does-may-harm-some/">Young children learn by playing</a>. They learn by digging and dancing and building and knocking things down, not by filling out piles of worksheets. And they learn by interacting with other children, solving problems, sharing and cooperating, not by drilling phonics. Mrs. Gantt and Mrs. Floyd created fabulous centers and units that allowed children to learn about everything from houses to trucks to pets to oceans. And they snuck in some reading and math skills that the children didn’t even notice, because they were so busy playing and creating! Teachers today, however, often have to limit (or even eliminate) time for centers and units, because the academic requirements they are forced to meet don’t allow time for creative learning.<br /><br /><b>Limited physical activity.</b> Few things are more counterproductive than limiting recess and other types of physical play time for children. Children learn better when they move. Parents and teachers know this intuitively, but research also confirms it. Children who have more opportunities to run around and play have <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/09/29/352455278/more-active-play-equals-better-thinking-skills-for-kids">better thinking skills and increased brain activity</a>. And don’t assume that young children are naturally active and are getting all of the exercise they need; researchers have found that <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26121562">children as young as three and four are surprisingly inactive</a>. Yet many schools are limiting or even eliminating recess, even for very young children.<br /><br /><b>Teaching that focuses on standards and testing. </b>Teachers are increasingly under pressure to <a href="http://ero.sagepub.com/content/2/1/2332858415616358">prepare their students to perform on standardized tests</a>. This means that their focus is shifting from teaching children in ways that match their development and learning styles to “teaching to the test.” As <a href="https://deyproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/readinginkindergarten_online-1.pdf">one teacher reported</a>, “I have watched as my job requirements swung away from a focus on children, their individual learning styles, emotional needs, and their individual families, interests and strengths to a focus on testing, assessing and scoring young children...” This shift in focus means that teachers have less time to nurture and develop children as lifelong learners, because they’re required to focus their efforts on standards that are unrealistic for many children.<br /><br /><b>Frustration and a sense of failure.</b> Children know when they aren’t meeting the expectations of teachers and other adults. What they don’t know, however, is that those expectations often make no sense. And because they don’t know that, they experience frustration and a sense of failure when they don’t measure up. So the boy who thrived in his experiential preschool, but struggles in his academic -focused kindergarten <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/01/13/report-requiring-kindergartners-to-read-as-common-core-does-may-harm-some/">may become frustrated to the point that he “hates school.”</a> And the girl who can’t sit still for 30 minutes and fill out worksheets knows that she’s disappointing her teacher, but doesn’t know that the task isn’t appropriate for her. Which means that many normal children are becoming frustrated - and are being labelled - by an entirely unrealistic system. As <a href="https://deyproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/readinginkindergarten_online-1.pdf">one report has bluntly stated</a>, “Most children are eager to meet high expectations, but their tools and skills as learners as well as their enthusiasm for learning suffer when the demands are inappropriate.”<br /><br />If your child is in kindergarten or first grade and hasn’t yet learned to read, don’t panic. Talk with his or her doctor about any concerns you have, but recognize that he or she is probably developing normally. If your child’s school is pushing academics in kindergarten in place of play-based learning, talk with the teacher. Chances are, she’s frustrated and under enormous pressure to get her students ready to “perform.” If you’re stuck with a kindergarten curriculum that seems unrealistic to you and doesn’t fit your child (and assuming that changing schools is not an option), let your child know that you’re not worried about reading in kindergarten (or even early in first grade). Talk about people who learned to read later (like Sam!) and are doing just fine. Then do things that promote real learning, like reading books he or she enjoys, playing games, teaching useful skills and getting outside as often as possible to have fun, be active and learn together.</span><div>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gaye-groover-christmus/4-things-worse-than-not-l_b_9985028.html?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gaye-groover-christmus/4-things-worse-than-not-l_b_9985028.html?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-72355329304911865662016-12-03T18:02:00.000+02:002016-12-03T18:02:50.996+02:00Boys Who Sit Still Have a Harder Time Learning to Read<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Anybody who has watched little boys for even five seconds knows that they are exhausting. At school, they tear around the playground, bolt through corridors and ricochet off classroom walls. <b>According to a new Finnish study, this is all helping them to be better at reading.</b></div>
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The <a href="http://www.jsams.org/article/S1440-2440%2816%2930238-9/fulltext">study</a>, released Nov. 30 in the Journal of Medicine and Sport, found that<b> the more time kids in Grade 1 spent sitting and the less time they spent being physically active, the fewer gains they made in reading in the two following years.</b> In first grade, a lot of sedentary time and no running around also had a negative impact on their ability to do math.</div>
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<b>Among girls, sitting for a long time without moving much didn’t seem to have any effect on their ability to learn.</b></div>
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Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland analyzed studies that measured physical activity and sedentary time of 153 kids aged six to eight. The studies used a combined heart rate and movement sensor, and researchers gave kids standardized tests in math and reading. “We found that lower levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity, higher levels of sedentary time, and particularly their combination, were related to poorer reading skills in boys,” the study says.</div>
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While the test group was small and Scandinavian (<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/the-joyful-illiterate-kindergartners-of-finland/408325/">the Finnish school system</a>‘s freaky success is <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/">almost legendary</a>), the study offers some evidence for what parents have been thinking for a long time: we may not be educating boys the right way.<a name='more'></a></div>
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As pressure increases on schools to show evidence of learning, many education systems have tried to provide a more academically rich environment. But sometimes this has come at the cost of physical education, which is often considered an optional extra rather than one of the core skills a student must master.</div>
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Money and school hours that might have been spent on P.E. are now devoted to libraries, science labs and better tech gadgets. All of these are worthy teaching tools, but they promote a very sedentary style of learning. Add to this the reliance on testing, which, again, has it merits, and you have kids sitting down for longer and longer periods every day. <a href="http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/07/childhood-obesity-most-u-s-schools-dont-require-p-e-class-or-recess/">Most U.S. schools don’t require any P.E. or recess</a>.</div>
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The connection between <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/how-exercise-can-boost-the-childs-brain/?_r=0">exercise and learning is not new</a>, but the Finnish study provides stronger objective evidence that the increased emphasis on sedentary academic activity among the youngest learners may be fruitless if it comes at the cost of physical activity.<b> Boys whose days were more sedentary when they were in first grade (a crucial year for learning to read) made fewer gains in reading in second and third grade. They also did worse at math for that year.</b></div>
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The authors aren’t sure why the difference between boys and girls is so stark. Not as many girls participated in the study, so that may have influenced results. Moreover, it may have less to do with the difference between the male and female brain; for girls, academic achievement may be more influenced by factors such as parental educational support, peer acceptance, teachers’ positive attitude and their own motivation.</div>
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<a href="http://time.com/4588035/sitting-exercise-reading/?utm_source=Parent+Co.+Daily&utm_campaign">http://time.com/4588035/sitting-exercise-reading/?utm_source=Parent+Co.+Daily&utm_campaign</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-43583737286880314592016-11-13T18:44:00.000+02:002016-11-13T18:44:32.807+02:00 Norway’s First Youth-Only Library for kids ages 10 to 15. Adults not allowed!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Forget what you think about libraries! <b>Biblo Tøyen</b>, one of Oslo Public Library’s (Deichmanske bibliotek) newest additions, is breaking and changing all the library rules! <b>This is a unique and innovative space, created for young people ages 10 to 15.</b></div>
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Christian Bermudez, a librarian at Biblo Tøyen explains, “Norwegian schools have an after school program called SFO (Skolefritidsordning) where children can stay at school until 5 pm. There they can play, do homework, or other activities. But this program is only available for kids from 1st to 4th grades so, <b>Biblo Tøyen is a great option for older kids to come and enjoy staying here after school.”</b></div>
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<b>Biblo Tøyen: new concept=great solution</b></div>
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The design team went directly to the source to begin their mission to rethink and redesign the library space. They held focus groups with young people to find out their wants and needs. The youth said they wanted a place to hang out, relax, and escape parents and siblings. In addition, they needed a safe place to socialize and said it should be a space where they can create and do things together. <b>The library has achieved these goals by creating a cool and comfortable ‘third’ space between school and home where youth can learn, explore, and be themselves.<a name='more'></a></b></div>
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Learning, reading and books are still the focus of the library but that is where the comparison ends.<b> The dedicated staff wants to motivate and instill a love of reading and learning in young people through fun and educational activities such as drama, music, cooking, computer programming, 3-d printing, and Lego building.</b></div>
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In the center of the library is an old Volvo truck, nicknamed Teddy, pimped out with a functional kitchen in the back and a sofa in the hood. Members can read while lounging in a wheelbarrow, work on homework inside a converted tuk-tuk, or discuss group projects in an old ski gondola hanging from the ceiling. The entire library embodies and encourages creativity and imagination. </div>
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<b>Library of the Future and Book Drones</b></div>
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Say goodbye to the old fashion library classification system! Books are grouped by themes or features such as ‘animals’ or ‘short and good’ so a science fiction book may be next to a book about robots to encourage discovery in more natural way. In this way, no book has a permanent location and all the bookshelves hang from rails on the ceiling making it easy to rearrange the space for different functions and events.</div>
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Exciting news! By the end of June 2016, Biblo Tøyen will implement a book drone system. All books have radio tags on their covers and every night a drone will fly over the bookshelves to scan and locate each book for easy access the next day. The check-out system has also been given a technology infused upgrade. Library cards have microchips so check-out is quick and simple. However, with all the cool and cozy spaces inside many of the young people won’t want to leave!</div>
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For those only young at heart or those outside of Oslo enjoy the glimpse into the sweet life of Oslo’s youth at their very own library through TheOsloBook’s exclusive pictures. Or just visit!</div>
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<a href="http://theoslobook.no/2016/05/28/biblo-toyen/">http://theoslobook.no/2016/05/28/biblo-toyen/</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-14040115447920046772016-10-25T20:36:00.001+03:002016-10-25T20:36:51.902+03:00How kids can benefit from boredom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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From books, arts and sports classes to iPads and television, many parents do everything in their power to entertain and educate their children. But <b>what would happen if children were just left to be bored from time to time? How would it affect their development?</b></div>
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I began to think about boredom and children when I was researching the <a href="http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/23/6/799.abstract">influence of television on children’s storytelling</a> in the 1990s. Surprised at the lack of imagination in many of the hundreds of stories I read by ten to 12 year-old children in five different Norfolk schools, I wondered if this might partly be an effect of TV viewing. Findings of earlier research had revealed that television does indeed reduce children’s imaginative capacities.</div>
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For instance, a large scale study carried out in Canada in the 1980s as television was gradually being extended across the country, compared children in three communities – one which had four TV channels, one with one channel and one with none. The researchers studied these communities on two occasions, just before one of the towns obtained television for the first time, and again two years later. The children in the no-TV town <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1614964">scored significantly higher</a> than the others on divergent thinking skills, a measure of imaginativeness. This was until they, too, got TV – when their skills dropped to the same level as that of the other children.</div>
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<b>The apparent stifling effect of watching TV on imagination is a concern, as imagination is important</b>. Not only does it enrich personal experience, it is also necessary for empathy – imagining ourselves in someone else’s shoes – and is indispensable in creating change. The significance of boredom here is that children (indeed adults too) often fall back on television or – these days – a digital device, to keep boredom at bay.<a name='more'></a></div>
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Some years after my study, I began to notice certain creative professionals mentioning how important boredom was to their creativity, both in childhood and now. I <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-teresa-belton/easter-feeling-bored-make-something_b_2962848.html">interviewed</a> some of them. One was writer and actress <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/past-stories/meera-syal.shtml">Meera Syal</a>. She related how she had occupied school holidays staring out of the window at the rural landscape, and doing various things outside her “usual sphere”, like learning to bake cakes with the old lady next door. Boredom also made her write a diary, and it is to this that she attributes her writing career. “It’s very freeing, being creative for no other reason than that you freewheel and fill time,” she said.</div>
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Similarly, well-known <a href="http://www.susangreenfield.com/about-susan/">neuroscientist Susan Greenfield</a> said she had little to do as a child and spent much time drawing and writing stories. These became the precursors of her later work, the scientific study of human behaviour. She still chooses paper and pen over a laptop on a plane, and looks forward with relish to these constrained times.</div>
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Sporting, musical and other organised activities <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-signing-to-sensory-can-trendy-baby-classes-really-boost-a-childs-development-56109">can certainly benefit</a> a child’s physical, cognitive, cultural and social development. But children also need time to themselves – to switch off from the bombardment of the outside world, to daydream, pursue their own thoughts and occupations, and discover personal interests and gifts.</div>
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<b>We don’t have to have a particular creative talent or intellectual bent to benefit from boredom. Just letting the mind wander from time to time is important, it seems, for everybody’s <a href="http://bbc.in/2cJ1coK">mental wellbeing and functioning</a>.</b> A study has even shown that, if we engage in some low-key, undemanding activity at same time, the wandering mind is <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/08/31/0956797612446024.abstract">more likely</a> to come up with imaginative ideas and solutions to problems. So it’s good for children to be helped to learn to enjoy just pottering – and not to grow up with the expectation that they should be constantly on the go or entertained.</div>
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<b>How to handle a bored child</b></div>
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Parents often feel guilty if children complain of boredom. But it’s actually more constructive to see boredom as an opportunity rather than a deficit. Parents do have a role, but rushing in with ready-made solutions is not helpful. Rather, children need the adults around them to understand that creating their own pastimes requires space, time and the possibility of making a mess (within limits – and to be cleared up afterwards by the children themselves).</div>
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They will need some materials too, but these need not be sophisticated – simple things are often more versatile. We’ve all heard of the toddler ignoring the expensive present and playing with the box it came in instead. For older children, a magnifying glass, some planks of wood, a basket of wool, and so on, might be the start of many happily occupied hours.</div>
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But to get the most benefit from times of potential boredom, indeed from life in general, children also need inner resources as well as material ones. Qualities such as curiosity, perseverance, playfulness, interest and confidence allow them to explore, create and develop powers of inventiveness, observation and concentration. These also help them to learn not to be deterred if something doesn’t work the first time, and try again. By encouraging the development of such capacities, parents offer children something of lifelong value.</div>
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If a child has run out of ideas, giving them some kind of challenge can prompt them to continue to amuse themselves imaginatively. This could range from asking them to find out what kind of food their toy dinosaurs enjoy in the garden to going off and creating a picture story with some friends and a digital camera.</div>
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Most parents would agree that they want to raise self-reliant individuals who can take initiatives and think for themselves. But <b>filling a child’s time for them teaches nothing but dependence on external stimulus, whether material possessions or entertainment.</b> Providing nurturing conditions and trusting children’s natural inclination to engage their minds is far more likely to produce independent, competent children, full of ideas.</div>
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In fact, there’s a lesson here for all of us. Switching off, doing nothing and letting the mind wander can be great for adults too – we should all try to do more of it.</div>
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<a href="http://theconversation.com/how-kids-can-benefit-from-boredom-65596">http://theconversation.com/how-kids-can-benefit-from-boredom-65596</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-21689408515959822122016-10-19T21:56:00.000+03:002016-10-25T09:10:28.837+03:00Simplicity of Thought: 4 Ways to Teach Kids How to Meditate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As a parent, I want to cultivate a culture of meditation for my children, so that no matter what happens outside of their control, they will be emboldened with a quiet confidence to handle the task or situation. Meditation with children doesn’t need to look like an Ashram. No robes necessary. But <b>these four techniques will arm your children to live lives of patience, love, generosity, and compassion.</b></span></div>
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<b>Rhythm meditation</b></div>
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Meditation doesn’t have to be limited to quiet words and thoughts. Sometimes the best way to teach children to notice what’s going on inside is to get them loud and moving. </div>
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Begin by handing your child whatever schoolhouse instrument or improvised instrument you have on hand. Maracas, shakers, hand drums, or old coffee cans work great. Ask your child to play for you what “happy” sounds like. Then ask them to play you what “sad” sounds like. Move through several emotions before asking them to play you what they feel like right now.</div>
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Engage with this through the week asking them at random intervals to play you what their feelings sound like at that moment. Over time, kids will learn to be attuned to their feelings and know that it’s safe to express whatever those feelings may be.</div>
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<b>“That Kid” and the loving-kindness meditation</b></div>
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Once kids hit school, they seem to always have That Kid in their class: the kid who is always irritating to your child. That kid is the perfect opportunity to teach your child the loving-kindness meditation or the “metta bhavana.” As adapted for children, here’s how it works:<br />
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Have your child sit with you (which can be over dinner or in the car) and tell them that you are going to play a game. It begins by asking your child to tell you something good about herself/himself. Encourage her/him to think about all of her/his favorite things. Let your child be as silly or reserved as he/she need to be, but push your child to be honest and to make a substantial list. When your child has exhausted their list tell your child that he/she is loved. Say it aloud.</div>
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Next, ask your child to think of a close friend or family member. Ask your child to tell you about all of the good qualities of this friend or family member. When your child is done indulging in those happy thoughts, say aloud “[This Friend] is loved.”</div>
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Then, ask your child to tell you something good about someone that they hardly know. It could be that quiet girl on the soccer team, or the man who bags your groceries each week. Push your child to think about something good that he/she can observe about this near stranger. Then say aloud “[This Stranger] is loved.”</div>
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Finally, ask your child to tell you all the good things that they can think of about That Kid. They will resist, they may laugh or scoff, but tell them the rule of the game is that they have to think of at least two things. At this point I allow the good things to be as simple as, “He doesn’t smell bad,” or “She’s good at holding the door open.” But be sure to end with “[That Kid] is loved.”</div>
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<b>Simple mantras</b></div>
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My oldest daughter is an anxious kid by nature. And despite my reading of every sleep-training book on the market and experimenting with more theories than the Manhattan project, she struggled to sleep through the night well into her preschool years. What did help? A Mantra.</div>
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In our case, we trained her that when she wakes in the middle of the night she should repeat, “I am safe and I am loved, I am safe and I am loved.” Your child’s mantra can be any simple phrase that gives them confidence in times of vulnerability. </div>
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<b>Journaling</b></div>
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Writing is like an extra sense to me – one that trumps the other five. For a kid who feels similarly, writing may be the access point to their unconscious. Whether the journal is one of words or pictures, encouraging your child to journal teaches them reflection, which is an immensely important meditation technique. </div>
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The best way to encourage a resistant kid to take the time to journal is to say, “It’s bedtime, but if you’d like to stay awake a little longer, you may write in your journal.” Works like a charm.</div>
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As parents, we can’t control the world in which our children live, but we can give them the tools to find peace, simplicity, and confidence anywhere – even in a messy closet. Difficult and confusing things will happen in your children’s lives. No matter how fine a parent you may be, you cannot change that reality. What you can do is teach your children the skills to hold their loving and confident ground.</div>
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<a href="http://www.parent.co/simplicity-of-thought-4-ways-to-teach-kids-how-to-meditate/">http://www.parent.co/simplicity-of-thought-4-ways-to-teach-kids-how-to-meditate/</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-33806219793755183172016-10-16T09:39:00.000+03:002016-10-16T09:39:53.460+03:00Lost in translation: five common English phrases you may be using incorrectly<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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English is a language rich with imagery, meaning and metaphor – and when we want to express ourselves we can draw upon a canon replete with beautifully turned phrases, drawing from the language’s Latin, French and Germanic roots, through Chaucer and Shakespeare right up to myriad modern wordsmiths – not to mention those apt aphorisms that English has appropriated from other languages.</div>
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So why is it we so regularly misuse some of these phrases?<span style="color: #0b5394;"> Here are five of the most common sayings that have somehow become lost in translation.</span></div>
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<b>The proof is in the pudding</b></div>
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This is a confusion of <b>a proverb first recorded in 1605</b> in its correct form: “<a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/proof-of-the-pudding.html">The proof of the pudding is in the eating</a>”. One of the reasons for the confusion is that the word “proof” is being used in the older sense “test” – preserved today in a proofreader who checks the test pages (or “proof”) of a book before publication. Confusion was further encouraged by the tendency for people to use a shortened version of the proverb – the proof of the pudding.</div>
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Since the word “proof” is today more commonly used to mean “evidence”, the phrase was reworded as if it implied that the evidence for some claim can be located in a pudding. The true explanation of this phrase is quite simple – especially for fans of the Great British Bake-Off – <b>it doesn’t matter how fancy the decoration and presentation, the true test of a pudding is in how it tastes.</b> Or, more generally, the success of something can only be judged by putting it to its intended use.</div>
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<b>The exception that proves the rule</b></div>
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<b>This phrase is most commonly used to argue that something that doesn’t conform to a rule somehow validates it.</b> This can hardly be the correct use, however, since the claim that all birds can fly is invalidated rather than confirmed by the discovery of penguins or emus. This confusion is often attributed to an incorrect understanding of the word “prove”, which it is claimed is here being used to mean “test”. According to this explanation, the phrase means that an exception is the means by which a rule is tested. If the exception cannot be accounted for, the rule must be discarded.<a name='more'></a></div>
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However, the real confusion lies in the use of the word “exception”. Rather than referring to something that does not conform to a rule,<b> “exception” here refers to something that has been deliberately excluded from it</b>. The phrase derives from a translation of <a href="http://www.snopes.com/language/notthink/exception.asp">a Latin legal maxim</a>,Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis, which may be translated as <b>“the exception confirms the rule in cases not excepted”</b>. So a shop sign stating the exception, “Open late on Thursdays”, implies a rule that the shop does not open late on the other days of the week.</div>
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<b>Off your own back</b></div>
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This phrase is often used to refer to something done using one’s own initiative. But <b>in origin it is a cricketing idiom, and should correctly be “off your own bat”</b> – distinguishing runs scored through the batsman’s skill from “extras” accrued without hitting the ball (byes, wides, no-balls, overthrows). This phrase is one of many cricketing idioms in regular use in English. The traditional association of cricket with fair play and good sportsmanship has given rise to expressions such as “play with a straight bat”, meaning to behave honestly, and “it’s just not cricket”, to refer to any behaviour that flouts common standards of decency.</div>
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If we find ourselves in a tricky situation we may be “stumped”, or “on a sticky wicket”. Someone who has lived to a ripe old age is said to have enjoyed a “good innings”, a phrase which compares long life to a successful period spent at the batting crease, while euphemisms for death include “close of play”, or the “drawing of stumps”.</div>
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<b>One foul swoop</b></div>
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This phrase, used to<b> refer to something that happens all at once, or in one go, should properly be “one fell swoop”</b>. <b>It is first recorded in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth</b>, where it is used by Macduff on learning of the cruel murder of his wife and children by the tyrannical king: “All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam, at one fell swoop?”</div>
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“Fell” is an archaic word meaning “fierce” or “deadly”, which only survives in this phrase and in the word “felon”.</div>
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Macduff’s use of the phrase imagines Macbeth as a ferocious bird of prey diving down to carry off his family in its cruel talons. Because the word “fell” is otherwise obsolete, people frequently replace it with a similar alternative, most commonly “foul”, but sometimes “full” and even “fowl” (even though chickens are hardly known for their aggressive swooping).</div>
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<b>Begs the question</b></div>
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<b>This phrase is often used as if it means “raises the question”</b>, but that is not its original application. It originates in <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/beg-the-question">a logical principle</a> discussed by the <b>Greek philosopher Aristotle</b> that refers to the practice of assuming something that an argument sets out to prove.</div>
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A crude example of this logical fallacy might be an argument that claims that, since Britain would be better off outside the European Union, the referendum vote was a positive outcome. Since this conclusion is based on an unproven assumption, it carries no force.</div>
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More commonly, arguments of this kind are subtle attempts to argue on the basis of an untested claim, so that the phrase is frequently used to mean “evades the question”. Much of our confusion may be blamed on the 16th-century translator who chose to render the Latin name for this fallacy, <a href="http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/circular.html">petitio principii</a>, rather inaccurately as “beg the question”, instead of using a more literal – albeit somewhat less snappy – formulation such as “laying claim to a principle”.</div>
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All of which raises the question of common usage. <b>Can we be said to be using a phrase incorrectly if it has assumed a new meaning by being repeatedly used in a certain way?</b> That’s a whole different story.</div>
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<a href="http://theconversation.com/lost-in-translation-five-common-english-phrases-you-may-be-using-incorrectly-67011?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205812&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205812+CID_42563d776acf5b8fc0f89bfc05467422&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=Lost%20in%20translation%20five%20common%20English%20phrases%20you%20may%20be%20using%20incorrectly">http://theconversation.com/lost-in-translation-five-common-english-phrases-you-may-be-using-incorrectly-67011?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205812&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205812+CID_42563d776acf5b8fc0f89bfc05467422&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=Lost%20in%20translation%20five%20common%20English%20phrases%20you%20may%20be%20using%20incorrectly</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-63611710646746288372016-10-12T21:12:00.000+03:002016-10-12T21:12:31.857+03:00Animation brings 2500-year-old vase to life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRRfN37p4gJ1T46P3TBPugohisnlZhyphenhyphenltlzPN0eFRMN5GkrCBkmPS-SmUxTgu0Z7wSmQ7S5cWRlA9McgypfdA3ViK4sX1VzddKtGXosHbws_n0xZau56qUJYH53vb1CnZzIt5v6SrX4NM/s1600/animation+ancient+Greek+vase.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRRfN37p4gJ1T46P3TBPugohisnlZhyphenhyphenltlzPN0eFRMN5GkrCBkmPS-SmUxTgu0Z7wSmQ7S5cWRlA9McgypfdA3ViK4sX1VzddKtGXosHbws_n0xZau56qUJYH53vb1CnZzIt5v6SrX4NM/s640/animation+ancient+Greek+vase.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>Oxford academics have teamed-up with an animator to bring ancient Greek vase scenes to life.</b></div>
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The images on this 2,500-year-old vase have been animated to show what life was like in ancient Greece.</div>
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The Classics in Communities project, which is led by Mai Musié of <b>Oxford University</b> to encourage the teaching of ancient languages like Latin and Greek, has teamed up with the <b>Panoply Vase Animation Project</b> following an award from the Oxford University Knowledge Exchange Fund.</div>
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The animation is freely available to watch online, and its creators hope it is used by teachers and lecturers to support their teaching of topics related to ancient Greece.</div>
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fSY4Y2BdXnE/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fSY4Y2BdXnE?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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'Our animation features a cup that would once have been used at ancient drinking parties 2,500 years ago,' says Dr Sonya Nevin, co-director of the Panoply Vase Animation Project.<a name='more'></a></div>
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'The cup's decoration comes to life in the animation, with a scene of drinking, chatting, and playing music and games now acted out before your eyes.</div>
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'We hope it will be used by teachers, students and anyone else who has an interest in seeing classical history brought to life.'</div>
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The project is the latest initiative by Classics in Communities, a project involving Oxford University, the Iris Project, and Cambridge University.</div>
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'Our aim is to promote the teaching of Latin and Ancient Greek at state schools in the UK,' says founder Mai Musié of Oxford University’s Faculty of Classics.</div>
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'This animation is just the latest way in which we hope to engage teachers and students in these fascinating subjects.'</div>
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<a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/animation-brings-2500-year-old-vase-life">http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/animation-brings-2500-year-old-vase-life</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-43771446999076008162016-10-09T16:11:00.000+03:002016-10-09T16:11:14.173+03:00How Libraries Save Lives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One woman’s story of how a bookmobile transported her away from a deadly life and toward her human potential.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCXqU9RtW5rl-s_CgfHCV_VYqmaQchVucb2VC164C3274JGSe8zHKWqoKm1lQ9y25udEMITa3hmbs0HScXfKmd7-ZxzseHPXXfjnWsGlvLcXQvKjbjeFyo7a1R76S6lUeKqS8_TkuhazQ/s1600/BiebBus+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCXqU9RtW5rl-s_CgfHCV_VYqmaQchVucb2VC164C3274JGSe8zHKWqoKm1lQ9y25udEMITa3hmbs0HScXfKmd7-ZxzseHPXXfjnWsGlvLcXQvKjbjeFyo7a1R76S6lUeKqS8_TkuhazQ/s640/BiebBus+2.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>“Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom,”</b> Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in contemplating <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/06/ursula-k-le-guin-libraries/">the sacredness of public libraries</a>. <b>“If librarians were honest, they would say, No one spends time here without being changed,” </b>Joseph Mills wrote in his <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/07/if-librarians-were-honest-the-artists-library/">ode to libraries</a>. “You never know what troubled little girl needs a book,” Nikki Giovanni wrote in one of her <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/11/nikki-giovannis-poems-library-librarians/">poems celebrating libraries and librarians</a>.</div>
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A beautiful testament to that emancipating, transformative power of public libraries comes from one such troubled little girl named Storm Reyes, who grew up in an impoverished Native American community, had her life profoundly changed, perhaps even saved, by <b>a library bookmobile</b>, and went on to become a librarian herself. She tells her story in this wonderful oral history animation by <a href="https://storycorps.org/">StoryCorps</a>:</div>
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The piece was adapted into an essay in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594205183/braipick-20">Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work</a>(<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/callings-the-purpose-and-passion-of-work/oclc/946150481&referer=brief_results">public library</a>) — the collection of tender, touching, and deeply humane stories edited by StoryCorps founder Dave Isay that also gave us pioneering astronaut Ronald McNair, who perished in the Challenger disaster, <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/06/06/ronald-mcnair-storycorps-callings/">remembered by his brother</a>.<a name='more'></a></div>
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Here is Reyes’s story, as it appears in the book:</div>
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<i>Working and living in migrant farmworkers’ fields, the conditions were pretty terrible. My parents were alcoholics, and I was beaten and abused and neglected. I learned to fight with a knife long before I learned how to ride a bicycle.</i></div>
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<i>When you are grinding day after day after day, there’s nothing to aspire to except filling your hungry belly. You may walk down the street and see a row of nice, clean houses, but you never, ever dream you can live in one. You don’t dream. You don’t hope.</i></div>
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<i>When I was twelve, a bookmobile came to the fields. I thought it was the Baptists, because they used to come in a van and give us blankets and food. So I went over and peeked in, and it was filled with books. I immediately — and I do mean immediately — stepped back. I wasn’t allowed to have books, because books are heavy, and when you’re moving a lot you have to keep things minimal. Of course, I had read in the short periods I was allowed to go to school, but I’d not ever owned a book.</i></div>
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<i>Fortunately, the staff member saw me and waved me in. I was nervous. The bookmobile person said, “These are books, and you can take one home. Just bring it back in two weeks.” I’m like, “What’s the catch?” He explained there was no catch. Then he asked me what I was interested in.</i></div>
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<i>The night before, an elder had told us a story about the day that Mount Rainier blew up and the devastation from the volcano. So I told the bookmobile person that I was nervous about the mountain blowing up, and he said, “You know, the more you know about something, the less you will fear it.” And he gave me a book about volcanoes. Then I saw a book about dinosaurs, and I said, “Oh, that looks neat,” so he gave me that. Then he gave me a book about a little boy whose family were farmers. I took them all home and devoured them.</i></div>
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<i>I came back in two weeks, and he gave me more books, and that started it. By the time I was fifteen, I knew there was a world outside the camps, and I believed I could find a place in it. I had read about people like me and not like me. I had seen how huge the world was, and it gave me the courage to leave. And I did. It taught me that hope was not just a word.</i></div>
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<i>When I left, I went to vocational school, and I graduated with a stenographer’s degree. Then, when Pierce County Library had an opening, I applied and was hired. I got to spend thirty-two years helping other people make a connection with the library. I have a deep, abiding commitment to them. Libraries save lives.</i></div>
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</span><div class="post-57579 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-culture tag-animation tag-books tag-culture tag-libraries tag-storycorps" id="posts" style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Complement this particular portion of the thoroughly humanizing </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594205183/braipick-20" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Callings</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> with Thoreau on </span><a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04/23/thoreau-on-libraries/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">the sacredness of public libraries</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">, Robert Dawson’s </span><a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/04/09/the-public-library-robert-dawson-book/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">photographic love letter to public libraries</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">, and Maurice Sendak’s forgotten, fantastic </span><a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/09/03/maurice-sendak-posters-reading-books/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">vintage posters celebrating libraries and reading</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/06/libraries-storycorps-bookmobile/?mc_cid=533d31dcb0&mc_eid=74c67d5997">https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/06/libraries-storycorps-bookmobile/?mc_cid=533d31dcb0&mc_eid=74c67d5997</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-9738298970247218412016-10-08T19:48:00.000+03:002016-10-08T19:48:13.396+03:00How mentoring can improve modern languages uptake in schools<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For some time, there have been many stories told of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36027905">“crisis” in modern languages</a> in secondary schools and <a href="https://theconversation.com/only-one-in-65-new-students-chooses-a-modern-language-degree-we-need-a-rethink-37768">universities</a>. There is <a href="http://schoolsweek.co.uk/language-teaching-sees-dip-in-gcse-and-a-level-entrants/">hard evidence to support this</a>. Even though there have been upsurges in modern languages provision – following the <a href="http://www.naldic.org.uk/eal-advocacy/eal-news-summary/140312.html">introduction of the English Baccalaureate</a> for example – pupil numbers continue to fall.</div>
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In Wales, where modern languages are still an optional choice at GCSE, research shows that the number of pupils studying a foreign language declined by 44% between 2002 and 2015. The number of pupils taking French in 2015 was <a href="https://wales.britishcouncil.org/en/language-trends-wales">less than half those who took it in 2002</a>.</div>
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But why are pupils put off taking a language at GCSE level, and how can we improve attitudes to the subjects? As a bilingual country, it seems counter-intuitive that Welsh pupils cannot see the benefits of studying languages. However, <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/modern-languages/about-us/engagement">research from an engagement project</a> we have recently been running suggests a range of things are influencing pupils’ decisions not to study a language.</div>
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<b>Choosing languages (or not)</b></div>
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The <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/modern-languages/about-us/engagement">mentoring project</a> saw undergraduate modern language students from four Welsh universities trained to work with year eight and nine pupils (aged 13 and 14) in 28 schools. The students helped the pupils to practice their language, build confidence and knowledge, and teach them how modern languages can aid personal and professional development.</div>
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Our work was part of a push by the Welsh government, <a href="http://gov.wales/topics/educationandskills/publications/guidance/global-futures-a-plan-to-improve-and-promote-modern-foreign-languages-in-wales/?lang=en">to arrest and reverse</a> the decline in modern languages study by 2020.</div>
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In its first year, with 32 students mentoring 254 pupils, the project had a clear impact not only on the schoolchildren who were mentored, but on whole cohorts within the project schools. Over half of the schools reported increased numbers for GCSE language classes, including one school where a modern language GCSE class is now running for the first time in three years.<a name='more'></a></div>
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When surveyed, the main “push” factors for the 13 and 14-year-old pupils to choose language study were: their preference for other subjects, given the curriculum squeeze and the small number of option choices available to them; their belief that they would not need a language for the jobs that they wanted to do in the future; lack of confidence in their linguistic ability; and negative attitudes about the long-term usefulness of languages, sometimes reinforced by parents and family.</div>
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What was most striking was that for many pupils who were dropping languages when choosing GCSE subjects, their view of languages were focused on the transactional benefits of learning a language. For them, the focus was on languages as communication tools rather than the benefits of learning a language to access and understand other cultures. What we might call the intercultural benefits of language learning were far less evident to these pupils.</div>
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<b>Mentoring and uptake</b></div>
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Though the first year of the project has only just been completed, we can already pinpoint specific ways in which mentoring has made a difference. First, by interacting with university undergraduate linguists, pupils have been able to understand the personal enjoyment and sense of achievement that interacting with other cultures brings. Languages as a way to access other cultures and their world views is made “live” to them by inspiring role models.</div>
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Being in small mentoring groups, outside the formal classroom structure, also helps improve confidence. By talking about the ups and downs of language learning with university students who have experienced similar education, pupils can appreciate the journey of language learning and build resilience and self belief. Working with mentors also helps school pupils understand more about the varied career opportunities that languages can support.</div>
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More generally, student mentoring has had a positive impact on pupils’ aspirations and ambitions. A number of teachers in project schools have reported that pupils from poorer backgrounds have been inspired to think about “realising their dreams” and going to university after being mentored by a young modern linguist.</div>
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In the wake of the UK vote to leave the European Union, the importance of promoting the value of modern languages is particularly urgent. Our student mentoring project has highlighted that pupils have often absorbed a narrow view of the benefits of language learning. As the country faces an uncertain future in the global economy, now more than ever, young people need to develop intercultural skills that will develop them professionally and personally. Speaking other languages is one of the first steps towards this wider world.</div>
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<a href="http://theconversation.com/how-mentoring-can-improve-modern-languages-uptake-in-schools-65380?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205762&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205762+CID_01a97b622e32a42e8366e5353f70c65c&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=How%20mentoring%20can%20improve%20modern%20languages%20uptake%20in%20schools">http://theconversation.com/how-mentoring-can-improve-modern-languages-uptake-in-schools-65380?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205762&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%205762+CID_01a97b622e32a42e8366e5353f70c65c&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=How%20mentoring%20can%20improve%20modern%20languages%20uptake%20in%20schools</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-26247007546300087532016-10-04T20:38:00.000+03:002016-10-04T20:38:23.784+03:00Seven myths about dyslexia put to rest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As researchers who study dyslexia, we often read articles or overhear conversations that completely misunderstand what dyslexia is – or how it can be treated.</div>
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Dyslexia is the term used to describe someone with reading difficulties – and it affects up to <a href="http://dyslexiaassociation.org.au/index.php?page=what-is-dyslexia">10% of Australians</a>.</div>
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A reader with dyslexia may have difficulty in reading unusual words like yacht; have difficulty with nonsense words like frop; misread slime as smile; struggle to understand passages; or struggle in a number of other ways when reading.</div>
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To coincide with <a href="http://dyslexiaempowermentweek.com.au/">Dyslexia Empowerment Week</a> – aimed at raising awareness and understanding of the disorder – we highlight the seven most common misconceptions about dyslexia.</div>
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<b>Myth 1: I’m a bad speller because I’m dyslexic</b></div>
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Some researchers and organisations include spelling problems in their <a href="http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexic/definitions">definition</a> of dyslexia. This can be a problem because spelling and reading are different skills even if they are both based on written language.</div>
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There are some processes involved in both spelling and reading, so some people will have problems with both skills. But <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10888430903162878#.VicO1mThC2w">research</a> has clearly shown that many people are good readers, but poor spellers; or good spellers, yet poor readers.</div>
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To avoid grouping different kinds of problems together, it is less confusing to use the distinct terms dysgraphia (or spelling impairment) for problems in spelling, and dyslexia (or reading impairment) for reading problems.<br />
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<b>Myth 2: I have trouble with (insert problem here), because I’m dyslexic</b></div>
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Reading problems are about problems with reading. That may seem obvious, but sometimes problems in other areas become so strongly associated with reading difficulties that they start to be talked about as if they were the same as having a reading difficulty.</div>
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For example, some people with reading problems also have problems with some aspects of memory. This can lead people to say things like, “David forgets his lunch box a lot because he’s dyslexic”, but this assumes a connection between the two problems. If dyslexia leads to poor memory, then everyone who has a reading problem should also have memory problems, but this is not at all the case.</div>
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In the extreme, one <a href="http://www.dyslexia.com/leonardo.htm">website</a> claims that Leonardo da Vinci had dyslexia not because of any evidence that he had trouble reading, but because he could write backwards and reversed (as in a mirror image). This is clearly using the term far too broadly.</div>
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<b>Myth 3: Dyslexia is the same for everyone</b></div>
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Though it may not feel like it to many of us, reading is a very complex task which involves many sub-skills and processes. It requires identifying and ordering letters, mapping letter patterns to sounds, and accessing knowledge stored in memory (among other things).</div>
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This means that the process can fail in a variety of ways, so as researchers we will almost never say “dyslexia” or “reading impairment” without first discussing what kind of problem we mean.</div>
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Does the reader have trouble with new words they have never seen before? Do they mistake broad for board more often than others their age? Do they read have as though it rhymes with save? Do they have trouble understanding what they have read? These are different problems, which don’t necessarily go together.</div>
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<b>Myth 4: There is one way to treat dyslexia</b></div>
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Since dyslexia is not one problem, there also isn’t a single solution. The particular nature of the reading problem a person has determines the treatment they need.</div>
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Based on current evidence, effective treatment of a struggling reader requires first identifying the specific reading problems the reader has, then designing a reading-based program to develop the skills that have fallen behind.</div>
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<b>Myth 5: Gymnastics can cure dyslexia</b></div>
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Treatments like physical exercise, coloured lenses or coloured paper are not helpful for two reasons. First, they assume that all dyslexias are the same. Second, they have nothing to do with reading.</div>
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There are many more “snake oil” treatments out there, and many of them have been adopted by school boards and education administrators with no reliable evidence to support them.</div>
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Currently, the <a href="http://www.language-brain.com/docs/Friedmann_Coltheart_types_of_developmental_dyslexia_NaaMax.pdf">evidence</a> favours treatments that are based on developing reading skills that target the specific reading problem.</div>
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<b>Myth 6: Phonics is a waste of time</b></div>
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This one is a particular challenge in Australia, where many teaching programs do not emphasise phonics in early reading education. As a result, some children who appear to have a form of dyslexia are struggling because of classroom teaching methods.</div>
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Phonics helps children learn to read by teaching them how to convert letters into sounds and then blend those sounds into words. Effective teaching methods for reading should always include systematic teaching of <a href="http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED479646.pdf">phonics</a>, particularly in the early years.</div>
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<b>Myth 7: Dyslexia runs in my family, so I just have to live with it</b></div>
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Research has found that genetics can play a role in reading difficulties. Sometimes the phrase “genetic cause” is mistaken for “there’s nothing anyone can do”. This isn’t true for reading difficulties.</div>
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No matter the source of the dyslexia, there are treatments that can help - provided the problems are clearly identified, and the treatment is targeted.</div>
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<a href="http://theconversation.com/seven-myths-about-dyslexia-put-to-rest-49201">http://theconversation.com/seven-myths-about-dyslexia-put-to-rest-49201</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-48682110566375159322016-08-29T15:30:00.000+03:002016-08-29T15:30:43.115+03:00Schools aren't teaching the most important subject for kids<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Not too long ago, Jana Mohr Lone was at an education workshop in her hometown of Seattle when someone gave her a note.</div>
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The note was written by a fifth-grade girl. As Mohr Lone read it, the girl's words began to fill her with joy.</div>
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"Ever since you left, I've been looking at my surroundings more and being careful about who I'm talking to and what I'm saying," Mohr Lone later recalled, reading the note over the phone. "I'm thankful because you made me think deeper about things and care more about life."</div>
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Mohr Lone isn't a guidance counselor or a therapist. She's a <b>philosophy teacher</b>, the founding director of the University of Washington's <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/nwcenter/">Center for Philosophy for Children</a>, and the 20-year president of <a href="http://www.plato-philosophy.org/">PLATO</a>, a nonprofit focused on bringing philosophy to schools.</div>
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She had spent an hour each week for the last year visiting the girl's school to teach the ancient discipline. And now, just a couple months later, she was already seeing her impact firsthand.</div>
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Schools' essential function (at least in theory) is to give kids the skills they need to navigate adult life. Amid the heavy focus on math, science, and reading, however, they've skipped over one of the oldest intellectual pursuits.</div>
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While programs have been spreading across US high schools over the last several years, when it comes to elementary education one question still lingers: <b>Why don't more schools teach philosophy?</b></div>
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<b>The surprising benefits of kids asking questions</b></div>
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The questions philosophy raises about life merit it a spot in the school schedule, but it's the wide-ranging benefits to other school subjects that make it so valuable for students.</div>
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Numerous <a href="http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/021/vol1/026/ecp2107026.pdf">studies</a> have found that kids who take philosophy go on to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240530674_Philosophy_for_children_A_systematic_review">excel in reading and math</a>, too.<a name='more'></a></div>
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A <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/EEF_Project_Report_PhilosophyForChildren.pdf">recent study</a> conducted among 3,000 fourth- and fifth-graders in 48 schools across England, for example, found that weekly, hour-long philosophy courses over one school year led to better literacy and math skills on follow-up tests two years later than with kids who took no philosophy courses. Neither group received any additional help in reading or math; the only difference was the introduction of philosophy.</div>
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Mohr Lone isn't surprised when she hears these collateral effects. Year after year, teachers gush that her philosophy courses teach kids skills they can apply in other classrooms. <b>The child who learns to reason through a philosophical argument can better tease apart math problems, just as perspective-taking enriches a lesson about slavery in the 1800s.</b></div>
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Kids also get a master class in character-building.<b> Philosophical inquiry teaches kids patience, listening skills, respect for others' opinions, and, perhaps above all, grit.</b></div>
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Grit is the quality that University of Pennsylvania psychologist <a href="http://go.redirectingat.com/?id=35871X943606&site=businessinsider.com&xs=1&isjs=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FGrit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth%2Fdp%2F1501111108%3Ftag%3Dbisafetynet-20&xguid=a586acd0aa1a23b0f43f6ba90733fdbe&xuuid=eaa7be6798e5b544093f961d806b8be1&xsessid=344b04d033c067c0caedc52f12687f7e&xcreo=0&xed=0&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fangela-duckworth-grit-more-important-than-iq-or-talent-2016-5&pref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fangela-duckworth-how-to-become-a-grittier-person-2016-5&xtz=240&abp=1&tag=bisafetynet-20">Angela Duckworth</a> has found is<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/angela-duckworth-how-to-become-a-grittier-person-2016-5">the single greatest predictor</a> of adult success — that stick-with-it trait that kids also tend to derive from sports. </div>
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Philosophy helps kids realize they should direct their energy toward solving the problem at hand, not stressing out because they think the real problem is them.</div>
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<b>Philosophy isn't scary</b></div>
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The idea of teaching kids morals and metaphysics may seem unrealistic, but give kids the right stimulus and there's no telling how far their minds will wander.</div>
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In Mohr Lone's classroom, pretty much anything is up for grabs. Scout and Atticus Finch can stimulate a discussion on the nature of courage. "The Velveteen Rabbit" gets kids thinking about the question, "What is real?" Often, the simplest stimuli can produce profound insights. </div>
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In her 2012 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Child-Jana-Mohr-Lone/dp/1442217332/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438181927&sr=8-1&keywords=the+philosophical+child&tag=TIsafetynet-20">"The Philosophical Child,"</a> Mohr Lone recalls asking a group of fifth-graders how we can know reality isn't a simulation — a prompt many might assume is too daunting for mere 10-year-olds.</div>
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"Okay," piped up one girl in the front row, "maybe I can't know that I am not just the mind of a computer or living in a cave and seeing only shadows. But what I can know is that if I'm thinking about what I can know, I can be sure that at least there is me thinking, even if that's all I can know about myself or anything else."</div>
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Mohr Lone writes that she was blown away. "I told her that the philosopher René Descartes had come to a similar conclusion almost four hundred years ago."</div>
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<b>Philosophy opens kids' eyes to the world around them</b></div>
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Beyond helping kids understand themselves, philosophy also helps kids understand each other. Some of Mohr Lone's favorite programs are those in which kids from predominantly white schools get together with kids from predominantly black schools to discuss issues of race in America.</div>
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She admits there's been some pushback.</div>
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"Occasionally, I'll have parents say to me 'You know, I think it might be too early for my kid to be thinking about racial identity,'" she explains. "And I always say 'Well, your kid must be white,' because if you grew up as a child of color, by the time you're seven or eight years old nobody needs to teach you about racial identity. You're already thinking about it."</div>
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An open forum where children from poor areas can reflect on the hardships of growing up can illuminate just how well those with privilege have it. Philosophy can serve as the great equalizer.</div>
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<b>Parents and schools should encourage kids to speak their mind</b></div>
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Philosophy shouldn't replace math and science — those are still vitally important to raising well-rounded thinkers. But its benefits mean that it does deserve a place in the classroom, even if just involves math and science teachers weaving philosophical thought into their lessons.</div>
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The biggest reason schools haven't done that is philosophy still feels largely inaccessible. People think it's something old guys do by the fireplace or in the Ivory Towers of academia.<b> "People don't think about the fact that we all do philosophy all the time,"</b> Mohr Lone says. Adults and children alike wonder if certain people are real friends, if what they just did was morally right, and how to find purpose in life.</div>
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Kids often ponder these questions on their own, but due to the pressures of formal schooling they learn to suppress their curious spirit and prioritize knowledge over understanding.</div>
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If Mohr Lone can do anything to help more schools bring a philosophy course to their students, she says it's to demystify for adults what seems to come naturally to kids.</div>
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<b>"Philosophy in many ways underpins all the subjects,"</b> Mohr Lone says. <b>"It's sort of the original subject."</b></div>
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<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/philosophy-most-valuable-school-subject-2016-8?nr_email_referer=1&utm_content=TechSelect&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_campaign=BI%20Tech%20Weekend%202016-08-28&utm_term=Tech%20Select%20-%20Engaged%2C%20Active%2C%20Passive%2C%20Disengaged">http://www.businessinsider.com/philosophy-most-valuable-school-subject-2016-8?nr_email_referer=1&utm_content=TechSelect&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_campaign=BI%20Tech%20Weekend%202016-08-28&utm_term=Tech%20Select%20-%20Engaged%2C%20Active%2C%20Passive%2C%20Disengaged</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-68082811961983164662016-07-14T12:54:00.000+03:002016-07-14T12:54:30.487+03:00Healing division in schools: the lessons from Ireland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As racism rears its head after the EU referendum, a chain set up to counter sectarian education is offering solutions for the UK.</span></div>
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In a horseshoe, sitting around teacher Laura Clarke, year 1 pupils from <b>Redfield Educate Together academy</b> in Bristol discuss the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/eu-referendum">EU referendum</a>. “Do you remember what happened?” asks Clarke. “There was a vote and people were unkind to people from other countries,” pipes up Ben Wycherley, aged six.</div>
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“How do you feel about that?” Clarke asks her class. “Shocked,” says Tarren Dwyer-Reid, also six. “Sad,” says classmate Angelo Marmolejo, whose parents are Spanish.</div>
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“How do you think being unkind might make other people feel?” asks Clarke. “I’d feel lonely,” says Zoe Papp.</div>
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“Not very welcoming”, written up on the whiteboard, is the phrase that seems best to sum up the children’s view.</div>
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This new school – the first established in England by the Irish Educate Together multi-academy trust – serves a diverse catchment in central Bristol: <b>60% of children come from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.</b></div>
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The city, like others, is feeling anxious after incidents of racial hatred and immigrants being told to “go home” following the referendum. One local primary school posted a notice on its Twitter feed offering to help families report racism and hate crime.</div>
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The headteacher here, Ros Farrell, is keenly aware that her school’s unique <b>“ethical education curriculum”</b> is needed as never before, as its children grow up in a multicultural city where a higher than expected 38% of voters opted to leave the EU.</div>
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The ethos of this chain of schools was developed in the Republic of Ireland – the first was founded in 1978 to offer an alternative to faith-based education, still the only option for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/europe/ireland-catholic-baptism-school.html?_r=0">97% of pupils there</a>. <b>Educate Together’s “ethical education” approach, Farrell says, is intended to help children understand and value belief systems other than their own, and explore concepts of equality and justice.<a name='more'></a></b></div>
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The trust, a secular educational charity, has opened 60 schools in the past 15 years, becoming the leading provider of new state schools in Ireland. In the Dublin region, its schools report applications in excess of four times their capacity. It opens another nine schools this summer, and the Irish government wants a total of 400 by 2030.</div>
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The increase, says the CEO of Educate Together, Paul Rowe, is due to <b>“a huge shift in parental attitudes towards preparing children for a future in which they’ll be working with people from across the world.”</b> The first school was formed, he says, “by people who wanted children from different religious backgrounds to be educated together in a context of rights, respect, and with the profound commitment to the idea that children should be treated with equality of esteem in everything a school does”.</div>
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Parents cannot pick and choose what a child is allowed to learn. “There are schools that will let children sit out certain activities,” Farrell says – religious education or sexual health and relationships education, for example – “but that doesn’t happen here, and it’s part of our pitch to parents. We say diversity is an opportunity. That’s why I think people of faith like what we do because we value their faith, and they understand we require everyone to respect other faiths.”</div>
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With the current divisions and uncertainties in the UK, Farrell believes there has never been a more important time for this educational philosophy. Healing painful rifts, when the world feels increasingly insecure and vast movements of people are taking place, will require children to be able to draw on skills of empathy and communication, she feels.</div>
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Rowe, over from Ireland to discuss the opening of two more schools in the autumn, points out that while this school’s young pupils will remember little of the referendum vote, they will be affected by it throughout their lives – which for many will stretch into the next century. In that time, the world will transform from what we know now.</div>
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In an exercise designed to help pupils imagine a life very different from their own, year 1s, he explains, have been asked to pack an imaginary rucksack for a refugee child fleeing their homeland. “They have to think ‘what does that feel like?’ It’s also central to critical thinking and involves problem-solving,” Rowe says. In a fast-changing global environment, he says, “these children aren’t going to be finding answers to their communities’ problems in textbooks; they’re going to be writing their own.”</div>
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There are refugee children in the school, Farrell confirms, as well as families from the EU who have lived here for years. At morning drop-off, Justyna Wardencka, mum of Olivia, six, who moved from Poland 12 years ago and works as a hospital cleaner, says while she has not experienced overt racism, the message that immigrants are not wanted is coming over loud and clear. “A friend at a different school said the headteacher was proud [after the vote], and she saw parents coming to congratulate her and hug her and say ‘we did it’!” Wardencka says. “My friend felt awkward.”</div>
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Since the referendum, Wardencka has started to speak Polish more quietly when on the street or taking the bus. “I had my children here, I had my first job here, I met my husband here, so it’s sad, and yes, I am worried.”</div>
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As Olivia heads off to class, her mum knows that in this school, at least, she is safe, and is being equipped to do more than simply achieve academically. Rowe is adamant that the resilience the Educate Together philosophy has fostered in the trust’s Irish schools needs to become more widespread. “For a child, to speak out, to interact with authority, to have the skills to deal appropriately with hurtful or bullying behaviour, it’s about trying to generate the confidence of the individual person,” he says.</div>
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Farrell puts it a different way. <b>“We look for similarities, and celebrate differences,”</b> she says. “I’ve not found a religion that doesn’t value kindness, so we start there.”</div>
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It seems to be working. Back in the classroom, the year 1s list the items a refugee child might need in their rucksack, and describe the messages they wrote to world leaders about their plight. It’s not just about feeling empathy, says Farrell: the children are taught to take action. And their letters will soon be in the post.</div>
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jul/12/schools-eu-referendum-racism-education-uk">https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jul/12/schools-eu-referendum-racism-education-uk</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-60488427604083284592016-07-11T22:55:00.000+03:002016-07-11T22:58:16.333+03:00Why our children are so bored at school, cannot wait, get easily frustrated and have no real friends?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I am an occupational therapist with 10 years of experience working with children, parents, and teachers. I completely agree with <a href="http://www.newsner.com/en/2015/09/his-message-to-parents-spoiling-their-kids-is-going-viral-and-its-not-hard-to-understand-why/">this teacher’s message</a> that our children getting worse and worse in many aspects. I hear the same consistent message from every teacher I meet. Clearly, throughout my ten years as an Occupational Therapist, I have seen and continue to see<b> a decline in kids’ social, emotional, academic functioning, as well as a sharp increase in learning disabilities and other diagnoses. </b></div>
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Today’s children come to school emotionally unavailable for learning and there are many factors in our modern lifestyle that contribute to this. As we know, the brain is malleable. Through environment we can make the brain “stronger” or make it “weaker”. I truly believe that with all our greatest intentions, we unfortunately remold our children’s brains in the wrong direction. Here is why…</div>
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<b>1. Technology</b></div>
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“Free babysitting service… the payment is waiting for you just around the corner”. We pay with our kids’ nervous system, with their attention, and ability for delayed gratification. Compared to virtual reality, everyday life is boring. When kids come to the classroom, they are exposed to human voices and adequate visual stimulation as opposed to being bombarded with graphic explosions and special effects that they are used to seeing on the screens. After hours of virtual reality, processing information in a classroom becomes increasingly challenging for our kids because their brains are getting used to the high levels of stimulation that video games provide. The inability to process lower levels of stimulation leaves kids vulnerable to academic challenges. Technology also disconnects us emotionally from our children and our families. Parental emotional availability is the main nutrient for child’s brain. Unfortunately, we are gradually depriving our children from that nutrient.</div>
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<b>2. Kids get everything they want the moment they want</b></div>
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“I am Hungry!!” “In a sec I will stop at drive thru” “I am Thirsty!” “Here is a vending machine”. “I am bored!” “Use my phone!” The ability to delay gratification is one of the key factors for future success. We have all the greatest intention in mind to make our children happy, but unfortunately, we make them happy at the moment but miserable in a long term. To be able to delay gratification means to be able to function under stress. Our children are gradually becoming less equipped to deal with even minor stressors which eventually become huge obstacles to their success in life.<br />
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The inability to delay gratification is often seen in classrooms, malls, restaurants, and toy stores the moment the child hears “No” because parents have taught their“child’s brain” to get what it wants right away</div>
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<b>3. Kids rule the world</b></div>
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“My son doesn’t like vegetables” “She doesn’t like going to bed early” “He doesn’t like to eat breakfast” “She doesn’t like toys, but she is very good at her IPAD” “He doesn’t want to get dressed on his own” “She is too lazy to eat on her own”. This is what I hear from parents all the time. Since when do children dictate to us how to parent them? If we leave it all up to them , all they are going to do is eat macaroni and cheese, bagel with cream cheese, watch TV, play on their tablets, and never go to bed. What good are we doing them by giving them what they WANT when we know that it is not GOOD for them? Without proper nutrition and a good night’s sleep, our kids come to school irritable, anxious, and inattentive. In addition, we send them the wrong message. They learn they can do what they want and not do what they don’t want. The concept of “need to do’ is absent. Unfortunately, in order to achieve our goals in our lives, we have to do what’s necessary which may not always be what we want to do. For example, if a child wants to be an A student, he needs to study hard. If he wants to be a successful soccer player, he needs to practice every day. Our children know very well what they want but have very hard time to do what is necessary to achieve that goal. This results in unattainable goals and leaves the kids disappointed.</div>
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<b>4. Endless Fun</b></div>
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We created an artificial fun world for our children. There are no dull moments. The moment it becomes quiet, we run to entertain them again because otherwise we feel that we are not doing our parenting duty. We live in two separate worlds. They have their “fun “world and we have our “work” world. Why aren’t children helping us in the kitchen or with laundry? Why don’t they tidy up their toys? This is basic monotonous work that trains the brain to be workable and function under “boredom” which is the same “muscle” that is required to be eventually teachable at school. When they come to school and it is time for printing, their answer is “I can’t. It is too hard. Too boring” Why? Because the workable “muscle” is not getting trained through endless fun. It gets trained through work.</div>
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<b>5. Limited social interaction</b></div>
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We are all busy, so we give our kids digital gadgets and make them “busy” too. Kids used to play outside, where in unstructured natural environments, they learned and practiced their social skills. Unfortunately, technology replaced the outdoor time. Also, technology made the parents less available to socially interact with their kids. Obviously, our kids fall behind…the babysitting gadget is not equipped for social skill development. Most successful people are the ones who have great social skills. This is the priority!</div>
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The brain is just like a muscle that is trainable and re-trainable. If you want your child to be able to bike, you teach him biking skills. If you want your child to be able to wait, you need to teach him patience. If you want your child to be able to socialize, you need to teach him social skills. The same applies to all the other skills. There is no difference!!</div>
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<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">You can make a difference though in your child’s life by training your child’s brain so that your child will successfully function on social, emotional, and academic levels.</span> Here is how:</div>
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<b>1. Limit technology, and instead re-connect with your kids emotionally</b></div>
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<li>Surprise them with flowers, share a smile, tickle them, put a love note in backpack or under their pillow, surprise them by taking them out for lunch on a school day, dance together, crawl together, have pillow fights</li>
<li>Have family dinners, board game nights (see the list of my favourite board games in my previous blog post), go biking, go to outdoor walks with flashlight in the evening</li>
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<b>2. Train delay gratification</b></div>
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<li>Make them wait!!! It is ok to have “I am bored “ time – this is the first step to creativity</li>
<li>Gradually increase the waiting time between “I want” and “I get”</li>
<li>Avoid technology use in cars and restaurants, and instead teach them waiting while talking and playing games</li>
<li>Limit constant snacking</li>
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<b>3. Don’t be afraid to set the limits. Kids need limits to grow happy and healthy!!</b></div>
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<li>Make a schedule for meal times, sleep times, technology time</li>
<li>Think of what is GOOD for them- not what they WANT/DON’T WANT. They are going to thank you for that later on in life. Parenting is a hard job. You need to be creative to make them do what is good for them because most of the time that is the exact opposite of what they want</li>
<li>Kids need breakfast and nutritious food. They need to spend time outdoor and go to bed at consistent time in order to come to school available for learning the next day!</li>
<li>Convert things that they don’t like doing/trying into fun, emotionally stimulating games</li>
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<b>4. Teach your child to do monotonous work from early years as it is the foundation for future “workability”</b></div>
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<li>Folding laundry, tidying up toys, hanging clothes, unpacking groceries, setting the table, making lunch, unpacking their lunch box, making their bed</li>
<li>Be creative. Initially make it stimulating and fun so that their brain associates it with something positive.</li>
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<b>5. Teach social skills</b></div>
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From my experience as an occupational therapist, children change the moment parents change their perspective on parenting. Help your kids succeed in life by training and strengthening their brain sooner than later!!!</div>
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<a href="http://yourot.com/parenting-club/2016/5/16/why-our-children-are-so-bored-at-school-cant-wait-and-get-so-easily-frustrated">http://yourot.com/parenting-club/2016/5/16/why-our-children-are-so-bored-at-school-cant-wait-and-get-so-easily-frustrated</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-47925923848155606722016-07-08T14:28:00.000+03:002016-07-08T14:28:02.325+03:00No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Anton Oberländer is a persuasive speaker. Last year, when he and a group of friends were short of cash for a camping trip to Cornwall, he managed to talk Germany’s national rail operator into handing them some free tickets. So impressed was the management with his chutzpah that they invited him back to give a motivational speech to 200 of their employees.</div>
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Anton, it should be pointed out, is 14 years old.</div>
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The Berlin teenager’s self-confidence is largely <b>the product of a unique educational institution that has turned the conventions of traditional teaching radically upside down.</b><span style="background-color: #6fa8dc;"> At Oberländer’s school, there are no grades until students turn 15, no timetables and no lecture-style instructions. The pupils decide which subjects they want to study for each lesson and when they want to take an exam.</span></div>
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The school’s syllabus reads like any <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/02/modern-tribe-universities-students-helicopter-parent">helicopter parent</a>’s nightmare. <b>Set subjects are limited to maths, German, English and social studies, supplemented by more abstract courses such as “responsibility” and “challenge”</b>. For challenge, students aged 12 to 14 are given €150 (£115) and sent on an adventure that they have to plan entirely by themselves. Some go kayaking; others work on a farm. Anton went trekking along England’s south coast.</div>
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The philosophy behind these innovations is simple: as the requirements of the labour market are changing, and smartphones and the internet are transforming the ways in which young people process information, the school’s headteacher, Margret Rasfeld, argues, <b>the most important skill a school can pass down to its students is the ability to motivate themselves.</b></div>
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“Look at three or four year olds – they are all full of self-confidence,” Rasfeld says. “Often, children can’t wait to start school. But frustratingly, most schools then somehow manage to untrain that confidence.”</div>
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The Evangelical School Berlin Centre (ESBC) is trying to do nothing less than “reinvent what a school is”, she says. <b>“The mission of a progressive school should be to prepare young people to cope with change, or better still, to make them look forward to change. In the 21st century, schools should see it as their job to develop strong personalities.”<a name='more'></a></b></div>
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Making students listen to a teacher for 45 minutes and punishing them for collaborating on an exercise, Rasfeld says, was not only out of sync with the requirements of the modern world of work, but counterproductive.<b> “Nothing motivates students more than when they discover the meaning behind a subject of their own accord.”</b></div>
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Students at her school are encouraged to think up other ways to prove their acquired skills, such as coding a computer game instead of sitting a maths exam. Oberländer, who had never been away from home for three weeks until he embarked on his challenge in Cornwall, said he learned more English on his trip than he had in several years of learning the language at school.</div>
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Germany’s federalised education structure, in which each of the 16 states plans its own education system, has traditionally allowed “free learning” models to flourish. Yet unlike <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school">Sudbury</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2006/sep/29/schools.uk">Montessori</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jun/14/steiner-schools-children-tablets-tech">Steiner</a> schools, Rasfeld’s institution tries to embed student self-determination within a relatively strict system of rules. Students who dawdle during lessons have to come into school on Saturday morning to catch up, a punishment known as “silentium”.<b> “The more freedom you have, the more structure you need,” </b>says Rasfeld.</div>
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The main reason why the ESBC is gaining a reputation as Germany’s most exciting school is that its experimental philosophy has managed to deliver impressive results. Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’sgesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, which combine all three school forms of Germany’s tertiary system. Last year’s school leavers achieved an average grade of 2.0, the equivalent of a straight B – even though 40% of the year had been advised not to continue to abitur, the German equivalent of A-levels, before they joined the school. Having opened in 2007 with just 16 students, the school now operates at full capacity, with 500 pupils and long waiting lists for new applicants.</div>
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Given its word-of-mouth success, it is little wonder that there have been calls for Rasfeld’s approach to go nationwide. Yet some educational experts question whether the school’s methods can easily be exported: in Berlin, they say, the school can draw the most promising applicants from well-off and progressive families. Rasfeld rejects such criticisms, insisting that the school aims for a heterogenous mix of students from different backgrounds. While a cross adorns the assembly hall and each school day starts with worship, only one-third of current pupils are baptised. Thirty per cent of students have a migrant background and 7% are from households where no German is spoken.</div>
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Even though the ESBC is one of Germany’s 5,000 private schools, fees are means tested and relatively low compared with those common in Britain, at between €720 and €6,636 a year. About 5% of students are exempt from fees.</div>
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However, even Rasfeld admits that finding teachers able to adjust to the school’s learning methods can be harder than getting students to do the same.</div>
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Aged 65 and due to retire in July, Rasfeld still has ambitious plans. A four-person “education innovation lab” based at the school has been developing teaching materials for schools that want to follow the ESBC’s lead. About 40 schools in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/germany">Germany</a> are in the process of adopting some or all of Rasfeld’s methods. One in Berlin’s Weissensee district recently let a student trek across the Alps for a challenge project. “Things are only getting started,” says Rasfeld.</div>
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<b>“In education, you can only create change from the bottom – if the orders come from the top, schools will resist.</b> Ministries are like giant oil tankers: it takes a long time to turn them around. What we need is lots of little speedboats to show you can do things differently.”</div>
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/01/no-grades-no-timetable-berlin-school-turns-teaching-upside-down">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/01/no-grades-no-timetable-berlin-school-turns-teaching-upside-down</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-23414101361143919372016-06-18T13:51:00.000+03:002016-06-18T13:51:32.673+03:00Could Steiner schools have a point on children, tablets and tech?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Studies have yet to show much benefit from technology in schools, leading some to wonder whether the offline life is better for children.</b></span></div>
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It’s late morning and the children in Maria Woolley’s class at <b>the Iona school in Nottingham</b> are busy kneading dough. The dough is made from flour they saw ground at the local windmill using grains harvested from a nearby farm they had visited. During the morning lesson the children have sung songs, recited poetry and done rhythmic clapping and stomping.</div>
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There is no uniform here, and no headteacher – the school is run by staff and friends – and, <b>unlike the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30216408">vast majority</a> of primary schools these days, here the students don’t work on tablets or computers.</b> At the front of the class is an old-fashioned blackboard.</div>
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The methods at the school, which are based on the controversial teachings of Austrian 19th century philosopher <b>Rudolf Steiner, </b>may be different from those employed in mainstream state schools, but the Iona was recently declared outstanding by the School Inspection Service – the independent equivalent of Ofsted. The report noted that<b> “pupils do not use computers or the internet when in school but staff have ensured that they have learned about internet safety”. </b>It went on: <b>“Teaching is inspirational and highly effective … teachers are very well trained and highly skilled.”</b></div>
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Any school would be grateful to be described in such glowing terms but the staff here are particularly proud that they achieved their outstanding status without technology. In addition to the ban on computers in school, parents are discouraged from letting their children watch television, play computer games or use smartphones at home.</div>
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The Iona school was set up in 1985 by Richard Moore, who had worked for 10 years as a state primary teacher. “Mainstream education was becoming prescriptive even then,” he says, “so <b>what appealed to me about Steiner was that it stressed that the work of children was play.</b>” Today the school – one of 33 schools that follow the Steiner curriculum – has 87 children aged between three and 12 and costs £5,402 a year.<a name='more'></a></div>
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Under the government’s free schools and academies programme, four Steiner schools are now state funded. The schools, based on the spiritual movement of “<a href="http://www.waldorfanswers.com/Anthroposophy.htm">anthroposophy</a>”, are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/17/trojan-horse-some-extremists-more-acceptable">controversial</a> because Steiner’s views on, for example, race have been discredited. But even some who question the philosophy or ideology may wonder whether these schools have a point about resisting the blanket use of technology.</div>
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<b>“Rudolph Steiner and many other childhood thinkers through the 19th and 20th centuries emphasised the importance of understanding how young children naturally learn to learn, and of providing educational experiences which build on their natural interests and curiosity,”</b> explains David Whitebread, director of the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning at Cambridge University. “Early childhood and primary education in the UK has moved a long way from this to a top-down, state-imposed curriculum model.”</div>
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<b>Critics suggest that in not allowing children to use screens as part of its ideology Steiner schools are putting them at a disadvantage.</b> “The needs of our young people are that when they leave school, they become part of a world that is highly likely to include technology,” says Mark Chambers, the chief executive of NAACE, a professional association for those concerned with advancing education using technology. “We should be doing all we can to help them be prepared for that world, just as we would for the physical world that is around them.”</div>
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David Andrews, who was a primary teacher in Hull for 10 years, now runs a <a href="http://www.mrandrewsonline.com/">website</a> on how to use technology to support learning in the classroom. <b>“In some schools, technology is used poorly and it can have a damaging impact on education,”</b> he says.<b> But when used creatively, “technology can engage the children because of their experience of what they are doing at home, where they may be watching television or gaming”.</b></div>
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Research into the effects of technology on learning has yet to demonstrate much in the way of positive results, though. A recent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/11/students-who-use-digital-devices-in-class-perform-worse-in-exams">study</a> published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that students barred from using laptops or digital devices in lectures and seminars did better in exams than those allowed to use computers and access the internet. And research last year from the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/may/15/mobile-phone-bans-improve-school-exam-results-research-shows">London School of Economics</a> found schools that banned pupils from carrying mobile phones showed a sustained improvement in exam results, with the biggest advances coming from struggling students.</div>
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A <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34139196">Cambridge University study</a> found that spending an extra hour a day of TV, internet or gaming time in year 10 saw a fall in GCSE results equivalent to two grades overall. Its co-author, Esther van Sluijs, says reducing screen time could have important benefits and adds that <b>“limiting the amount of time spent in front of screens and introducing children to a variety of activities is likely to have the most beneficial long-term impacts on a child’s health”</b>.</div>
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<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/the-reality-is-that-technology-is-doing-more-harm-than-good-in-our-schools-says-education-chief-20160330-gnu370.html">Andreas Schleicher</a>, head of education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said recently: “The reality is that technology is doing more harm than good in our schools today.” <b>A <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34174796">report by the OECD in 2015</a> found that countries that had invested heavily in technology had shown no signs of improvement in reading, maths or science.</b></div>
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Despite the evidence from such studies there is still, according to Moore, “an anxiety that children aren’t going to be ready to fit into the economy because they don’t do computers at the age of four – whereas <b>if you give them a healthy education and childhood, they can catch up very easily”.</b></div>
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Steiner schools attract parents and teachers who tend to share similar thoughts on screen time and who try to ensure their students are better able to resist the lure of technology. Sean Cummins, who has had three children at the Iona school, says for him the appeal of a Steiner education was that it showed you “could structure a child’s education in a way different from just preparing them for an employer’s requirements when they were 18”.</div>
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Asma Al-Deraa has a seven-year-old son at the Iona school and a 10-year-old daughter in mainstream state education. “My daughter is being taught inside the box with lots of testing,” she says. “But with my son – he is more creative and trying to dig for the things that are beyond.” When her daughter returns from school she will reach for the iPad, but her son “is not asking for that or the PlayStation – he just wants to draw and play”.</div>
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Even some who support the use of computers in the classroom share the concern about the negative impact of technology. <b>“The role of technology at home is potentially damaging children’s communication skills with their parents who are using it as an electronic babysitter,”</b> says Andrews. <b>“More and more children are coming into primary school with their spoken language as an issue so we are using technology in the classroom to record their language as a way of getting them talking to their parents.”</b></div>
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However, teacher José Picardo argues that the aversion to technology in Steiner schools is rooted in a “pseudo-intellectualism which believes the things we are familiar with are better than the things our children are familiar with”. Picardo teaches at Surbiton High School in Surrey, where every pupil from the age of seven or eight is given a tablet. “I think my children are going to end up being better prepared for the world in which they live,” he says, because his school does not subscribe to the idea that “playing with something physical is better and therefore children shouldn’t be allowed technology”.</div>
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In Kirsty Thompson’s classroom at the Iona school, the children don’t even have any ready-made toys in the room. They have to use their imagination to make what they want. Here boys and girls are playing together, rather than self-segregating, to make towers from wooden blocks and to play dressing up with cotton and woollen sheets.</div>
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Thompson, who joined the Iona last September, says for her the school offers a daily affirmation of why she wanted to be a teacher. “In the state schools I worked in, the focus was primarily on number crunching,” she says. “I was sat in meetings and it was all about statistics. Here we talk about the children as people.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jun/14/steiner-schools-children-tablets-tech">http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jun/14/steiner-schools-children-tablets-tech</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-64943493267740687872016-06-17T05:56:00.000+03:002016-06-17T05:56:02.810+03:00Two children in every class start school with an unexplained language disorder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Language is a fundamental human accomplishment. It is the foundation for <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evaluation/projects/nuffield-early-language-intervention/">literacy</a>, underpins academic and social success, and is important for developing and maintaining relationships with others.</div>
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So it is no surprise that <b>children who struggle to acquire their native language are at a distinct disadvantage when they start school</b>. <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.12573/abstract">Our research</a>, recently published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, found that two five-year-old children in every Year 1 classroom of 30 had a currently unexplained language disorder. An additional 2.34% had a language disorder that occurred as part of another developmental condition, such as autism or Down syndrome.</div>
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Children with language disorders have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/RALLIcampaign">problems with speaking and listening</a>. They tend to have limited vocabularies, leave endings off words and use very simple grammar in their sentences. They have difficulties telling coherent stories and don’t understand complex instructions. This causes many problems in the classroom.</div>
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So for example, children with language disorders will struggle to understand questions such as “which of these items will float? Why do you think so?” Even if they understand and know the answer, they may not be able to use words to explain “the ball will float because it is filled with air and is lighter than the penny.” A child with language disorder may just point and guess, or articulate a couple of key words such as “the penny sinked”.</div>
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Our study involved more than 7,000 children and 190 schools in Surrey, south of London, in order to find out how many children in England start school with a language disorder – what is known as a prevalence estimate. This may sound straightforward to work out, but it isn’t. As language is multi-faceted, we measured vocabulary, grammar and narrative skills both when the children were speaking and listening. This is the combination of tests that has informed current diagnostic criteria for <a href="http://psychcentral.com/disorders/language-disorder/">language disorder</a>.<a name='more'></a></div>
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<b>What counts as a ‘language disorder’</b></div>
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Different studies have used different cutoffs for language disorder, but the severity of the cutoff point can drastically affect the estimates of how prevalent problems are. In our study, children who scored in the bottom 7% of all pupils in the tests we gave were deemed to have a language disorder.</div>
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We also considered children’s non-verbal reasoning skills by asking them to solve problems that don’t involve words, for example, choosing the next step in a visual sequence from a selection of visually similar items.</div>
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Children with good non-verbal skills may mask problems with speaking and listening. For example, a very social child with language disorder, who is quick to learn new activities and can copy what other children are doing may not be able to follow complicated instructions such as “put your boots on after you find your coat” or may use very simple language like “him doing picture”, rather than “he is painting a picture”.</div>
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In recent years, many experts have argued that non-verbal skills should not feature in the diagnosis and decisions of how to treat children with language disorders. But many children with poorer non-verbal ability as well as language disorder can still find it difficult to meet <a href="https://www.education.ie/en/Circulars-and-Forms/Active-Circulars/sped02_05.pdf">eligibility requirements</a> for specialist speech-language therapy services.</div>
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To measure the impact of language disorder we took advantage of the fact that all children in England are assessed on the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/488745/EYFS_handbook_2016_-_FINAL.pdf">Early Years Foundation Stage Profile</a> at the end of their first year in school. To achieve a “good level of development” children must meet or exceed 12 key curriculum targets, which cover speaking, listening, reading, writing, numeracy, physical and personal, social and emotional development. Most of these items tap into children’s ability to use language in the classroom, for example to play co-operatively, share ideas and form positive relationships with others.</div>
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Overall, we found that 7.58% of children starting school had an unexplained language disorder. Our estimate included children with low non-verbal abilities, and including these children increased the prevalence of disorders by almost 50% – from 4.8% to 7.58%. But we found that low non-verbal ability did not result in more severe language impairments, more pervasive behaviour problems or more serious academic difficulties.</div>
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Children meeting our criteria for language disorder were very unlikely to meet education targets on the early years profile – only 11% of them did so. They were also more likely than their peers to display social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.</div>
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<b>Children not getting help</b></div>
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Despite this, fewer than half of the children who met criteria for language disorder had been referred to speech-language therapy services.</div>
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<b>It’s clear from our research that a greater focus is needed on oral language development in the early years</b>. Many teachers suggest that oral language needs to have the same status and protected teaching time that literacy and numeracy do. In the early years particularly, improving oral language <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evaluation/projects/nuffield-early-language-intervention/">should have positive impacts</a> on later literacy, behaviour and social development.</div>
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Of course there will still be some children who require specialist support, and our findings clearly indicate this should not depend on non-verbal ability. Instead, speech-language therapists should base decisions on eligibility for support on the child’s language and communication needs.</div>
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But children with lower non-verbal abilities may not respond to intervention in the same way that more able children do. It’s difficult to prove this, in part because children with lower non-verbal abilities are often excluded from trials of interventions that could help them. Nevertheless, that shouldn’t mean they get no help – only that we need to establish the most appropriate way of helping children with multiple developmental challenges.</div>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/two-children-in-every-class-start-school-with-an-unexplained-language-disorder-60023">https://theconversation.com/two-children-in-every-class-start-school-with-an-unexplained-language-disorder-60023</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-20348545265913267162016-06-05T18:42:00.001+03:002016-06-05T18:42:42.468+03:00It's time for teachers to look after their mental health – here's how<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To ensure students’ wellbeing, teachers need to feel confident about their own – so here are some mood-boosting tips.</span></div>
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During the safety briefing on every plane journey adults are reminded that, in case of an emergency, they are to secure their own oxygen masks before they help their children fit theirs. Why? Because it helps you look after children more effectively. The same is true of mental health, and it is something teachers should consider. After all, it is difficult to discuss good mental wellbeing in front of class if we, as adults, do not practise it ourselves.</div>
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Action to improve the mental health of teachers is certainly needed: worries about <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/teachersworkload">teacher workload</a> has seen 67% of teachers state that their <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-31921457">job had adversely impacted their mental or physical health</a>, according to a recent NASUWT survey. This has led to suggestions that <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/hand-schools-ps500m-nhs-funding-deal-mental-health-crisis-says-report">half a billion pounds should be transferred to schools</a> to help them tackle the issue.</div>
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Which is why it’s worthwhile for teachers to look at these simple ways, informed by the latest <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/pages/improve-mental-wellbeing.aspx">NHS guidelines</a>, to boost their mental health. </div>
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<b>Connect</b></div>
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<a href="https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/podcasts-and-videos/relationships-missing-piece-wellbeing-puzzle">Researchers</a> have shown the importance of having a range of healthy relationships. They suggest feeling disconnected from others is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. <a href="https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/">The Mental Health Foundation</a> states that “people who are more socially connected to family, friends and their communities are happier, physically healthier and live longer, with fewer mental health problems”.</div>
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As well as forming connections on an individual level, <a href="http://www.ntu.ac.uk/apps/news/186426-15/happiness_effect_down_to_sense_of_belonging_study_shows.aspx">evidence suggests</a> that being part of a group has similar benefits. People who identify closely with a group reported being happier.</div>
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<b>Be aware</b></div>
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We live in an age of distraction. Research suggests that we check our phones on average <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151029124647.htm">85 times a day</a>. This, among other distractions limits how much we notice what is going on around us. When world famous violinist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw">Joshua Bell</a> busked at a train station during rush-hour in Washington, of the 1,097 people who passed him, only seven stopped to listen. Just a few days before, people had paid hundreds of pounds to hear him play the same music.<a name='more'></a></div>
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While looking to the future can be motivating (that’s why <a href="http://www.innerdrive.co.uk/Release_Your_Inner_Drive/how-to-do-goal-setting-right/">psychologists encourage people to set goals</a>) thoughts about the past or future can become too dominant, and sometimes it is important to focus on the present moment.<a href="https://nau.edu/research/feature-stories/mindfulness-training-has-positive-health-benefits/">Practising this skill</a> will reduce stress levels, improve your ability to handle future stressful situations, and help you develop better relationships.</div>
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<b>Keep learning</b></div>
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Why does learning increase your mental wellbeing? As well as giving a sense of achievement, being enjoyable, and helping you cope with stressful events, a <a href="http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/5506/1/Schuller2002Learning.pdf">study into adult learning</a> (pdf) has found that “the most fundamental and pervasive benefit from learning of every kind is a growth in self-confidence”.</div>
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Learning does not have to mean formal education. It can be anything that develops your knowledge in any area. Stepping out of your comfort zone and trying something new will enhance this. The feeling of achievement new skills can give you can help your emotional wellbeing and will be motivating.</div>
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<b>Be active</b></div>
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As well as known physical benefits, exercise can help improve your mood, self-esteem and ability to deal with stress. <a href="http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/factsheet_adults/en/">The World Health Organisation</a> suggests that adults, on average, should do about 22 minutes of physical activity per day.</div>
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It’s easy to be put off <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/c25k/Pages/overcoming-the-barriers-to-exercise.aspx">when perceived barriers</a> such as feeling too tired get in the way of exercise. However, physical activity can actually help combat fatigue and doesn’t have to be organised sport (eg gym classes or walking). Furthermore, being active can encourage better mental health, especially if it helps with socialising or focusing on the present.</div>
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<b>Give to others</b></div>
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Most people have heard the phrase “It is better to give than receive”. And economics research suggests that we feel a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm-glow_giving">“warm glow”</a> when we help someone else. </div>
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The power of giving is supported by <a href="http://sonjalyubomirsky.com/files/2012/09/Lyubomirsky-Layous-20132.pdf">psychological research</a> (pdf) that found that random acts of kindness result in the giver feeling the benefit as well as the receiver. This is an interesting area for those who work in schools where, by definition, most of the job involves giving either of time, energy or advice. But giving does not have to involve money or be time-consuming. Small, almost incidental random acts of kindness can be powerful enough.</div>
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<b>A final thought</b></div>
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When it comes to mental health, some people don’t know where to begin. These five areas offer a starting point. Connecting with others, learning, giving, being physically active and improving awareness offer tangible strategies even for the most busy of lifestyles. Encouraging everyone to look after their mental health makes sense for schools, including teachers.</div>
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/jun/05/teachers-five-ways-to-boost-mental-health-mindfulness">http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/jun/05/teachers-five-ways-to-boost-mental-health-mindfulness</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-83453085565657789962016-05-26T21:35:00.000+03:002016-05-26T21:35:06.194+03:00How to beat exam stress with just the power of your brain<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Stress is part of life. Too much stress, over a sustained period, is clearly damaging, but normally we can deal effectively with short bouts. In fact, while stress may be uncomfortable, it can actually be a <a href="http://essay.utwente.nl/62412/">key motivator</a> and the right amount of it can help to boost our performance.</div>
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But there is a limit. Too much stress and the opposite tends to happen, leading our confidence and performance to decline at a rapid rate. <a href="https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/inverted-u.htm">The stress and performance relationship</a> is often seen as an upside down “U” – as you get more stressed, your performance improves until you reach an optimum point – then it declines. In reality, it is more common for it to act as a motivator and then reach a sudden and severe drop – this is something I like to refer to as falling off the “fear cliff”.</div>
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Stress can easily turn to fear and what happens when fear raises its ugly head is twofold. First, all our good intentions go out the window and <a href="http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-impact-of-stress/">we snap back into our comfort zones</a>. Second, we panic and believe that just because in the past we have made a mistake this is bound to happen again.</div>
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To avoid the “fear cliff” it is important to take a couple of steps back from the edge and think about your goals in advance. <b>Set yourself realistic targets</b>, two hours study may well be effective, but four hours is not twice as effective.</div>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabrielle-bernstein/michael-eisen-youth-wellness-network_b_1076416.html">Research</a> shows that the human brain can only effectively concentrate for about 45 minutes – after that your concentration levels dip. So make sure you plan breaks into your revision schedule. Split the day into hour-long chunks knowing that for the last 10-15 minutes of the hour you will have a break before you move on to your next topic.<a name='more'></a></div>
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<b>Taking charge</b></div>
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When it comes to deciding what to actually revise during these sessions it can seem like a good option to do the easy stuff first. You know your French better than your Spanish so it makes sense to start with that, right? Wrong! <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5937118/tackle-the-hard-stuff-first-to-make-the-most-of-the-first-hour-of-your-day">Always do the hardest task at the beginning</a> – do not warm up by doing the easy stuff.</div>
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Another way to look at this is to think about how you would eat two frogs? An odd question, but the clear answer is to eat the ugliest first. <b>Get the hard stuff out of the way while your brain is still fresh</b>, leaving the easier stuff to cool down with later in the day.</div>
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Another way to manage the fear in the run up to exam time is to<b> manage your thoughts</b>. While well-meaning advice such as “cheer up”, “think positive” or “don’t worry” doesn’t really work, there are some simple techniques that do. The “<a href="https://www.toovia.com/lists/climbing-the-attitude-ladder">attitude ladder</a>”, for example, can be helpful when it comes to managing exam stress.</div>
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Visualise a ladder with its rungs. See the lower rungs as the negative thoughts – “I can’t do this” “I don’t know how to do it”, “I wish I knew how to do it” – and the higher rungs as the positive thoughts. So the top of the ladder would be “I did it” and the second rung would be “I can do it” followed by “I will do it” and so on.</div>
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When revising or tackling exams, the aim is to be at the top of the ladder on rungs one, two or three. This is done by speaking positively to ourselves. Think about how you would talk to your best friend: you wouldn’t put them down, you’d build them up. So learn to be your own best friend when it comes to revision.</div>
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<b>Quit catastrophising</b></div>
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Ah, I hear people say, but what about when I really can’t do something? The key here is to control the controllables. At this stage of the process, there is a tendency to dwell on the “could haves” and “should haves”. The simple message is <b>work out what you can do now and then do it</b>. It might not be perfect but dreaming of retrospective perfection is not at all helpful.</div>
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People often think about the “what ifs?” in terms of the negative. Instead of thinking “what if I get a question on my worst topic”, think “what if get a question on my best subject”. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201511/9-mantras-keep-you-mentally-strong-during-tough">Think about what could go right for you</a> and it will really help.</div>
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The final thing to remember is to <b>stop “catastrophising”</b>. Failing an exam will not be a catastrophe and it doesn’t have to have a knock-on effect for the rest of your life. There is always a Plan B – or a resit. It is not the end of the world – just a bump in the road.</div>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-beat-exam-stress-with-just-the-power-of-your-brain-59552">https://theconversation.com/how-to-beat-exam-stress-with-just-the-power-of-your-brain-59552</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-32785677674808891652016-05-18T21:37:00.000+03:002016-05-18T21:37:30.714+03:00Eight ways you can help your children revise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Whoever said that your school days are the best days of your life may have been a bit of a sadist. Either that or they weren’t ever part of the British education system. It’s no secret that children living in England are some of the most tested in the world, and with pupils as young as ten said to have been “<a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/sats-pupils-tears-after-sitting-incredibly-difficult-reading-test">left sobbing</a>” after SATs tests in UK schools recently, it’s clear that exam pressure is something that starts early in the British isles.</div>
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But as much as most children (and parents) hate tests and revision, exam time is just another part of school life – and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. But the good news is that<b> there are things you can do to help the exam period stay as stress free as possible – helping to keep door slamming and tears to a minimum.</b></div>
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<b>1. Get ahead</b></div>
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In the run up to exam time, sit down together with your child and work out the best times for revision. Make a revision timetable on a big piece of paper and pin it up somewhere prominent. When it comes to revision,<a href="http://psi.sagepub.com/content/14/1/4.full.pdf+html?ijkey=Z10jaVH/60XQM&keytype=ref&siteid=sppsi">research</a> shows that little and often is better than overlong sessions. Cramming at the last minute is also counterproductive, so it’s best to start early and put in the groundwork while there is still time.</div>
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<b>2. Learn what works</b></div>
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We know that different people have <a href="http://www.journeytoexcellence.org.uk/resourcesandcpd/research/summaries/rslearningstyles.asp">different styles of learning</a>, and it is important your child is working in the way that’s right for them. Find out what motivates them and use it to your advantage – be it an end goal, such as doing well in an exam, or building a skill, such as learning a language. But don’t use bribes. This puts undue pressure on your child, and sets the wrong precedent. They should want to achieve for their own sake, not yours or because there’s a cash reward in it.</div>
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<b>3. Stay positive</b></div>
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During exam season, it can be all too easy for your child to forget that learning can actually be enjoyable. The field of <a href="http://positivepsychology.org.uk/component/content/article/3-brief-news/2-what-is-positive-psychology-.html">positive psychology</a> takes a “glass half full” approach to life, celebrating the positive rather than the negative. Looking at revision from this angle, there are numerous benefits, such as increased knowledge and working towards personal goals. It can also be an opportunity for you to support and help your child to achieve. <a href="https://www.ucy.ac.cy/nursery/documents/ThemaVdomadas/DCSF-Parental_Involvement_1.pdf">Research</a> has found that parental involvement in their child’s education has a significant positive effect, even into adulthood – so what you do now could make a big difference in the years to come.<a name='more'></a></div>
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<b>4. Get the snacks on the go</b></div>
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Put the kettle on and buy plenty of healthy snacks for your studious workers – the healthier the better. Any foods high in omega 3, such as oily fish, flax seeds and walnuts <a href="http://www.nutritionist-resource.org.uk/nutritionist-articles/six-foods-that-help-with-concentration-and-why">support concentration</a> and cognitive function, so are ideal. Foods high in antioxidants such as fruits – especially berries and tomatoes – and moderate amounts of caffeine can help concentration. Green tea and dark chocolate, which are especially rich in specific antioxidants called <a href="http://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2012/914273/">polyphenols</a>, can also support brain function. Ripe bananas or sunflower seeds are great to snack on because they naturally increase dopamine – a brain chemical involved in increasing <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/11/14/rs.increase.your.attention.span/">motivation and concentration</a>.</div>
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<b>5. Keep your thoughts to yourself</b></div>
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The concept of the “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/29/naughty-sporty-arty-why-we-must-stop-labelling-our-children_n_7373422.html">self fulfilling prophecy</a>” proposes that what we believe about a child has a habit of coming true. So if they get told they can’t do maths and are better at English, chances are this will be reflected on results day. With teenagers, however, if we say they are good at something, they will often believe the opposite. Basically, if we label, either in a positive or a negative way, in some form this will manifest in adverse outcomes. So best to just keep those thoughts to yourself in the run up to exam time.</div>
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<b>6. Work the space</b></div>
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Set aside a calm room or space for revision, and invest in some large plastic boxes to keep books and resources tidy and easily accessible. Ensure that where possible, this space is kept well organised and clutter free, because it turns out that the old “tidy desk, tidy mind” saying might actually have some truth to it. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21228167">Researchers at Princetown University</a>, have found that if our environment is cluttered, the chaos restricts our ability to focus. Clutter can also limit the brain’s ability to process information – so keep those desks clear.</div>
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<b>7. Pool your skills</b></div>
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It may be that some parents in your social group are better at science or maths than you are, so a skill swap to support your respective offspring might be the answer. Parents more knowledgeable in GCSE physics could facilitate a tutorial, while you could coach a group in English. You could even rope in other family members with expert knowledge or subject specialisms to help handle the task of revision.</div>
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<b>8. Take a break</b></div>
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<a href="http://www.tlu.ee/~arro/Happy%20Space%20EKA%202014/urban%20green_stress%20Ojala%20jt.pdf">Research</a> has shown that spending time outdoors in green spaces such as parks or woodlands decreases stress and anxiety, so try and incorporate some of the great outdoors into your child’s revision routine in the lead up to exam time.</div>
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Exercise such as a kick about in the park, a swim, run or even a karate class can all help them to let off steam while giving those young minds a break from the books.</div>
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<span style="line-height: 28.8px;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/eight-ways-you-can-help-your-children-revise-59490">https://theconversation.com/eight-ways-you-can-help-your-children-revise-59490</a></span></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-2070773330671267252016-04-26T09:57:00.000+03:002016-04-26T09:59:15.997+03:00Not just an ordinary pair of gloves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Two University of Washington undergraduates have won a $10,000 <a href="http://lemelson.mit.edu/winners/thomas-pryor-and-navid-azodi">Lemelson-MIT Student Prize</a> for <span style="background-color: #3d85c6;">gloves that can translate sign language into text or speech.</span></div>
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<b>The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize is a nationwide search for the most inventive undergraduate and graduate students</b>. This year, UW sophomores <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/navidazodi">Navid Azodi</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/twpryor">Thomas Pryor</a> — who are studying business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering, respectively — won the “Use It” undergraduate category that recognizes technology-based inventions to improve consumer devices.</div>
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<b>Their invention, “SignAloud,” is a pair of gloves that can recognize hand gestures that correspond to words and phrases in American Sign Language.</b> Each glove contains sensors that record hand position and movement and send data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a central computer. The computer looks at the gesture data through various sequential statistical regressions, similar to a neural network. If the data match a gesture, then the associated word or phrase is spoken through a speaker.</div>
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They honed their prototype in the UW <a href="http://comotion.uw.edu/makerspace">CoMotion MakerSpace</a> — a campus space that offers communal tools and equipment and opportunities for students to tinker, create and innovate. For Azodi and Pryor, that meant finding a way to translate American Sign Language into a verbal form instantaneously and in an ergonomic fashion.</div>
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“Many of the sign language translation devices already out there are not practical for everyday use. Some use video input, while others have sensors that cover the user’s entire arm or body,” said Pryor, an undergraduate researcher in the <a href="https://www.aa.washington.edu/research/csl">Composite Structures Laboratory</a> in the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics and software lead for the Husky Robotics Team.</div>
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<b>“Our gloves are lightweight, compact and worn on the hands, but ergonomic enough to use as an everyday accessory, similar to hearing aids or contact lenses,”</b> said Pryor.<br />
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The duo met in the dorms during their freshman year and discovered they both had a passion for invention and problem solving. Azodi has technical experience as a systems intern at NASA, a technology lead for UW Information Technology and a campus representative for Apple. His long history of volunteer work — which includes organizing dozens of blood drives and working with Seattle Union Gospel Mission, Northwest Harvest and Ethiopia Reads — gave motivation to build a device that would have real-world impact.</div>
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“Our purpose for developing these gloves was to provide an easy-to-use bridge between native speakers of American Sign Language and the rest of the world,” Azodi said. “The idea initially came out of our shared interest in invention and problem solving. But coupling it with our belief that communication is a fundamental human right, we set out to make it more accessible to a larger audience.”</div>
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The team received support and mentoring from Mike Clarke, who manages the CoMotion MakerSpace and met the students after one asked for help with some soldering equipment that turned out to be broken.</div>
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“We disassembled it and fixed it together while talking about their sign language translation project. I recognized from working and talking with Thomas and Navid that they were standouts and that the invention they made was really impressive,” Clarke said.</div>
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Pryor and Azodi’s first target audience is the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and those interested in learning and working with American Sign Language. But the gloves could also be commercialized for use in other fields, including medical technology to monitor stroke patients during rehabilitation, gesture control and enhanced dexterity in virtual reality.</div>
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Their “Use It” Student Prize is one of seven awarded by the Lemelson-MIT Program this year. Each winning team of undergraduates will receive $10,000, and each graduate student winner will receive $15,000. The winners of this year’s competition were selected from a diverse and highly competitive applicant pool of students from 77 colleges and universities across the country.</div>
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“This year’s Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winners have outstanding portfolios of inventive work,” said Lemelson-MIT Program faculty director Michael Cima. “Their passion for solving problems through invention is matched by their commitment to mentoring the next generation of inventors.” Students interested in applying for the 2017 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize can complete this <a href="http://lemelson.mit.edu/sign">interest form</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/04/12/uw-undergraduate-team-wins-10000-lemelson-mit-student-prize-for-gloves-that-translate-sign-language/">http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/04/12/uw-undergraduate-team-wins-10000-lemelson-mit-student-prize-for-gloves-that-translate-sign-language/</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-42283820453919100072016-04-25T21:25:00.000+03:002016-04-25T21:25:59.268+03:00Learning and Emotions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Achieving change is emotional as well as intellectual. Emotions can enhance the learning process or interfere with it.</div>
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<b>Our emotional system drives our attention, which drives learning and memory.</b> Specifically, how a person “feels” about a situation determines the amount of attention he or she devotes to it. <b>Students need to feel an emotional connection to their tasks, their peers, their teachers, and their school.</b> For an increasing number of students, school is a place where making emotional connections is more important than anything else. This is especially true for so many adolescents where a feeling of belonging almost overshadows all other desires and is often the most important factor that keeps them in school.</div>
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We generally focus on cognition when we teach and tend to ignore emotions. Yet, students must feel physically and emotionally secure before they can process information. Threats are counterproductive because they stimulate emotions that interfere with thinking skills. Examples of negative emotions are humiliation, shame, guilt, fear, and anger, which become “paralyzing experiences.” When students are anxious, their emotions interfere with thinking and disrupt the learning process. In short, <b>negative emotions are counterproductive to learning.</b></div>
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Some knowledge of how emotions and thinking are intertwined is important because in every encounter there is an emotional subtext. Within a few moments of seeing or hearing something, we react. There is a very subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, liking or disliking. The brain evolved this way for survival. In case of a dire threat, we needed an immediate response. Not much time was allowed for a rational decision. “I’ll get it or it may get me.”</div>
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The emotional brain still reacts before the thinking brain. Sensory signals from the eye or ear travel to the thalamus. The thalamus acts as a relay station for information and branches to both the neocortex, the thinking or cognitive part of the brain, and to the amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped ganglion (mass of nerve tissues) perched above the brain stem adjoining the temporal lobe. The amygdala stores our emotions, especially fear and aggression. It is our emotional memory since the time we were infants. But there is one long neuron connection from the amygdala to the gastrointestines. That is why you may have a feeling that seems like it emanates from the pit of your stomach. It does!<br />
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Branching allows the amygdala (emotions) to respond before the neocortex (thinking) because the circuit to the amygdala is smaller and shorter. This explains why we get angry before we think. This threat-response is great for escaping from predators, but not for learning. The short-term impact of this brain response includes impaired memory, weakened ability to prioritize, and greater likelihood of repeated behaviors that impinge on learning.</div>
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The brain biologically is going to pay attention and remember longer those things that have strong emotion, either negative or positive. <b>Since emotional climate is critical for learning, we need to invest the first few minutes of every class in activities that allow students to get into a positive learning state and make the lesson “enjoyable” to the learner.</b></div>
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The implication for the classroom is to add emotional hooks to what we are teaching. The art of this craft is to <b>create experiences, rather than just present information.</b> For example, a high school history class is reading about immigration to the country in the early part of the 20th century. The textbook contains a graph showing great numbers coming from Eastern Europe. A simulation could give students some idea of what the experience was like for these people, who were mostly very poor, and who traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on ships as steerage. A group of students huddles sitting on the floor in one corner of the classroom. Crowded together, they move their upper bodies back and forth to simulate not only the movement of the ship but also how people were seasick for much of the voyage. No wonder they were elated to see the Statue of Liberty in the calmer waters of New York Harbor! <b>When we add emotion to learning experiences to make them more meaningful and exciting, the brain deems the information more important, and retention is increased.</b></div>
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The human brain has a built-in attention preference for certain stimuli, such as novelty and pleasure. <b>We can take advantage of the brain’s preference for novelty by eliciting states of curiosity, oddity, intrigue, suspense, anticipation, awe, confusion, surprise, and challenge</b>. We can increase pleasure by creating states of anticipation, hope, security, fun, acceptance, success, and satisfaction.</div>
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Knowing that we respond emotionally when fear and anxiety are involved should always be a classroom consideration. If a student feels helpless or incompetent, anxiety sets in and impedes learning. Conversely, when students are encouraged, empowered, and challenged without coercion or fear of failure, they feel the likelihood of becoming more competent.</div>
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<b>To move towards competence, students need to learn to accept feedback, whether positive or negative, without any emotional connotation or judgment. </b>They need to learn to treat failure as an opportunity, not a disaster. Failure gives information one would not otherwise have. The approach is to see failure as a guide and not allow an emotional rush to swamp them. But we have done a funny thing with failure. Instead of keeping it as a lookout, we have too often given it the helm. Failure is a natural part of any learning. In reality, the only time we fail is when we do not get up, continue, or persevere.</div>
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<b>You cannot learn and be perfect at the same time</b> is a mantra I continually used with my students. This phenomenon can be observed by watching very young children before they put on their belief systems. They take one shaky step and fall down; they take another step and plop. Without emotional freight, babies know instinctively that failure is a signal to try another way. If failure is feared, learning will never be optimal. If failure is used as a guide, not an accuser, success will be swifter.</div>
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<a href="http://gazette.teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/marvin-marshall/learning-and-emotions/2/">http://gazette.teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/marvin-marshall/learning-and-emotions/2/</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6004582573259206354.post-19369457695622842512016-04-22T09:27:00.000+03:002016-04-22T09:27:09.854+03:00How to teach … immigration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Educating students about the UK’s diverse mix of cultures promotes inclusion and tolerance. Take your pick of our resources.</span></div>
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London is made up of more than 270 nationalities with more than <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/270-nationalities-and-300-different-languages-how-a-united-nations-of-workers-is-driving-london-forward-6572417.html">300 languages now spoken in the capital’s schools</a>, so what does it really mean to be British?</div>
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Teaching students about the UK’s diverse population is a good way to promote inclusion and tolerance in class, and there are plenty of ideas on how to tackle the topic of immigration on the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/">Guardian Teacher Network</a>.</div>
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A good place to start is by exploring the history of immigration and emigration to and from Britain with this <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18332/?CMP=edi_44">lesson plan</a> by <a href="https://www.teachingresourcessupport.com/">Teaching Resources Support</a>, suitable for key stage 3 students. Another <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18259/?CMP=edi_44">lesson</a> by <a href="https://www.truetube.co.uk/">TrueTube</a> asks what makes Britain British? <b>Students could work in groups to create a timeline from the 1st century to the present day, showing how Britain has been a multi-ethnic country for most of recorded history.</b></div>
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An accompanying <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18340/?CMP=edi_44">lesson plan</a> discusses the benefits and challenges of living in a multicultural society. <b>Students could create a word bank of terms such as segregation, integration, diversity, prejudice, identity, isolation, extremism and discrimination.</b></div>
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<b>The lesson includes instructions for a fun game called Turnabout, which tests debating skills.</b> You’ll need a few prepared statements for and against immigration such as: “We should all be free to live where we choose”, “People should live and work in the country where they were born”, and “Multiculturalism is good for Britain”. Students must present their argument from one point of view until a bell sounds, signalling them to change their stance.</div>
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<b>Working in groups, you could ask students to explore why people migrate</b> using these three lessons from the <a href="http://www.geography.org.uk/">Geographical Association</a>. They are for secondary students and <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18360/?CMP=edi_44">cover migration</a>, <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18359/?CMP=edi_44">migration within the EU</a> and <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18361/?CMP=edi_44">the case of refugees and asylum seekers</a>. Get students to think about any emotions you might have arriving in a new country. What are the benefits of immigration? Are there any challenges that might have to be dealt with in the communities where immigrants live?<a name='more'></a></div>
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Students could use these ideas in <b>a piece of persuasive writing</b>, for example, a letter to the prime minister arguing why it is a good thing to allow people to migrate to the UK to work. Or they could write <b>a postcard</b> from an immigrant to a friend back home sharing their feelings about living and working in a new country.</div>
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Immigration has fuelled political and public debate, as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/16/john-major-attacks-ukip-calls-britain-remain-eu">opposing views on unrestricted migration within Europe put Britain’s future in the EU under the spotlight</a>, so why not explore this subject by looking at the news?<b> Get students</b> <b>to look at recent research </b>from <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/">University College London</a>, which found that European migrants contributed £20bn to the UK economy between 2000 and 2011, with an <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18330/?CMP=edi_44">article</a> by <a href="http://theday.co.uk/">The Day</a>.</div>
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<b>Ask students to identify some of the main arguments for and against immigration</b> in the article. Can they separate these by their economic and social impact? Other related articles examine the <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/12875/?CMP=edi_44">dramatic rise of Ukip</a> and <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/16466/?CMP=edi_44">immigration in Iceland</a>.</div>
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<b>Another good activity is to examine how news relating to immigration is presented in the media.</b> Working in groups, ask students to gather a selection of headlines about immigration. How do they vary in tone? Using <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/migration-statistics-quarterly-report/august-2014/index.html">figures from the Office for National Statistics</a>, challenge half the class to write an article in favour of immigration, and the other half to write an article that’s against. Compare how much empathy for the people is shown in different articles. You’ll find plenty of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/immigration">material to stimulate discussion here</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/13955/?CMP=edi_44">Experiences of immigration to the UK</a> is a fabulous resource by the <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/">National Archives</a>, suitable for all ages. It looks at the years between 1948 and 1970 when nearly 500,000 people left their homes in the West Indies to live in Britain. The documents provide a glimpse of what their life was like. <b>Ask students to write a list of questions they would have asked one of these people, then role play the answers, or design a leaflet explaining what a person from another part of the world might expect when they arrive in Britain.</b></div>
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The <a href="http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/london-wall/">Museum of London</a> has created a <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/13990/?CMP=edi_44">pocket history resource</a> for secondary students, which explores how the city has become one of the most culturally diverse in the world. Are students surprised by this? How does this compare with the area in which they live?<b> The resource includes two quizzes that examine students’ knowledge and assumptions about refugees, asylum seekers and being British.</b></div>
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Finally, <b>encourage primary children to celebrate diversity</b> with these worksheets –<a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18315/?CMP=edi_44">We are all different</a> and <a href="http://teachers.theguardian.com/teacher-resources/18314/?CMP=edi_44">New boy in school</a> – by <a href="http://www.seemeresources.com/">Seeme Resources</a>. What do they like or dislike about being in a new place? Share any experiences of moving house or starting a new school. As a homework activity, students could find out if they have friends or family who have moved to Britain. Where did they come from and why? The information could be presented in an assembly. A display could also be created on the theme of what Britain has gained from immigrants in terms of music, food, literature, fashion, new customs and pastimes.</div>
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/nov/24/how-to-teach-immigration">http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/nov/24/how-to-teach-immigration</a></div>
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Natasha Papangelishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04734531375508764864noreply@blogger.com