Use of Writing with Symbols 2000 Software to Facilitate Emergent Literacy Development

This paper outlines the use of the Writing with Symbols 2000 software to facilitate emergent literacy development. The program’s use of pictures incorporated with text has great potential to help young children with and without disabilities acquire fundamental literacy concepts about print, phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, vocabulary development, and comprehension. The flexibility and features of the software allow early childhood professionals to create a variety of early literacy tools for the classroom, including worksheets, storybooks, and interactive activities.     

Linking extreme precocity and adult eminence: a study of eight prodigies at international chess

Do prodigies have extraordinary innate talent or do they just start very early and get much practice? Why do relatively few become eminent as adults? Is it because early and later success often need somewhat different abilities and gatekeepers rule? International chess is a good test domain for both issues because it has objective longitudinal data, unvarying task requirements, and no glass ceiling. Eight prodigies were studied. Some did not start chess particularly young but quickly reached high performance levels. Five already are very eminent, one becoming the youngest‐ever world champion at age 18. Chess prodigies probably do have great natural talent. Prodigies in domains with certain characteristics may tend to become eminent if they persist.     

Student performance and attitudes using personalized mathematics instruction

This study investigated the effects of personalized instruction on the achievement and attitudes of Taiwanese students on two-step mathematics word problems. A total of 136 fourth-graders in a Taiwanese public school participated in the study. Subjects initially completed a Student Survey on which they chose their favorite foods, sports, stores, classmates, and other selections. The most popular items were then used to create personalized math word problems for the pretest, personalized instructional program, and posttest. Subjects were blocked by ability based on their pretest scores and were randomly assigned within ability levels to either a personalized or nonpersonalized version of the print-based instructional program. After finishing the program, subjects completed a student attitude survey and the posttest. A repeated-measures univariate analysis of variance revealed that subjects in the personalized treatment made significantly greater pretest-to-posttest gains than those in the nonpersonalized treatment. Subjects also performed significantly better on the personalized pretest and posttest problems than on the nonpersonalized problems. Personalized subjects and higher-ability students both had significantly more positive attitudes toward the instructional program than did their nonpersonalized and lower-ability counterparts. This research was conducted while he was a doctoral student at Arizona State University.     

Effect of early experience and age on initial responsiveness ofTilapia mossambica fry to a maternal model

Fry of the maternal mouth brooding fishTilapia mossambica were tested for the effects of (1) rearing and (2) increasing age on initial responsiveness to a gray disk covered with small black pits that served as a maternal model. In the first experiment, the eggs were removed from their mother’s mouth shortly after spawning, hatched, and the fry raised in groups, singly in complete visual isolation, or by the mother (control) until testing. When free swimming, the fry were tested individually for responsiveness to the model. High levels of responsiveness were exhibited by all fry regardless of rearing experience, indicating that responsiveness to the mother’s mouth is fully developed at birth and needs no previous social experience for its expression. In the second experiment, naive group-reared fry were tested individually for initial responsiveness to the model at 13, 16, 20, or 26 days postspawning. It was found that naive fry were strongly attracted to the model at 13 and 16 days of age but were neutral or actively avoiding it at 26 days of age. This decline is almost identical to the decline in responsiveness of normally reared fry toward their actual mother.     

Patterns of parental reaction to student grades

Factor analysis of questionnaire responses produced by over 6,000 individuals revealed parental reactions to good and bad grades grouped themselves into five categories: (1) Grades are important to me; bad ones lead to negative consequences; (2) Good grades are important to me, but I will support you regardless of grade; (3) Bad grades make me mad; (4) Do your best, but there is more to life than grades; and (5) Grades are important; you will know how I feel on the basis of a joking comment. When these patterns were related to reports of specific student actions in college, such as getting good grades, dropping a course, or cheating on an examination, results indicated only a few significant negative correlations, and only for students whose parents reacted to bad grades in a negative emotional way; i.e., in terms of categories 1 and 3. More benign reactions - categories 2, 4, and 5 - did not correlate either positively or negatively with student actions or grades. Results were taken to suggest that parental reactions to grades are not only attempts at changing student behavior but also may be viewed as emotional responses expressing personal needs and values.     

Using VoiceThread to Create Meaningful Receptive and Expressive Learning Activities for Young Children

Development of receptive and expressive language skills is an important foundational skill in early childhood education. Recently, early childhood education professionals have begun using Web-based technology to assist in developing these skills. One Web-based technology that holds potential to support children’s learning is VoiceThread which has unique features that support Universal Design for Learning. This paper provides practical recommendations for use of VoiceThread in meaningful learning activities that can easily be implemented. A step-by-step guide is presented to create and use VoiceThread.     

MOTHER

＂M＂is for the million things she gave me ,
＂O＂means only she ＇s growing old,
＂T＂is for the tears she shed to save me ,
＂H＂is for her heart of purest gold,