The Morning Message in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidelines for Best Practices

The Morning Message is a commonly implemented activity in early childhood settings, appearing as a part of the daily schedule in many classrooms. However, there is limited research on what are the most effective ways to use the Morning Message to promote print awareness. The goal of this paper is to present suggested guidelines for implementing the Morning Message in early childhood classrooms based on print related research. Ten guidelines for supporting effective implementation of the Morning Message are discussed.     

论益希卓玛《清晨》的地域空间书写

地域空间书写是西部少数民族文学中一个极为重要的创作特征。从藏族女作家益希卓玛的长篇儿童小说《清晨》,可看到绚丽多彩的草原风光、鲜活的藏族语言、具有现代气息的藏族人物、理想状态下的民族情怀等带有藏族风情的地域空间文化特征,作品通过对西部草原、文化、情感、意识等的空间书写,揭示了民族生活的普遍性意义,构建了富有民族本性的精神家园。     

浅析幼儿前书写活动对幼儿书写技能的影响

《幼儿园教育指导纲要（试行）》（以下简称《纲要》）指出：“利用网书和绘画,引发幼儿对阅读和书写的兴趣,培养前阅读和前书写技能。”关于儿童早期读写能力发展的大多研究都指出了儿童早期阅读的重要性,以及创造阅读环境、亲子阅读来促进儿童阅读能力的发展。     

Assessment of Children's Social Skills: Recent Developments,Best Practices,and New Directions

This article provides an overview of some of the recent developments in assessing social skills of children and youth, as well as a discussion of "best practices" in conducting assessment and linking assessment to effective intervention. Naturalistic behavioral observation and behavior rating scales are proposed as the 2 assessment methods that should be considered primary or "first-line" choices for social skills assessment. A review of some specific tools that have been developed within these 2 assessment methods is provided. Interviewing and sociometric techniques, although not necessarily primary methods of assessment for children's social skills, sometimes may be an important part of an assessment design, or "second-line" choices. Projective-expressive techniques or objective self-report instruments for assessing children's social skills sometimes may help illuminate the overall assessment results but should never be used as primary assessment methods for social skills; thus, these methods are considered "third-line" methods for this purpose. Six best-practices recommendations, all of which are supported by previous empirical research, are offered for improving social skills assessment efforts. Finally, conclusions are drawn regarding the current state of the art in social skills assessment, as well as implications for future directions in this area. Clearly, the challenge facing researchers and practitioners who are concerned with this area will be to make assessment "functional" and link it to intervention more effectively.     

以技能比赛促进技能教学的模式研究

技能教学是高等职业院校教学的根本。当前一些高等职业院校在技能比赛上取得了一定成绩,但是技能比赛在提高技能教学质量方面还有待探讨。以目前重庆市内职业技术学院技能比赛与技能教学相结合的现状为例,就如何更好的以技能比赛来促进高等职业院校技能教学的发展,实现技能比赛与技能教学的良好结合进行了一定的探讨。     

Teaching Practices that Promote Motor Skills in Early Childhood Settings

Early childhood educators, especially those in preschool centers, are often expected to design and implement movement programs. However, these individuals may not have been taught these skills during their education. The purpose of this study was to determine if early childhood majors could successfully be taught to implement a mastery climate instructional approach to promote motor skill development to preschool-age children. Twenty undergraduate Early Childhood Education majors, who completed a Motor Development Across the School Years course, designed and implemented a movement program to develop preschoolers’ locomotor and object control skills. Fourteen preschoolers participated in an 11-week movement program. Preschoolers’ motor performance was assessed with the Test of Gross Motor Development—2nd Edition prior to and following the intervention. Results indicate significant improvements in total performance (p < .05) and locomotor skills (p = .037). Findings indicate that with guidance and training, early childhood majors can effectively design and implement a mastery-based movement program that enhances motor skill competence. The findings also demonstrate the need and value for early childhood majors to receive training in the design and implementation of movement programs. This paper provides a conceptual framework and practical recommendations to assist teachers and educators with implementing a mastery climate movement programs.     

Writing and Reading Subjects: Fixing and Unfixing Identity through Close Literary Practices

For a number of years, Rebecca Luce‐Kapler and Dennis Sumara have been investigating the ways in which literary practices of close reading can help change how we think and how we remember. They have also considered how such practices might help make us more critical of normative representations of remembered experience. More recently, they have been joined by Claire Robson, who works with and investigates memoir writing. In 2009, Robson and Sumara were joined by their six older lesbian research participants at a conference held at the University of British Columbia entitled ‘Queerly Canadian: Changing Narratives’. The six women performed extracts from memoirs they had written as part of the research data and joined the researchers in offering theories and insights about the writing processes in which the group had engaged. That presentation and this paper represent the evolution of a two‐year collaboration between these researchers and the six women, who are listed as co‐authors on both the presentation and this paper.     

Helping Student Develop Argumentative Writing Skills through Rich Feature Analysis

The primary concern of this paper is to address the issue of discrepancies between teachers intuitively defined stronger and weaker student argumentative writings.There exists a problem in Chinese university EFL writing classrooms that the teachers’remarks on student compositions are often found to be rather vague or even unhelpful.Remarks such as Needs further amendment and You wrote just like the way you speak cannot supply students with explicit reasons of what is really needed for their writing improvement.Affirming the dialectal view on text-context relationship held by Systemic Functional Grammar(SFG),the theoretical propositions of Rich Feature Analysis(Barton,2004) are contended to a sound solution to the problem proposed by this paper.To demonstrate its feasibility,the paper followed the gist of Rich Feature Analysis to analyze a corpus of four argumentative writings on same topics.The paper consolidates "the spoken-written continuum"(Barton,2004,p.64),and concludes stronger argumentative writings should own at least one of the following properties: product-like,condensed,recursive,coherent,distanced,and open to scrutiny.The absence of lexical density and nominalization constitutes the main reason for writing deficiencies by tertiary students.The implications for learning the register of schooling are discussed.     

以技能比赛促进技能教学的模式研究

技能教学是高等职业院校教学的根本.当前一些高等职业院校在技能比赛上取得了一定成绩,但是技能比赛在提高技能教学质量方面还有待探讨.以目前重庆市内职业技术学院技能比赛与技能教学相结合的现状为例,就如何更好的以技能比赛来促进高等职业院校技能教学的发展,实现技能比赛与技能教学的良好结合进行了一定的探讨.     

Best Practices for an Interdisciplinary Team-Taught Course

In the interdisciplinary course, Aging to Infancy: A Life Course Retrospective, the Institute of Medicine's recommendations for education were embraced through the role modeling provided by faculty both across and between disciplines. Over the five years since its creation, the course has introduced students to aging in a positive manner, establishing the foundation for higher level courses within each program's curriculum. The course also introduces students to the interdisciplinary healthcare team and reinforces the need for practitioners who value the interdisciplinary approach and expect it in their place of work. These are best practices for an interdisciplinary course.     

Interdisciplinary Best Practices for Adapted Physical Activity

ABSTRACT

This article provides an introduction to the literature on interdisciplinary research. It then draws lessons from that literature for the field of adapted physical activity. It is argued that adapted physical activity should be a self-consciously interdisciplinary field. It should insist that research be performed according to recognized interdisciplinary and disciplinary methodologies. Each section of the article addresses an important aspect of the literature on interdisciplinary research and closes with a recommendation for adapted physical activity.     

Building Inclusive Language Classroom Spaces through Multilingual Writing Practices for Newly-Arrived Students in Norway

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an action research project that aimed to increase opportunities for multilingual literacy engagement and identity investment for newly-arrived immigrant students in Norway. A language teacher and a researcher jointly developed a cross-curricular, multilingual module focusing on identity texts written in three languages: English, Norwegian, and each student's home language. Fourteen adolescent students speaking 15 different home languages participated. To assess the effectiveness of the multilingual pedagogical practices, the data collected included a language use questionnaire, student reflection logs, students’ identity texts, lesson plans, and the teacher's notes and reflections. The results suggest that explicit emphasis on including all languages in students’ linguistic repertories can help build inclusive classroom spaces and foster learners’ multilingual identities.     

Best Practices for Teaching Those Afraid in Water

The primary purpose of this study is to share what has been found to work well in professional practice based on a series of exploratory scholarly studies as well as information gathered informally from students and through specialized aquatic workshops, conferences and seminars. Research has shown that there is an existing population of at-risk swimmers, and, therefore, it is inevitable that many aquatic professionals will encounter individuals in need of a specialized approach to learning. The concept of systematic desensitization holds great promise and, when refined, can be introduced to educators to augment existing swimming instruction and eventually contribute to the extinction of preventable drowning.     

Training Advanced Writing Skills: The Case for Deliberate Practice

The development of advanced writing skills has been neglected in schools of the United States, with even some college graduates lacking the level of ability required in the workplace (National Commission on Writing, 2003 National Commission on Writing. April 2003. The neglected “R”: The need for a writing revolution April, Retrieved December 1, 2008, from http://www.writingcommission.org/prod_downloads/writingcom/neglectedr.pdf [Google Scholar], 2004 National Commission on Writing. September 2004. Writing: A ticket to work… or a ticket out: A survey of business leaders September, Retrieved December 1, 2008, from http://www.writingcommission.org/prod_downloads/writingcom/writing-ticket-to-work.pdf [Google Scholar]). The core problem, we argue, is an insufficient degree of appropriate task practice distributed throughout the secondary and higher education curriculum. We draw on the power law of skill acquisition, the role of deliberate practice in expert performance, and the uniquely intensive demands that advanced written composition place on working memory to make this case. A major impediment to assigning enough writing tasks is the time and effort involved in grading papers to provide feedback. We close by considering possible solutions to the grading problem.     

Developing Successful Readers: Building Early Comprehension Skills through Television Viewing and Listening

Developing the ability to read is a complex process involving a variety of skills, including both basic language skills and language comprehension skills. Although a balanced reading program would include the development of basic language and comprehension skills, comprehension has often been overlooked in early reading instruction. In this article, we examine recent research findings on how comprehension skills develop in young children and discuss the implications of those findings for comprehension assessment and interventions.     

Early childhood teaching manuals: Guidelines for selection

More and more early childhood teaching manuals and guides are appearing all the time. It is difficult to look at any teaching magazine without finding reviews and advertisements for guides which promise to help us in our work with children.Diane E. Levin is Assistant Professor of Education at Wheelock College in Boston.     

Best Practices for Preschool Music Education: Supporting Music-Making Throughout the Day

Early Childhood Education Journal - Active engagement in music has numerous academic and social benefits for young children and music-making is included in many early childhood standards and...