Forget Mozart CDs and Baby Einstein videos, Boston’s mayor is urging parents to teach preschool children the old-fashioned way: by talking, reading, and playing with them.

Hoping to turn a new page on early-childhood education in Boston, Mayor Thomas M. Menino declared today as “Talk, Read, Play Day” in conjunction with Boston public schools’ Countdown to Kindergarten program and ReadBoston.

The day is part of a new public awareness campaign focused on the role of parents and their responsibility as their child’s “first teacher,” from birth until age 5.

The program’s three components of interaction meld to give babies and toddlers essential skills. Talking, reading, and playing help young children develop longer attention spans, larger vocabularies, and proper social interactions as well as foster creativity, imagination, and problem-solving skills, Menino said.

“Talk, Read, Play” is part of Thrive in 5, Boston’s new 10-year plan, spearheaded by Menino and the United Way, to ensure Boston children are prepared for educational success.

The program, implemented in March after two years of planning and $3.25 million in funding from the city, the United Way, and area hospitals, highlights the importance of a child’s first five years in five areas of growth: language development, cognition and general knowledge, approaches to learning, social and emotional development, and physical and motor development.

Source: Boston Globe, United States
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/11/12/mayor_to_parents_read_to_children/

And here’s the proof: Use the JUMP program and enjoy the unaccustomed taste of success

Melissa Marsh is a special education co-ordinator at Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw School in Port Hardy, at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Its students include some of the most challenged kids in Canada. Many struggle with learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities and behaviour problems. The community has its share of social issues, and parental involvement is low.

For kids like these, academic failure is depressingly familiar. “The shutdown mode comes extremely quickly,” Ms. Marsh says. But now, kids at this school are experiencing the unaccustomed taste of success in a subject that far more advantaged kids have grown to dread - math.

The JUMP program, pioneered by Toronto mathematician John Mighton, breaks almost every rule of current math pedagogy. It does not depend on the “discovery” method, group work or real-life examples. It is highly structured, relies on a great deal of direct instruction, repetition and reinforcement, and proceeds in small, incremental steps.

It also works.

“Repetition is crucial for many of our students,” says Wayne Peterson, the principal. He adds, “Your regular math texts have too much reading.” JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) is structured so that every kid can solve the problems, one small step at a time. That builds their confidence and self-esteem, and keeps them motivated and engaged. It can get even low achievers excited about math. Teachers say their math skills dramatically improve - and so does their behaviour, their levels of engagement and their attitude.

“The kids aren’t fighting me tooth and nail any more,” says Ms. Marsh. “They know what’s expected. They have the steps set out in front of them and they know they are going to be able to achieve all of those steps. The kids in my special education class go, ‘Whoo-hoo! I did the bonus question and I got it right!’ One Grade 7 student has never been able to sit in math class without completely disrupting it. JUMP has changed that. Today, he participates in class discussion and does the written work by himself.”

The JUMP program is now being used in more than a dozen first nations schools in B.C., as well as in many regular schools in the Vancouver area. “We found that the regular textbook way wasn’t reaching all the kids,” says Christine Hammond, head teacher of N’Kwala School, near Merit. The program is especially effective with her ESL students, because they don’t have to wade through oceans of text. One floundering Innu boy, for example, quickly became a math whiz. The kids at her small band school are now performing at the regional average in math, she says. JUMP is also effective with adult learners, some of whom, after a lifetime of frustration, are getting their GEDs.

Liz Barrett is a South Africa-born educator who travels the province doing outreach and teacher support in first nations schools. For her, proficiency in math is a social justice issue. “These kids are falling by the wayside, and that’s unacceptable. If your students aren’t getting a Grade 12, the door is closed to them.” She discovered the JUMP program four years ago, when she heard Mr. Mighton lecture in B.C., and became a passionate advocate. She’s now helping to launch a JUMP pilot program in South Africa.

Mr. Mighton, 52, is an unusual man. As well as being a mathematician (currently in residence at Toronto’s Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences), he is one of Canada’s best playwrights. He got interested in math education because he thinks the state of numeracy in Canada is a disaster. Judging by the evidence, he’s right. In Ontario, for example, a third of community college students are in danger of failing first-year math. Mr. Mighton also believes we must reverse the “culture of failure” that permeates math education. “There’s no reason the vast majority of kids can’t learn math.”

Ten years ago, Mr. Mighton began tutoring inner-city Toronto kids in his apartment, with great success. The next task was to determine whether JUMP would scale up. He began working to persuade school boards, a far tougher task than he expected. But the initial results have been good. One British inner-city school district, in London, agreed to try it. At the start, the kids were performing an average of two years below the national level in math. After one year of JUMP, 60 per cent of them passed the national exams.

JUMP works for middle-class kids, too. One Toronto teacher used it with her Grade 5 kids, whose math skills at the start of the year ranged from Grade 3 to Grade 7. By the end of the year, every student signed up for the Pythagoras competition, which is written only by top students. Fifteen out of the 17 achieved distinction.

The JUMP program is founded on observation, evidence, teacher feedback, continuous improvement and rigour, combined with new research findings on how the brain learns. By contrast, most programs taught in school are not. For the past couple of decades, both math and reading instruction have been an ideological battlefield that pits the “progressives” - educators who favour good things such as discovery and creativity - against the traditionalists, who favour bad things such as repetition and direct instruction. The progressives have had the upper hand, which is one reason why JUMP has been regarded in some quarters - especially in progressive-minded Ontario - as positively dangerous. Last May, consultants with the Toronto District School Board dismissed JUMP as a form of “rote, procedural learning.” In Ontario, that’s the kiss of death.

Now the tide is turning, though not fast enough. Last spring, the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel endorsed the seemingly obvious idea that, in order to succeed in math, children need to understand what they’re doing.

But the school system is plagued by other barriers that actively discourage best practices. One is the widespread use of consultants, who often write the very textbooks they then are paid to recommend. Some teachers are heavily discouraged from using instructional methods or materials their school board frowns on, even though they work. Many schools and parents are beaten into submission by claims that certain programs are “evidence-based” even though they’re not. There’s a lot at stake in how curriculum decisions are made - but parents and teachers seldom have a clue, or a voice.

So if you’re interested in JUMP for your kid, you may have to move to Vancouver or Port Hardy. You could also check out the JUMP website (jumpmath.org). And Mr. Mighton has written two books, The Myth of Ability and The End of Ignorance. The program survives on charitable support, and he is a more or less full-time volunteer.

“Teachers get so excited by this,” says Liz Barrett. “Suddenly they’ve got the tools to reach the students, and suddenly they’re all achieving.”

Source: Globe and Mail, Canada
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081108.COWENT08/TPStory/National

On her back in a dark tube, Blair Smith held still as a scanner combed her brain with magnetic waves. Words flashed by her eyes: tack, vase, hope, glow, vague, cade.

The 11-year-old had been told to press the button in her right hand if the word was real, the button in her left if it was nonsense. The answer itself was less important than the map the scanner would make of which areas of Blair’s brain lighted up when she struggled with a word.

The aim of the study, said Laurie Cutting, director of the Education and Brain Research Program at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, is to understand the neurological differences among students who are skilled readers, those who have difficulties and those with diagnosed learning disabilities.

If neuroscientists can pinpoint which parts of the brain are activated when a reader puzzles over an unknown word, they may eventually help teachers tailor reading instruction for individuals.

That is only the beginning. Many educators hunger for scientific data to help them structure their lessons, and neuroscience is beginning to offer them broad guidance about what works best.

One of the most startling recent revelations in neuroscience has been that the brain’s structure is much more flexible (a concept called neuroplasticity) than was previously thought; this understanding may help teachers find ways to train the brain to better solve math problems or understand a book.

“There’s an awful lot that neuroscience can begin to tell us in broad strokes that’s relevant for education and that ultimately 10 or 20 years downstream can provide us with prescriptive information,” said Robert Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education.

“I think we’re looking at a period of five years of very rich territory for investigation here.”

Complex conditions

Brain research already is opening the way to help teachers detect and address complex conditions — such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia and its mathematical cousin, dyscalculia — that defy blood tests and other simple medical diagnostics.

Cognitive scientists are developing a theory of “micro-development” that could turn some lesson plans upside down. Studies have found that, on a minute-to-minute basis, children and adults learn in fits and starts, often going backward. That could indicate that students should be allowed to grope their way to understanding — for instance, by being asked to power up a light bulb using a battery and a strand of wire before having the theory of electricity explained to them.

How the brain functions remains deeply mysterious, with studies seeming to unfold at a glacial pace. One expert noted that it took decades for researchers, examining data from brain and behavioral studies and other sources, to confirm the belief of many educators that focusing on phonics helps youngsters who struggle with reading.

Still, top educational institutions have recently shown new interest in the link between brain activity and education. Harvard University founded its mind, brain and education degree program in 2002. Johns Hopkins University this year briefed the Maryland State Board of Education on a neuro-education initiative that aims to “explore how current findings have application to educational practice.”

Better ways of teaching

A study published in the journal Nature last month reported a link between a primitive, intuitive sense of the size of numbers and performance in math classes, a finding that could lead to ways to identify young students who may have trouble with math and develop better ways of teaching them. Advocates of expanding pre-kindergarten classes point to studies that show the importance of early education in molding young minds.

Pianta, of the Curry School, said neuroscience has also influenced the education of autistic students.

“Twenty years ago, you might have seen an intervention that was far more oriented toward trying to get those kids to be affectionate, let’s say. Or the therapist in that case would be promoting physical contact with kids who didn’t like physical contact,” Pianta said. “Now we would look at that (response) as sort of saying this kid’s behavior is a result of their brain’s ability to process social, emotional information. You would structure your interactions with an autistic child so as not to overwhelm their capacity to process that information.”

Kurt Fischer, director of Harvard’s mind, brain and education master’s degree program, warned that many educational theories claim to be based on science but are not.

“One of the major problems we face is that there are a whole lot of things that claim to be ‘brain-based education’ that are nonsense,” he said. “One of them is the belief that boys and girls have totally different brains and learn totally differently. That’s not what the evidence shows. Not at all. The other is kind of a rigid idea of sensitive periods: that after a certain age you can’t learn a foreign language. You’ve also heard that there are left-brained and right-brained people. Total nonsense, unless they’ve had their left or right hemisphere removed. All of us use all our brains.”

Craving information

Another example Fischer cited is the widely held but dubious notion that listening to Bach in the bassinet will make babies smarter. Still, Fischer said, the popularity of such ideas shows that educators and the public crave scientific backing for classroom innovations.

At Kennedy Krieger, Cutting gave a nifty copy of her brain scan to Blair, her young research subject. The research team prepared Blair’s identical twin sister to go inside the tube for a new round of scans. They are both perfectly good readers, but the data from their studies might help others.

“Creepy but cool at the same time,” said Blair, an aspiring veterinarian. “It’s good because you help other kids.”

Source: Monterey County Herald, CA
http://www.montereyherald.com/health/ci_10913995

Many parents don’t realize how easy and fun it can be to bring the family closer together while improving their children’s literacy skills.

“Spending time together and learning as a family can be a simple, inexpensive and easy activity. It just requires a little time, imagination and creativity,” said Sharon Darling, president and founder of the National Center for Family Literacy.

With this in mind, the center is offering some helpful tips for families to teach their children by using the world around them and maximizing time spent together:

1. Make science come alive at home by checking out science experiment books from the library and then trying simple experiments at home. For example, grow a vegetable with your child, chart the growth and talk about it.

2. Tie reading into an outing. If you’re going to a museum, bring home a book about dinosaurs, so they see reading as an experience.

3. Increase oral language skills by sharing stories of your childhood, suggest the experts at the center. You also can share stories about your child’s life, such as when they were born, their first Christmas, etc.

4. Use certain reading techniques that have been proven to increase effectiveness in reading time, including making sound effects to capture kids’ attention and changing your voice when different characters speak. You also should talk about the story to reinforce comprehension and memory skills, and read it again because repetition helps children recognize and remember words.

5. Teach math skills by letting your child count the money to pay at the store.

You will quickly be able to see the rewards of these activities, first-hand.

“As the father of three fantastic children, I so clearly and vividly recall many moments curled up with my children reading to them, at all times of day and night; on the kitchen floor, in their forts, on old sofas and beat up bean bags, in bed and in the car,” said David Murphy, president and CEO of Better World Books.

“Few moments in life can compare to the wonders of opening up the new world of language and communication, and wonder and awe to your child.”

Children also need good role models when it comes to literacy. According to the center, if kids don’t see parents reading for pleasure and for purpose, then they are less likely to view reading as a pleasurable experience.

For more recommendations from the center on literacy activities, visit www.famlit.org.

Source: Elmira Star-Gazette, NY
http://www.stargazette.com/article/20081105/LIFE06/811050304

It is a question which worries every parent – what is the best way to prepare your child for their first day at school?
Now a psychologist has devised a checklist of 22 skills she believes children need to learn before beginning their formal education.

According to her findings, nearly half of parents would like more advice and information to prepare children for their first day at school.

Fewer than one in six parents have a clear idea about this, while one in five said they had no idea what skills children should have by the age of four or five. Only 18 per cent said they knew where to go for official advice.

Dr Spencer said: “Ensuring a child is adequately prepared for school is one of the most important things parents have to do.

“But it can be very challenging and daunting if the guidance and information needed is not there.

“A lot of the available material on pre-school development is focused on teaching child carers the skills, but can be difficult for parents with young children to access and understand.”

The list of suggested skills, called the Curricu-mum, was commissioned by the children’s television show Hi-5 which is designed to reflect pre-school learning guidelines.

Cecilia Persson, programme director for the Cartoonito network, which broadcasts Hi-5, said: “We believe the Hi-5 Curricu-mum is exactly what parents of pre-school children have been looking for.”

The list suggests that by the time they start school, children should be able to recite the alphabet, to count and use number and to write their own names. It also suggests children should know how to share, how to play with others and be able to dress and feed themselves.

It also claims children should be able to join in conversations, learn to sing songs, know which foods are healthy and be able to differentiate between past and future events and actions which are right and wrong.

However, Judith Gillespie, development officer for the Scottish Parent Teacher Council said she was concerned the list could create more anxiety and pressure for parents of young children.

“To a parent that is an incredibly daunting list. I think the trouble is it will make some parents feel like failures,” she said.

“Saying these are things children should be able to do is incredibly unhelpful. It would be more helpful to say that these are the kinds of things that many children learn to do before they start school. Children learn differently and develop differently and making it a requirement that they should be able do all these things is very bad news.”

Ms Gillespie said teachers did not expect children to learn the alphabet or to be able to count and use numbers before they started school and the list did not take into account the fact that boys tend to be more boisterous and learn at a different pace.

“In many respects, the most important things on the list are social skills like sharing – it is far more important that children go to school with social skills.”

Alphabet and dressing among 22 target tasks

These are the 22 tasks the report says children should be taught by the time they reach school.

1 Write their own name – a useful skill that helps confidence.

2 Know the alphabet. Being able to recite the letters of the alphabet will be a help when children begin to learn to read and write.

3 Sing/recite songs. Learning simple songs and rhythms helps children develop their learning skills.

4 Take turns and share with other people without a fuss. Learning to get along with other children is crucial.

5 Complete simple activities on their own.

6 Be sensitive to others’ feelings and know the difference between right and wrong.

7 Dress and feed themselves (even if they get it wrong).

8 Join in group activities with other children.

9 Make up stories (even if they make no sense).

10 Join in general conversation at home.

11 Tell the difference between past and future.

12 Be able to focus their attention on one thing for a prolonged period without becoming restless.

13 Count basic numbers and answer number-based questions such as: “How many carrots are on your plate?”

14 Complete simple puzzles such as jigsaws.

15 Ask lots of questions. Curiosity is a great asset in a pre-school child.

16 Know the difference between different groups; eg cats and dogs.

17 Experiment with basic technology, such as typing their name on a computer.

18 Have fun outside and be active.

19 Tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods.

20 Play “make believe” and use imagination.

21 Make things and get messy with paints and crafts.

22 Make music with toy instruments and experiment with different sounds.

Source: Scotsman, United Kingdom
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/The-key-skills-that-make.4652933.jp

You can help your child develop skills for reading and writing while doing ordinary chores around the house! Supporting your child’s literacy development is one of the most important tasks you have, and it can be done even when you are busy (and isn’t that most of the time?).

Following are some simple ideas that will help you make the most of every opportunity you have with your preschool child:

- As you put away the groceries, ask your child to name the items in the boxes. He may not be able to read the words on the label yet, but he will begin to recognize logos and pictures, which he will later associate with the printed word.

- While you dust the furniture, let your child write his name in the furniture polish.

- Give your child simple jobs to do as you cook; measuring ingredients or rolling dough are examples. Talk about the words in the recipe you are using; explain terms like mix, stir, or sift. This is a great time to also talk about cleanliness and the importance of “clean cooking hands.”

- When making biscuits, give your child a portion of the dough. He can shape the dough into letters and bake his name. What a fun way to learn to spell! You can also use leftover dough and add a little food coloring - instant play-dough (keeps in refrigerator a few days with kneading).

- Let your child place magnetic letters on the refrigerator while you cook. Talk about the letters and sounds he is using.

- Even bath time can be a learning experience! Let your child lather up the side of the tub with soap. Encourage him to write his name or draw pictures in the lather.

- Make a book with your child. Let him draw pictures and scribble (a toddler’s version of writing) a story. Place the pages in plastic storage bags and staple together like a book or punch holes in the sides and tie pages together with yarn.

- Let your child help sort the laundry by color. Talk about the colors. You can also sort into items (linens, clothes, etc.) and in sizes (large, small, medium) to nurture those all-important pre-math skills.

- Look for restaurant signs, toy store signs, etc., as you travel. Most children recognize their favorite fast food place simply by its outdoor sign! This is a child’s first reading experience (recognizing familiar signs and symbols). We call this “environmental literacy.”

Remember, you as a parent are your child’s first and most important teacher! Think about the simple ways you can support your child’s literacy development as you go about your daily activities! In doing so, you are nurturing your child’s natural curiosity and promoting a life-long love of learning. Happy Parenting! (…)

Source: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, MS
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=281094&pub=1&div=News

As a girl, author Peg Tyre didn’t like recess.

But as a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for Newsweek and CNN, Tyre noticed a trend: As schools across the country cut recess, music and other subjects not required by state tests, the number of students taking medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder went up.

“The American Medical Association tells us that 3 to 5 percent of Americans have ADHD,” said Tyre, who spoke at Book Passage in Corte Madera Tuesday and will appear at Redwood High School in Larkspur Thursday night. “Yet the Centers for Disease Control tell us that 14 percent of boys younger than 15 are diagnosed with the condition. I worry about why we’re medicating all these children.”

In her new book, The Trouble With Boys, Tyre argues that the changes schools have made during the past two decades - driven by a focus on standardized test scores - have created a huge disadvantage for boys.

“It used to be that boys did well in math and science, and girls did well in reading and writing,” Tyre said. “But in the last 20 years, girls have caught up in math and science, while boys have been taking a whipping in reading and have fallen behind in writing - at the same time that the whole curriculum has become literacy-based.”

In Marin, seventh-grade girls scored an average of 6 percentage points higher in English and 1 point lower in math on the 2008 California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) exam, according to the state Department of Education. Eleventh-grade girls scored 6 percentage points higher in English and 2 points higher in math on the state’s high school exit exam test for 2008.

Statewide, the gender gap is even greater, with seventh-grade girls scoring 10 percentage points higher on the English portion of the STAR and 10th-grade girls scoring 8 points higher in English on the exit exam.

The problem, Tyre argues, isn’t that boys are less intelligent or capable than girls. It’s that the two genders reach mental and emotional maturity at different ages, she said, and that schools increasingly reward skills like organization and neatness over innovation and risk-taking.

“Girls are completely mature at age 15 to 16, while boys are not there until they’re 25,” said Tyre, basing her argument on neurological studies of adolescent brain scans.

Virginia Dunn nodded in agreement.

“She’s right about the developmental pace,” said Dunn, a retired teacher who works as a reading intervention tutor and family therapist in San Rafael. “I used to teach high school, and around junior year, it was as though something magically happened, and boys began to catch up.”

At a time when success in school can determine so many aspects of people’s lives - where they work, where they live and even when they can retire - the evidence suggests the deck is stacked against boys, Tyre said.

Boys are expelled from preschool at a rate five times that of girls and are twice as likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or a learning disability, she said. Students in the lowest-performing group at each school tend overwhelmingly to be boys, whether the school is a wealthy private institution or an impoverished neighborhood school.

“Boys learn early on that school is a game they can’t win, and so they decide they don’t want to play,” Tyre said.

Educators have addressed gender as an element of the “achievement gap” between successful and struggling students. Yet county Director of Alternative Education Lisa Schwartz noted that every student falls into a variety of groups, and that each student needs to be treated as an individual.

“Boys probably do better in a more active learning environment,” Schwartz said. “But we need to be paying attention to each individual child. Boys may need a more active, problem-solving curriculum; gifted and talented students need the opportunity to stretch themselves; our English language learners need intensive support to develop their English language skills. We need to focus on a variety of strategies to help kids succeed better in order to be doing our job.”

Tyre doesn’t assign blame to parents, teachers or even distractions like television or video games. Instead, she says parents and teachers need to work together, armed with data, to find ways to make the educational experience better for both genders.

“I grew up with teachers who told me, ‘You don’t have to be a secretary. You can be a lawyer. You don’t have to be a stewardess; you can be pilot.’ That changed the world for girls. They can apply that same attitude to boys.”

Source: Marin Independent-Journal, CA
http://www.marinij.com/ci_10787120?source=most_viewed

Although school has been back for less than a month, it is likely that many children are already experiencing frustration and confusion in math class. Research at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada could change the way we view math difficulties and how we assist children who face those problems.

Daniel Ansari is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Western. He is using brain imaging to understand how children develop math skills, and what kind of brain development is associated with those skills.

Research shows that many children who experience mathematical difficulties have developmental dyscalculia - a syndrome that is similar to dyslexia, a learning disability that affects a child’s ability to read. Children with dyscalculia often have difficulty understanding numerical quantity. For example, they find it difficult to connect abstract symbols, such as a number, to the numerical magnitude it represents. They can’t see the connection, for instance, between five fingers and the number ‘5.’ This is similar to children with dyslexia who have difficulty connecting sounds with letters. In a recent study Ansari and graduate student Ian Holloway showed that children who are better at connecting numerical symbols and magnitudes are also those who have higher math scores. A report of this research is forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

‘Research shows that many children have both dyslexia and dyscalculia. We are now exploring further the question of exactly what brain differences exist between those who have just math problems and those who have both math and reading difficulties,’ says Ansari.

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study the brains of children with math difficulties, Ansari says that it becomes clear that children with developmental dyscalculia show atypical activation patterns in a part of the brain called the parietal cortex.

This research holds tremendous promise for people who, in the past, had simply accepted that they are ‘not good at math.’ Understanding the causes and brain correlates of dyscalculia may help to design remediation tools to improve the lives of children and adults with the syndrome.

‘We have some cultural biases in North America around math skills,’ says Ansari. ‘We think that people who are good at math must be exceptionally intelligent, and even more dismaying and damaging, we have an attitude that being bad at math is socially acceptable. People who would never dream of telling others they are unable to read, will proclaim publicly they flunked math.’

Ansari says that math skills are hugely important to life success and children who suffer math difficulties may avoid careers that, with help, might be a great fit for them.

Ansari is the recipient of an Early Researcher Award grant from the Ontario government and a CIHR grant. Ansari recently reviewed existing research in this field for the April edition of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and he hopes that news of this important research will also reach parents, teachers and individuals.

An article by Ansari entitled ‘The Brain Goes to School: Strengthening the Education-Neuroscience Connection,’ will be published in the upcoming Education Canada, the magazine of the Canadian Education Association. In the article Ansari says technological advances such as fMRI have provided unprecedented insights into the working of the human brain.

‘A teacher who understands brain structure and function will be better equipped to interpret children’s behaviours, their strengths and weaknesses, from a scientific point of view, and this will in turn influence how they teach,’ says Ansari.

Source: Science Centric, Bulgaria
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=08102244

Up to 56 per cent of trainee teachers now need multiple attempts before they pass, according to statistics.

The test is designed to drive up standards in the profession and it must be passed before students can qualify as teachers.

However, the trainee teachers are allowed to sit the test as many times as they need and record numbers are failing.

One student reportedly made 27 attempts. Meanwhile, up to a third of trainees need two attempts or more at a similar test in literacy.

The numeracy test takes 48 minutes and contains 12 mental arithmetic questions, to be completed without the aid of a calculator. There are several longer questions with data manipulation which can involve a calculator. The 45-minute literacy test is in four parts – spelling, grammar, punctuation and comprehension.

The figures, obtained in a Commons written answer by the Liberal Democrats, has reignited debate about whether the minimum qualifications for teaching was too low.

The basic skills tests are taken online in literacy, numeracy and ICT and the pass marks are 60 per cent.

In numeracy, the failure rate has risen particularly sharply since the tests were introduced in 2001. Then, trainees needed on average 1.28 attempts to pass.

Last year it was 1.56, with 34,360 trainees taking 53,600 numeracy tests between them.

For literacy, the average number of attempts required to pass was 1.14 in 2001. However, last year 35,150 trainees took 46,460 tests. Most trainees passed their ICT test first time – the average number of attempts required was 1.12.

David Laws, Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said: “The existing minimum qualifications for people wanting to become teachers are too low.

“As the number being accepted on to teaching courses rises, we need to be sure this is not being coupled with a decline in standards.

“Only if we attract the finest quality of young people into teaching will we really be able to drive-up standards in all our schools.”

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said trainees on some routes into teaching – such as on-the-job training programmes – were exempt from taking the skills tests.

“Ofsted tell us that the standard of teaching training has never been higher and big rises in results show that quality of teaching is improving massively year-in, year-out,” he said.

Soiurce: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/556szn

Mamas, you might want to let your babies grow up to be mathematicians, especially if they’re girls.

It seems American students — especially females — may not be encouraged to excel in math, according to a new study, which claims that while many girls do have a knack for mathematics, they could be derailed by a combination of societal pressures, a less than stellar public school system, and a lack of role models. Boys aren’t immune, either. The study, published in this month’s issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society, paints a dreary picture of low math participation among both sexes as they get older.

Researchers examined years of results from challenging international math competitions to determine the gender and nationality of the participants and came to a number of conclusions. Though girls may be under-represented in math competitions, lots of them do quite well at math. The mathematical talent of American youth isn’t valued and nurtured as much as it is in other countries. American children of immigrants hailing from countries where math talent is appreciated — especially Asia and Eastern Europe — are more likely to be recognized as having exceptional math skills. And starting as early as middle school, cultivating strong math talent begins to go astray.

The reasons are many and complex. According to the study, “it is deemed uncool within the social context of USA middle and high schools to do mathematics for fun; doing so can lead to social ostracism. Consequently, gifted girls, even more so than boys, usually camouflage their mathematical talent to fit in well with their peers.” And: “girls perform as well if not better than boys in mathematics throughout elementary school; it is during the middle school years, an age when children begin to feel pressure to conform to peer and societal expectations, that they start to lose interest and fall behind in most, but not all countries.”

“We are wasting this valuable resource,” said Janet Mertz, senior author and professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a news release. “Girls can excel in math at the very highest level. There are some truly phenomenal women mathematicians out there.”

Maybe Mattel could make a Mathematician Barbie. It might erase the memory of that Teen Talk Barbie they came up with years ago that uttered this memorable phrase: “Math class is tough!”

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/10/girls-and-math.html