IEA Newsletter for Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Welcome to the Institute for Education and the Arts' newsletter for Wednesday, May 14, 2008. The newsletter is published each Wednesday to the IEA listserv and archived here on the IEA blog.


------------------------------
REPORTS AND RESEARCH
------------------------------

THE POWER OF FAMILY CONVERSATION:
SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY PROGRAMS HELP PARENTS BUILD CHILDREN’S LITERACY FROM BIRTH
Laura Pappano, Harvard Education Letter, May/June 2008
“School matters, but literacy starts at home. Teachers armed with reading contracts and carefully worded missives have long urged parents to read aloud to their children. But now there is a second and perhaps more powerful message: Talk to your kids, too. Mounting research that links language-rich home environments with reading success and school achievement is driving educators and community groups to target families long before children register for school. In addition to Todd Risley and Betty Hart’s landmark work correlating verbal home environments with future literacy, Catherine E. Snow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and David K. Dickinson, a professor of teaching and learning at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, are assembling data on the impact of early literacy interventions. Their ongoing study of 57 low-income families reveals that home support for literacy markedly influences kindergarten language skills and fourth grade reading comprehension test scores. No wonder those at the leading edge of literacy want to increase the quantity and quality of conversations between parents and children beginning at birth. ‘It is really what parents have been doing at home that children have to draw on when they become readers and writers,’ says Gail Jordan.”
Read more>>


----------------------------------
THE POWER OF CHILDREN'S RESEARCH
----------------------------------

REMARKABLE RESEARCH PROJECT UNEARTHS WORLD WAR II HERO
“Some enterprising students from rural Kansas discovered a Catholic woman who saved Jewish children during World War II. The story began when four high school students were shown a news clipping, which said, 'Irena Sendler saved 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942-43.' The students began to research this amazingly underreported story by looking through primary and secondary sources. They eventually found that Irena Sendler, a Warsaw social worker, had gone into the ghetto and talked Jewish parents and grandparents into letting her take their children in order to save them from death camps. She then took the children past Nazi guards and had them adopted into the homes of Polish families or hid them in convents and orphanages. In addition, she made lists of the children's real names and put the lists in jars that were then buried. At one point, the Nazis captured her and she was beaten severely, but the Polish underground bribed a guard to release her, and she went into hiding. After the students' diligent research, they wrote a play depicting Sendler's life. Since then, they have performed for numerous clubs and civic groups all over the U.S. and Europe, notching at least 225 presentations. The students also bring a jar to every performance, aptly titled "Life in a Jar," and collect funds ... for the care of Irena and other rescuers.”
Learn more>>
(Found via PEN News Blast)

----------------------------------
KIDS AND TECHNOLOGY
----------------------------------

ARE WIRED KIDS WELL SERVED BY SCHOOLS?
Stefanie Olsen, CNET News Blog, 4/24/08
“Among the generation of kids growing up wired, many teens are hyper-motivated to learn a special skill like how to create a podcast, direct a YouTube video, publish an anime site, or hack an iPhone. Now if only teachers could inspire such ingenuity. That was one of the basic questions that had academics scratching their heads here Wednesday at Stanford University, where a group of researchers from the University of Southern California and University of California at Berkeley presented their first findings from one of the largest ethnographic studies on kids in digital environments. (An ethnographic study draws on fieldwork to provide a descriptive picture of a group. The full research will be published later this year as part of a MacArthur Foundation grant.) Sure, kids have long been attracted to extracurricular activities like dance or sports. But researchers say digital media is bringing up a new generation who are creators of media rather than just passive consumers of it. Within these digital environments among peers, kids who create and evaluate media are deriving a sense of competence, autonomy, self-determination and connectedness, researchers say.”
Read more>>

----------------------------------
REPLACING ARTS WITH P.E.
----------------------------------

BILL TO REQUIRE P.E. ELIMINATES ARTS ELECTIVES
Jerry F. Rutledge, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, 5/6/08
“Smiths Station High School senior Jordan Hatch can't conceive of a world without music or theater … Hatch is a member of the high school's award-winning chamber choir, one of the highly acclaimed choirs in Alabama for more than a decade. He and other students and faculty are concerned that a bill before the Alabama Legislature could limit or eliminate choir and other electives from the curriculum in favor of more physical education time.”
Read more>>


----------------------------------
GRANTS, AWARDS, AND CONTESTS
----------------------------------

NSTA NEW SCIENCE TEACHER ACADEMY
National Science Teachers Association; sponsored by Amgen Foundation
Award: Program Expenses covered
Eligibility: Teachers with a minimum of 51% of courses in middle or high school science
Deadline: 5/23/08 ***COMING SOON***”
NSTA New Science Teacher Academy, cofounded by the Amgen Foundation, is a professional development initiative created to help promote quality science teaching, enhance teacher confidence and classroom excellence, and improve teacher content knowledge The NSTA New Science Teacher Academy endeavors to use mentoring and other professional development resources to support science teachers during the often challenging, initial teaching years and to help them stay in the profession.” NSTA Fellows receive many benefits, including e-Mentoring and facilitated online curriculum.”
Learn more>>

# # #