Childhood Education articles from March 1995

Childhood Education archives from March 1995

Death of a friend.
March 22, 1995... On September 23, 1989, Tommy died, just two weeks before his seventh birthday. Not quite a year before, in December, Tommy told a teacher that he did not feel well. Then, after Christmas, the news came that he was in the Oakland Children's...

Understanding others through stories.
March 22, 1995... Author's note: Pseudonyms have been substituted for actual names of persons and places. I began to use stories and other forms of narrative three years ago in the methodology courses I was teaching at Tuskegee University. I drew inspiration...

Teaching children with sight about Braille.
March 22, 1995... By teaching Braille to sighted children, teachers can propagate a more positive view of blind-children who learn about Braille realize its importance as a means of communication in the blind community. As Kevin, a sighted 3rd-grader who had...

Projects in the early years.
March 22, 1995... A greater number of early educators are attempting to provide programs that are sensitive to children's needs. This trend is in response to position statements by leading education organizations concerning appropriate practices (Bredekamp, 1987;...

Jump rope rhymes ... in the classroom?
March 22, 1995... Bubble gum, bubble gum, chew and blow. Bubble gum, bubble gum, scrape your toe. Bubble gum, bubble gum, tastes so sweet. Get that bubble gum off your feet! (Cole, 1989, p. 38) Many adults have cherished memories of the jump rope rhymes and...

Encouraging young children's thinking skills with Logo. (Logo computer language)
March 22, 1995... As problem solving becomes more integral to mathematics curricula, educators have increasingly focused on thinking skills associated with the process. In particular, they are turning their attention to the development of higher order thinking...

An interview with Professor Amita Verma: a leader in early childhood education in India. (Interview)
March 22, 1995... Amita Verma is one of the most renowned leaders and pioneers of early childhood education in modern India. A pioneer in the field, her contributions span 40 years. She has built a premier institution, the Department of Human Development and...

Classroom idea-sparkers.
March 22, 1995... REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE Here is a collection of ideas to help students become more ecologically aware and help save our planet. Tally Your Garbage Our first Idea-Sparker was submitted by Sudha Swaminathan, a doctoral student at the State...

Readiness for school or for school culture?
March 22, 1995... In the Fall 1993 "Issues in Education" column, Leigh O'Brien questioned the meaning of school readiness (National Education Goals Panel, 1991). O'Brien argued that instead of expecting the child to be ready for school, the schools should be ready...

Children take learning into their own hands.
March 22, 1995... Although the first children's museums in the United States were established around the turn of the century, they did not begin to reach their full potential until the mid-1970s. Before that time, just a handful of children's museums were...

Collecting keeps your mind busy!
March 22, 1995... When asked why she needed one more rock to add to her already large collection, an 8-year-old responded, "Collecting keeps your mind busy!" Her reply prompted me to think about all of the things children and adults collect and I began to explore...

How to Get Your Teaching Ideas Published: A Writer's Guide to Educational Publishing.
March 22, 1995... Stangl has written 22 books and more than 200 magazine articles related to education and has taught classes from kindergarten through college. In this book, she shares her knowledge to educate and inspire other teachers and does so using a...

Early Childhood Curriculum: Developmental Bases for Learning and Teaching.
March 22, 1995... Many issues surround early childhood curriculum and practices that support developmental learning and appropriate teaching. Wortham addresses the challenge of writing about these issues, while supporting teachers as decision-makers. Wortham...

Investigating Mathematics With Young Children.
March 22, 1995... The author presents both a theoretical background for the need to change mathematical instruction for young children and an outstanding collection of activities with which to support this change. Althouse has divided the book into two major...

When Children Write: Critical Revisions of the Writing Workshop.
March 22, 1995... Lensmire, an Assistant Professor of Education at Washington University, spent a year teaching writing to public school 3rd-graders. He hoped to experience a writer's workshop as a teacher/researcher and to help children "... write themselves on...

Cooperative Learning and Strategies for Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity in the Classroom.
March 22, 1995... Rapidly changing demographics, low student achievement and increasing diversity in the classroom pose daunting challenges to educators. This book, the first in a series entitled Children, Youth, & Change: Sociocultural Perspectives, is based on...

Caregiver Stability and Toddlers' Attachment-Related Behavior Towards Caregivers in Day Care.
March 22, 1995... Increased attachment to a stable caregiver is a significant aspect of infant development. Some empirical evidence supports a relationship between the establishment of attachment behaviors and a child's development in cognitive, social and...

Infants' Sensory Abilities: Caregiving Implications and Recommendations.
March 22, 1995... This article provides an excellent developmental basis for specific caregiver behaviors in formal out-of-home infant care settings. The author strongly asserts that infants actively seek, and respond to, sensory information from their...

The Effect of Situation Familiarity on the Establishment of Co-References Between Mother and Infant.
March 22, 1995... The authors describe their study of 12 mother-infant dyads, in which 5- and 9-month-old infants played with both familiar and unfamiliar toys. The dyads were filmed in their infant care centers with the infants seated in highchairs and the...

Effects of A School for Pregnant Studies on the Incidence of Low Birth-Weight Deliveries.
March 22, 1995... To evaluate the effects of an alternative public school for pregnant teenagers in New Haven, Connecticut, the authors reviewed medical and school records of 230 adolescent mothers. Nearly 75 percent of the young women who were enrolled in the...

Psychosocial, Behavioral and Developmental Characteristics of Toddlers Prenatally Exposed to Cocaine.
March 22, 1995... The authors identified two groups of foster care children between the ages of 1 and 4. One group was prenatally exposed to cocaine and the other group was not. The authors visited foster care settings to collect data concerning the children's...

Child in the Family: Developing Child Series.
March 22, 1995... This video presents an extensive and varied review of family theory and research. It addresses such topics as cultural influences on families, the functions of families, types of families, sources of family stress, functional and dysfunctional...

Parents, Kids and Books: The Joys of Reading Together.
March 22, 1995... A bedtime-story-soothing intimacy characterizes this enticement to parents to read to their children. The producers combine segments of The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco, with wise words from Polacco and clear, but gentle, instruction from William...

Toys.
March 22, 1995... This resplendent Canadian Broadcasting production provides an impressively extensive and thoroughly researched examination of toys and their role in children's development. Its historical perspective stretches from Froebel to Montessori to Papert...

Traits of A Healthy Family.
March 22, 1995... In this thought-provoking and entertaining video, syndicated columnist Dolores Curran shares the findings from her survey of 500 family professionals who were given a list of 56 traits and asked to check the 15 that they most commonly found in...

Excellent Beginnings: Helping Schools Reach Families.
March 22, 1995... This video profiles three schools that were awarded grants as part of a project called Excellent Beginnings, an initiative funded by the Plan for Social Excellence, Inc. Selected on the basis of their unique plans to better serve their students'...

How Play and Work Are Organized in a Kindergarten Classroom.
March 22, 1995... Using a structuralist ethnographic approach, this study describes the symbolic texts, stories, myths and rituals of one kindergarten classroom, especially as they influence children's play and work in that classroom. Analysis of the early morning...

Childrens' Understanding of Academic Tasks: Work, Play, or Learning.
March 22, 1995... This study explores play, work, and learning dimensions from the inside-out, investigating children's understanding of the learning purpose of teacher-designated work and play in five different kindergarten classrooms and one...

Quality of the Literacy Environment in Day Care and Children's Development.
March 22, 1995... This study of the literacy environment in 30 day care centers provides another contextual framework for viewing children's development and learning. Using a reliable standardized instrument (ECERS), the researchers rated each classroom on quality...

Adult Interactive Strategies and the Spontaneous Comments of Preschoolers During Joint Storybook Readings.
March 22, 1995... Adult interaction styles that foster literacy and language development are addressed in this study, in which three groups of preschoolers were assigned randomly to conditions of adult/individual child story reading: story with adult comments,...

Toddlers and Preschoolers Drawing With Primary and Standard Markers, Pencils and Crayons.
March 22, 1995... In this study of another aspect of literacy development, gaining the ability to use drawing/writing instruments, both the child's performance and the parent's practices at home were assessed. Twenty children, ranging from age 2 to 4, were given a...

Parent and Student Views of Multiage Classrooms.
March 22, 1995... The attitudes of parents and students regarding participation in one of the new ideas, multiage grouping in the classroom context, are explored in this study. During the first year of implementing a primary multiage unit, 168 children and their...

Portfolio Implementation: What About R for Realistic?
March 22, 1995... Another innovative classroom practice is portfolio assessment. Although the concept has been embraced by many teachers, this study shows how the actual implementation of a literacy-related portfolio may differ if it is compiled by teachers who...