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CANADA MILITARY NEWS: O Canada-Nova Scotia- Global Digital Civilization 4 our World Youth- gettin it done- Teaching our Youth how 2 be Good Digital Citizens.... and seniors we need 2 change old ways 4 the new world order of our youth- they will honour our cultures-causes -Our Canada History- Come Visit Nova Scotia Nature - tidbits /Kids and learning money care early /Disabilties are Abilities in Disguise
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/03/canada-military-news-o-canada-nova.html
CANADA MILITARY NEWS: O Canada-Nova Scotia- Global Digital Civilization 4 our World Youth- gettin it done- Teaching our Youth how 2 be Good Digital Citizens.... and seniors we need 2 change old ways 4 the new world order of our youth- they will honour our cultures-causes -Our Canada History- Come Visit Nova Scotia Nature - tidbits /Kids and learning money care early /Disabilties are Abilities in Disguise
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/03/canada-military-news-o-canada-nova.html
10 Ways 2 b a good citizen
Here's
a list of 10 things you can do right now to be a better citizen.
1. Volunteer to be active in your
community.
2. Be honest and trustworthy.
3. Follow rules and laws.
4. Respect the rights of others.
5. Be informed about the world around
you.
6. Respect the property of others.
7. Be compassionate.
8. Take responsibility for your
actions.
9. Be a good neighbor.
10. Protect the environment.
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Teaching Good Citizenship's Five Themes
Activities from the editors of
Weekly Reader can help develop K-6 students' understanding of the five
good citizenship themes---honesty, compassion, respect, responsibility, and
courage.
Advocating the five themes of
citizenship -- honesty, compassion, respect, responsibility, and courage -- is
not enough. Exploring those themes, talking about them, and making connections
between those themes and your students' lives are the keys to developing a true
understanding of the concepts. The activities below, which will help develop
those themes, al re divided by grade levels:
But first, let's have a few words
about each of the themes:
·
Honesty is the basic theme of good citizenship. A
person must be honest with others, and with himself or herself, in order to be
a good citizen.
·
Compassion is the emotion of caring for people and for
other living things. Compassion gives a person an emotional bond with his or
her world.
·
Respect is similar to compassion but different in
some ways. An important aspect of respect is self-respect, whereas compassion
is directed toward others. Respect is also directed toward inanimate things or
ideas as well as toward people. For example, people should have respect for
laws. Finally, respect includes the idea of esteem or admiration, whereas
compassion is a feeling people can have for others they dont necessarily
admire.
·
Out of
honesty, compassion, and respect comes Responsibility, which includes
both private, personal responsibility and public responsibility. Individuals
and groups have responsibilities. Responsibility is about action, and it
includes much of what people think of as good citizenship. You may wish to
point out that one of the main responsibilities of students is to learn.
They must educate themselves so that they can live up to their full potential.
·
Finally,
the theme of Courage is important to good citizenship. Human beings are
capable of moving beyond mere goodness toward greatness. Courage enables people
to do the right thing even when its unpopular, difficult, or dangerous. Many
people---including Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr.,
Susan B. Anthony, and Mohandas Gandhi---have had the courage to change the
rules to achieve justice.
ACTIVITIES FOR EXPLORING THE FIVE
THEMES OF CITIZENSHIP: KINDERGARTEN AND GRADE 1
A large part of the learning
experience in kindergarten and first grade is socialization. Children are
learning to cooperate and share with peers, to take part in group activities
and talks, and to take responsibility for their own actions and for their own learning.
For kindergarten and first graders, learning the five themes as distinct
concepts is less important than beginning to recognize that good citizenship
behavior is based on certain principles. Here are a few activities that might
help promote that recognition among your students.
Classroom Rules (Use as a discussion starter and a
writing/drawing prompt.)
Start a discussion about the rules that should be followed in your classroom. Write each rule as it is discussed on the board or a chart. Talk about why each rule is important. If students don't suggest anything like the following rules, which relate to the five themes, you can add them:
Start a discussion about the rules that should be followed in your classroom. Write each rule as it is discussed on the board or a chart. Talk about why each rule is important. If students don't suggest anything like the following rules, which relate to the five themes, you can add them:
·
Tell the
truth.
·
Be
caring.
·
Respect
others.
·
Be
responsible for what you do and say.
·
Be brave
enough to do the right thing and to ask for help when you need it.
Sharing Stories (Use as a discussion starter.)
One way of exploring the five themes is simply to ask students to tell about their experiences. You may wish to use the following prompts:
One way of exploring the five themes is simply to ask students to tell about their experiences. You may wish to use the following prompts:
·
Tell a
story about a time you told the truth, even though that was a difficult thing
to do.
·
Tell a
story about a time you felt happy or sad for somebody or something.
·
Tell a
story about someone you respect.
·
Tell a
story about a time you took responsibility for something you had done or said.
·
Tell a
story about being brave.
What Could Happen Next? (Use as a prompt for discussion, drawing, or
writing.)
Ask students to discuss, draw, or write in response to the following questions:
Ask students to discuss, draw, or write in response to the following questions:
·
You find
a watch on the playground. What could happen next?
·
Everybody
is in a hurry. A kid near you trips and falls down. What could happen next?
·
Your
teacher asks the class to be quiet after somebody said something really funny.
What could happen next?
·
You
borrowed a pencil from the teacher's desk and lost it. What could happen next?
·
You
think somebody is being cruel by making fun of a kid on the playground. What
could happen next?
ACTIVITIES FOR EXPLORING THE FIVE
THEMES OF CITIZENSHIP: GRADES 2 AND 3
In general, second and
third-graders have a pretty firm grasp on what does and what does not
constitute good behavior. They should recognize the rights of others, know that
they should work and play by the rules, and make decisions concerning right and
wrong with increasing independence.
The following activities may help
students further refine their thinking about good behavior by exploring the
five themes of citizenship in realistic situations.
The Homework Truth (Use as a discussion starter or a
role-playing activity.)
For last night's homework, you were supposed to read a story and be ready to tell it to the class today in your own words. You didn't read a story last night because you were having too much fun playing video games. You figured you could remember an old story. When your teacher calls on you, you are suddenly nervous and can't remember any stories at all. What should you do?
For last night's homework, you were supposed to read a story and be ready to tell it to the class today in your own words. You didn't read a story last night because you were having too much fun playing video games. You figured you could remember an old story. When your teacher calls on you, you are suddenly nervous and can't remember any stories at all. What should you do?
Call for Compassion (Use as a writing prompt or a discussion
starter.)
A teenage neighbor is responsible for you while your parents go to a movie. Your neighbor wears a hearing aid because he is partially deaf. Tonight, he tells you his hearing aid isn't working very well. The telephone rings, but your neighbor doesn't hear it, so your parents' answering machine takes a message. When your neighbor isn't watching, you play the message back. The message is from your parents. They had forgotten to tell your neighbor your bedtime. You realize you can get away with staying up later. When your parents find out, they'll blame your neighbor for not getting the message. What thoughts go through your head? What do you do?
A teenage neighbor is responsible for you while your parents go to a movie. Your neighbor wears a hearing aid because he is partially deaf. Tonight, he tells you his hearing aid isn't working very well. The telephone rings, but your neighbor doesn't hear it, so your parents' answering machine takes a message. When your neighbor isn't watching, you play the message back. The message is from your parents. They had forgotten to tell your neighbor your bedtime. You realize you can get away with staying up later. When your parents find out, they'll blame your neighbor for not getting the message. What thoughts go through your head? What do you do?
Respect (Use as a discussion starter or a
role-playing activity.)
You're at a school picnic and there's a long line for buying cold drinks. You're really thirsty. You see a friend of yours way ahead of you in line. Should you ask your friend if you can cut in line? How is the idea of respect for others connected to this situation? How do others in line feel when somebody cuts in line?
You're at a school picnic and there's a long line for buying cold drinks. You're really thirsty. You see a friend of yours way ahead of you in line. Should you ask your friend if you can cut in line? How is the idea of respect for others connected to this situation? How do others in line feel when somebody cuts in line?
Responsibility---Whose Is It? (Use as a discussion starter or a writing
prompt.)
You borrow a great book from your classroom. It's a lot of fun to read. By accident, you spill chocolate milk on the book. It's a mess. You take the book out of your book bag as soon as you get to your classroom. The teacher is busy. You could just take the book back to the shelf and leave it there. What should you do? Why?
You borrow a great book from your classroom. It's a lot of fun to read. By accident, you spill chocolate milk on the book. It's a mess. You take the book out of your book bag as soon as you get to your classroom. The teacher is busy. You could just take the book back to the shelf and leave it there. What should you do? Why?
Brave on the Ball Field (Use as a discussion starter or a writing
prompt.)
You are in a dodgeball game. One kid is throwing the ball too hard. A couple of kids have already quit the game, but most don't want to because they think quitting would make them seem weak. What do you do? If you say something, what do you say and to whom do you say it? (Note that sometimes a person needs to be brave enough to walk away from a bad situation.)
You are in a dodgeball game. One kid is throwing the ball too hard. A couple of kids have already quit the game, but most don't want to because they think quitting would make them seem weak. What do you do? If you say something, what do you say and to whom do you say it? (Note that sometimes a person needs to be brave enough to walk away from a bad situation.)
ACTIVITIES FOR EXPLORING THE FIVE
THEMES OF CITIZENSHIP: GRADES 4, 5, AND 6
In general, fourth through
sixth-graders have a pretty good understanding of the concepts of honesty,
compassion, respect, responsibility, and courage. Whether they behave honestly,
compassionately, and so on is another matter, but that's true for people of all
ages: Everyone finds it challenging, from time to time, to live up to those
high ideals.
One key reason for this is that
citizenship ideals sometimes conflict with one another or with other values.
With young people, peer pressure -- the desire to make and keep friends at
almost any cost -- often competes with other ideals. Following are some
activities that can help students explore some of the problems in living up to
the five themes of citizenship.
Truth in Friendship (Use as a writing prompt, a discussion
starter, or a role-playing activity.)
Imagine that a friend is going to do a comedy act in a talent contest. He tells you the jokes from the act. The jokes are awful. Do your tell him? If so, how do you say it?
Imagine that a friend is going to do a comedy act in a talent contest. He tells you the jokes from the act. The jokes are awful. Do your tell him? If so, how do you say it?
Test Your Compassion (Use as a writing prompt or a role-playing
activity.)
You find out that a friend had no time to study for a test because she had to help around the house when her mother was sick. So your friend cheats on the test. What do you say to her? What do you do? Do you tell the teacher? (Discuss after writing or role-playing.)
You find out that a friend had no time to study for a test because she had to help around the house when her mother was sick. So your friend cheats on the test. What do you say to her? What do you do? Do you tell the teacher? (Discuss after writing or role-playing.)
Respect (Use as a writing prompt or a role-playing
activity.)
Imagine that you live near an elderly couple. Two or three of your friends are visiting you and they see the two old people. Your friends start making fun of the elderly people behind their backs. What, if anything, do you say to your friends? What might happen if your neighbors overhear what is going on? (Discuss after writing or role-playing.)
Imagine that you live near an elderly couple. Two or three of your friends are visiting you and they see the two old people. Your friends start making fun of the elderly people behind their backs. What, if anything, do you say to your friends? What might happen if your neighbors overhear what is going on? (Discuss after writing or role-playing.)
Be Kind: Rewind for
Responsibility (Use as a
writing prompt or a discussion starter.)
Lots of little things make up good behavior, such as rewinding rented movies, not littering, keeping quiet when people need to concentrate, and returning library books on time. Make a list of small responsibilities. (That part of the activity might be done in small, cooperative groups.) Then try to think of a situation in which you fulfilled one of the small responsibilities. Think of another situation in which you did not fulfill a small responsibility. Are the "little" things really that important? Why or why not?
Lots of little things make up good behavior, such as rewinding rented movies, not littering, keeping quiet when people need to concentrate, and returning library books on time. Make a list of small responsibilities. (That part of the activity might be done in small, cooperative groups.) Then try to think of a situation in which you fulfilled one of the small responsibilities. Think of another situation in which you did not fulfill a small responsibility. Are the "little" things really that important? Why or why not?
It Takes Guts (Use as a writing prompt.)
Imagine you're playing basketball with a friend. Some kids come up and take your friend's basketball. Create more specific details about this kind of situation, and then describe what you would do. (Discuss and role-play based on the additional circumstances students describe in their writing. Note that sometimes a person needs courage to walk away from a situation.)
Imagine you're playing basketball with a friend. Some kids come up and take your friend's basketball. Create more specific details about this kind of situation, and then describe what you would do. (Discuss and role-play based on the additional circumstances students describe in their writing. Note that sometimes a person needs courage to walk away from a situation.)
Article by Gary Hopkins
--------------
How 2 be a world citizen
We are in a global age. The world
has become a global village due to technological advances in communications and
other spheres of human endeavor. Being a world citizen can create international
cooperation on all levels, uniting everyone and making the world a better and
safer place for all; the mentality of "us against them" has caused
untold, useless suffering worldwide. Too Utopian? Let's follow the steps, and
find out.
1
Understand the world doesn't end
in your home village, town, city, state or country.
·
Recognize
that events happening in the far end of the world away from your country can
have a real impact on your life, e.g 9/11, global
warming, etc.
·
Learn
about other countries and cultures.
·
Get
interested about international news.
·
Be
interested in the life and struggles of other peoples and cultures and find
out how you can help. Participate in international discussions like on the BBC, CNN, ETC or the internet.
2
Learn some new major language or languages.
3
Be tolerant and respectful of
other people's cultures.
4
Resist, react, repeal, speak
against xenophobia and intolerance in all its forms.
5
Oppose racism,
tribalism, regionalism, religious bias and all kinds of segregation
of any kind.
6
Value each human life as you
value your own.
7
Feel welcome in whatever region
of the world where you happen to find yourself.
8
Consider each individual on his
own merits and repeal unfounded popular myths about certain nations and
peoples. Don't say that, for example Americans are arrogant, Africans are ignorant, Muslims
are evil, atheists are satanists, Germans are Nazi or Jews run banks, foreigners
increase crime, etc.
9
Teach other people in normal conversation. For
example, if someone says something ignorant, say "Don't generalize. There
is no reason to include a whole race."
10
Don't refer to your special group
if you intend your message to be universal.
11
Individuals are not
representations of their cultures. Be cautious to not emphasize differences too
much and "other" what you don't know. We are all humans before
anything else.
12
Be active and contribute.
13
Learn from wise people and
redistribute your knowledge.
14
Learn about the past in order to
help build
a better future.
Tips
·
Becoming
a world citizen requires a conscious effort.
·
Read New
Internationalist.
·
Question
all aspects of "nationalism," both the bad (e.g. "war" )
and even the good (e.g. your country's legal and ethical obligation and
prerogative to "watch your back" while you're overseas" for any
reason).
Warnings
·
World
Citizen Passports are not valid passports.
·
You may
start to feel out of place, with the loss of feeling for self-identity.
·
You may
be seen as traitors to your country.
Categories: Social Activism
In other languages:
Español: ser un ciudadano del mundo, Русский: быть космополитом, Italiano: Essere un Cittadino del Mondo, Português: Ser um Cidadão do Mundo
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CANADA
MILITARY NEWS: r Environment matters 2 Canadians cause NOT one political party
has ever truly given a sheeet (just their own agendas) and we know it /sites
and games 4 classrooms and students/Annapolis Valley takes Environment serious/
First Nations Canada and Environment- God chose our First Peoples as protectors
of our vast and last land of pure nature on this planet- and it f**king matters
2 Canadians/TEACHERS KITS AND STUDENT FACTS AND GAMES SITES
GAMES 4 KIDS and activities..
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THE VOICE- Sawyer Fredericks and the youth of The Voice allowed the world 2 see the absolute innocence and purity and intelligence and beauty of the real deal American youth of 2day.... millions of us old folks tuned in.... we were in awe at the calibre and real raw and righteous talent.... Megan was also incredible... but Sawyer and the youth stole the show and kept it... rightfully so. America- why are u hiding your decent and wondrous innocent youth
What does it take to be a good school citizen?
How can students become better citizens at school? Engaging, age-appropriate program hosts help students understand five pillars of good school citizenship:
AND..
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You are a child of the universe- like the trees, the stars and the sky... u matter
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A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices. Such a definition of global citizenship is based on two assumptions which this article explores: (a) that there is such a thing as an emerging world community to which people can identify; and (b) that such a community has a nascent set of values and practices.
Historically human beings always have organized themselves into groups and communities based on shared identity. Such identity gets forged in response to a variety of human needs - economic, political, religious, and social. As group identities grow stronger, those who hold them organize into communities, articulate shared values, and build governance structures that reflect their beliefs.
Today the forces of global engagement are helping some people identify themselves as global citizens, meaning that they have a sense of belonging to a world community. This growing global identity in large part is made possible by the forces of modern information, communication, and transportation technologies. In increasing ways these technologies are strengthening our ability to connect to the rest of the world: through the internet; through participation in the global economy; through the ways in which world-wide environmental factors play havoc with our lives; through the empathy we feel when we see pictures of humanitarian disasters, civil conflicts and wars in other countries; or through the ease with which we can travel and visit other parts of the world.
Those who see ourselves as global citizens are not abandoning other identities; such as allegiances to our countries, ethnicities, and political beliefs. These traditional identities give meaning to our lives and will continue to help shape who we are. However, as a result of living in a globalized world, we find we have an added layer of responsibility. We have concern and a share of responsibility for what is happening to the planet as a whole, and we are members of a world-wide community of people who share this concern.
The values being proposed for the world community are not esoteric and obscure. They are the values that world leaders have been advocating for the past 100 years. They include human rights, religious pluralism, gender equity, the rule of law, environmental protection, sustainable worldwide economic growth, poverty alleviation, prevention and cessation of conflicts between countries, elimination of weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian assistance, and preservation of cultural diversity.
Since World War II efforts have been undertaken to develop global policies and institutional structures that can support these enduring values. Such efforts have been made by international organizations, sovereign states, transnational corporations, NGOs, international professional associations and others. They have resulted in a growing body of international agreements, treaties, legal statutes, and technical standards.
Yet, despite such efforts, we have a long way to go before there is a global policy and institutional infrastructure that can support our emerging world community and the values it stands for. There are significant gaps of policy in many domains, large questions about how to get countries and organizations to comply with existing policy frameworks, and issues of accountability and transparency. Most importantly, from a global citizenship perspective, there is an absence of mechanisms that enable greater citizen participation in the growing number of institutions practicing global governance.
Governance at the global level, for the most part, is in the hands of the representatives of sovereign states and technocrats. Global governance organizational leaders are usually distant and removed from those that their institutions serve. Therefore most people feel disconnected and alienated from the global governance arena, making it difficult to build a sense of grass-roots community at the global level.
There is an urgent need for a cadre of citizen leaders who can play activist roles in forming world community. Such global citizenship activism can take many forms, including: advocating, at the local and global level, for policy and programmatic solutions that address global problems; participating in the decision-making processes of global governance organizations; adopting and promoting changes in behavior that help protect the earth’s environment; contributing to world-wide humanitarian relief efforts; and organizing events that celebrate the diversity in world music and art, culture and spiritual traditions.
Instinctively, most of us feel a connection to others around the world facing similar challenges to ourselves, yet we lack adequate tools, resources, and support to act on this emotion. Our ways of thinking and being are still colored by the trapping of old allegiances and ways of seeing things that no longer are as valid as they used to be. Nonetheless, there is a longing to pull back the veil that keeps us from more clearly seeing the world as a whole, and finding more sustainable ways of connecting with those who share our common humanity.
The Global Citizens’ Initiative seeks to bring together people and organizations to promote the practice of global citizenship and the building of world community. For more information visit: www.theglobalcitizensinitiative.org
Becoming a good global citizen is a difficult thing to do, and it can be incredibly overwhelming if you’re confronting your place in the world for the first time. Here are some easy things you can do in 2014 to make yourself a better global citizen.
And so on. There are some things you just can’t buy ethically, and to some extent, you’re probably going to fail in your effort to be a conscious consumer. But here’s one hugely positive step you can take: Get out your smartphone — yes, the one made with conflict minerals — and download the Buycott app. Buycott allows you to join user-created campaigns that you believe in, like “Campaign for Ecological Responsibility” or “Say No to Monsanto” or “Equality for LGBTQ.” Next, take your phone into your pantry, closet, or fridge and start scanning your products’ barcodes. Buycott will tell you — based on your campaigns — which of your products are ethically made, and which aren’t.
You may not be able to buy everything ethically, but you can certainly start.
There are a ton of other ways to travel more sustainably. National Geographic has a set of tips, as does Conservation.org. The basic rule, though, is to just do your research, and don’t be a dick.
The first is VolunteerMatch. Punch in your location, your email, and the causes you’re interested in, and each week they’ll send you a newsletter with opportunities nearby that you can sign up for. Another similar site is Idealist.org, which can do the same but with jobs as well as volunteer opportunities.
How can you know which charity to trust? Fortunately, there are a number of sites that do this work for us. The first is The Life You Can Save, an organization founded by philosopher Peter Singer that’s focused on giving your charity money the most bang for its buck. Very few charities meet their very high standards, but they hope to add to their list over time.
Another site to check out is Zidisha, a microlending site. You’ve probably by now heard of Kiva, the more famous microlending site that allows you to lend money to causes and small businesses around the developing world. Zidisha is similar but cuts out intermediary institutions, making it more of a peer-to-peer website than Kiva. Zidisha also has a much lower interest rate for borrowers, which is important for those that worry that microlending simply puts the borrowers into serious debt. Kiva, on the other hand, has a slightly higher repayment rate. Since this is, in fact, lending and not giving, you could theoretically use the same $25 over and over again endlessly, and support countless small businesses in the developing world.
For a full breakdown of the differences between Kiva and Zidisha, check out this article.
The point is that, to a critical reader — a reader who’s skeptical of the source and its bias and engages with the material instead of accepting it — nothing is harmful. Not even bullshit-heavy conservative mouthpieces like Fox News. And this isn’t even limited to nonfiction — there’s no shortage of thought-provoking fictional material out there. The goal, with your reading, is to get yourself thinking in different ways and to be more engaged in the world around you. To find new stuff, check out Goodreads, TasteKid, and Shelfari.
Getting involved in politics can mean any number of things (and don’t believe the assholes who tell you democracy ends at the voting booth, and that if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain). The quickest way is to start letting your representative know what you think about the issues that are important to you. If you’re in America, here’s a tool to find your Congressperson’s Twitter account. Here’s how to find their email. Trust me — someone’s at least gonna glance at your missive.
If you don’t like your representative, campaign for their rival. The New Organizing Institute is a great organization with a ton of awesome resources designed to help you organize for political campaigns. You can also, on a lower level, give to campaigns you approve of. It may sound boring, but politicians do operate on money, and they do need your money just as much as they need your time.
Childhood toys straddle a strange line between “encouraging fantasy” and “reflecting reality.” Ideally, a toy—especially an action figure or doll—should both inspire unbounded flights of imagination, while still being realistic and recognizable enough that a child playing with it can form some sort of attachment to the toy. That can be a tough needle to thread, and more often than not, toy makers count on the former trumping the later, opting not to produce toys that accurately depict the full spectrum of shapes, colors, and physical features that kids likely see everyday in their friends, family, and community.
Thanks to British toy maker Makies, children playing with their line of 3D-printable dolls will be able to accessorize the toys with small, but significant elements such as walking canes, hearing aids, and even birthmarks. Explains Makies in a blog post published last week:
In recent weeks, the Toy
Like Me Facebook campaign (#toylikeme) has rallied for greater
‘diversity in the toy box’, calling for toys that reflect children in more inclusive
ways than the market currently offers. Toy Like Me’s Facebook posts of toy
‘makeovers’ by parents of disabled children have been widely shared, reaching
an audience of 50,000 and rising – thanks to enthusiastic support from parents
eager for positive representation of disability in toys.
British-based toy developer MakieLab has responded to the call by creating a selection of Makie doll-sized impairment aids and accessories, using 3D printing to deliver them within days of demand.
Toy Like Me is a growing, grassroots movement, in which “parents of disabled kids makeover toys in call for better representation and diversity in the toy box,” according to their Facebook page. The toy hacks created by these crafty parents are truly impressive, but it’s one thing for a few people here and there to modify existing products. It’s quite another for an entire company to address the issue of diversity in the toy industry head on.
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CANADA MILITARY NEWS- Schools need 2 teach from ELEMENTARY LEVELS ON- about money- and how 2 save/about First Aid and CPR/About emergency and storms preparedness no matter where they are- and even their pets.... LET'S GIT R DONE CANADA - Kids and money, how young is 2 young/ showing children how 2 be safe in storms
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/12/canada-military-news-schools-need-2.html
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From a Canadian Grade IV student- our children and theirs... our glorious Canada is changing
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CANADA MILITARY NEWS: OUR LOCAL LIBRARY- The saving grace of our identity- culture -gathering place and safe place of learning… and being and remembering who we are – KENTVILLE NOVA SCOTIA LIBRARY IS THE MOST VIBRANT OF ALL PLACES FROM POOREST OF POOR TO WEALTHY- We deserve a grand Library and parking like the old Harvey’s Restaurant Bldg.- We helped raised $$$hundreds of thousands of dollars 4 better??? What is going on? OPEN ARMS- are u open yet? Christmas Parade Kentville – 4 the children- the good things of which there are many.
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/11/canada-military-news-our-local-library.html
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CANADA- hey politicians wanting elected 2015-In Canada the Environment matters not 2 the tree cutting poster posers but everyday folks who live and work and are historically part of Canada’s communities- it matters-imho- SOUTH AFRICA NAILS THE TRUTH
https://nova0000scotia.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/canada-hey-politicians-wanting-elected-2015-in-canada-the-environment-matters-not-2-the-tree-cutting-poster-posers-but-everyday-folks-who-live-and-work-and-are-historically-part-of-canadas-c/
The Best Classroom for New Readers Might Be the
Great Outdoors
“Children are growing systems, and need to have
feet grounded in the earth to develop the brain,” says the co-founder of an
outdoorsy pre-kindegarten program. Image via Flickr user Ilianna López.
Last year, a study from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that today’s
kids are more sedentary than ever before. These overbooked digital natives spend up to
10 hours a day in front of some type of screen, shuttled from home to
school to extracurricular activity, with scarce opportunity to explore the
natural world. But playing in nature, it turns out, is critical to a
child’s learning process, especially when it comes to developing reading
and writing skills.
Fortunately, some schools and
educational programs are taking this important nature-learning connection to
heart. Sarojani Rohan, co-founder of the pre-K program at Mount Madonna School, puts it this
way: “We understand that children are growing systems themselves, and need
to be surrounded by green, growing things, need to have feet grounded in the
earth to develop the brain and connect all the systems.”
Mount Madonna School is perfectly
situated to incorporate the natural world into its instruction, perched as it
is high up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, surrounded by the oak woodlands of
Mount Madonna State Park. “When we start teaching reading, we want
children to bridge the inside world and the outside world,” says Rohan. “An
important part of literacy is naming things. [Words] are an abstract
representation that adults take for granted. Literacy is a process.”
Children must learn that
abstractions add up to meaning. Rohan’s program teaches preschoolers to “read”
the world around them. “I take them out on the mountain and we learn the
difference between raccoon tracks, turkey tracks, and dog tracks. We read the
clouds—what does it mean when the clouds are moving fast? We read the
landscape. I’m expanding the idea of what literacy is; nature is concrete,
real, and right in front of them.”
Next, when the children are ready
to begin writing their own names, her students are asked to pick a word a day
that is important to them. “Anything they choose,” says Rohan. “A food they
like, a favorite animal, a person. Then we write that, they trace it, and
practice reading it. The idea that the words are theirs is a huge step in them
owning their own learning.”
TimberNook nature
camps, billed as “the ultimate sensory experience” for children, builds on this
owned-learning approach by taking a look at what the whole body is doing when
picking up new skills. As TimberNook founder Angela Hanscom has said, “Children are
going to class with bodies that are less prepared to learn than ever before.
With sensory systems not quite working right, they are asked to sit and pay
attention.”
Hanscom comes from the world
of occupational therapy, and originally developed TimberNook as an
extension of that practice. So by tasking kids with exploring their
worlds visually, she organically helps them exercise their vestibular
systems, which she says “support all six eye muscles. A child might have
fine visual acuity, but their eye muscles might not be working together, so
they have trouble reading or scanning.”
TimberNook’s whole-body
approach to learning “immerses children in a bunch of different
senses at once, which nature provides,” says Hanscom. “Wind in your face, sun
beating down on you, birds tweeting all around you—this helps with spatial
awareness,” along with many other crucial learning skills, she adds.
Richard Louv, author of The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from
Nature-Deficit Disorder, writes frequently of the
relationship between nature and learning, and suggests that the kind of
independent exploration that occurs in nature is invaluable. “One of
my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels
as if she is meeting someone new,” writes Louv. “Giving a name to something is
a way of knowing it.”
Literacy is more than simply rote
memorization, after all. “As the brain develops with real-life
experiences, then you can come into a classroom and tell stories, which engages
the child’s inner picturing. This is critical to reading later on,” Rohan says.
Louv writes, “Reading stimulates
the ecology of the imagination… Nature may be the key to getting kids to
develop a love of reading that will last.” Rohan puts it a bit
more simply: “When in doubt, go outside, is what Louv would
say.”
We
think words mean power, and so should you. Through Project
Literacy, GOOD and Pearson are building partnerships for a
more literate future. Follow the #ProjectLiteracy hashtag and
visit good.is or projectliteracy.com to
tell us your stories, help us ask the right questions, and take action in your
community.
--------------
--------------
Canada- from the streets-
What does it mean to be a good Canadian citizen?
by News Staff
Posted Feb 16, 2012 7:45 am PDT
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Being a good citizen is about more than just waving the flag or obeying the law. News1130 hit the street, finding out what it means to be a true Canadian.
“It’s accepting everyone,” says Pushpa, originally from Nepal. “That’s what makes me proud to be a Canadian — the inclusiveness. That’s the beauty of Canada.”
Acceptance, equality and inclusiveness are indeed high on the list in Canadians on Citizenship, a national survey from Environics. It suggests 95 per cent of us believe being a good Canadian citizen is about treating men and women equally. Eighty-two per cent feel it is about accepting those who are different, while 65 per cent say it is about respecting other religions.
“I think one of the central values has to be having a sense of tolerance,” adds Ryan, who feels Canada is also a country of mediators. “But I’m concerned our present government is taking away from what are really the core values of most Canadians, trying to somehow manipulate that into a more aggressive tone. I think what has really built Canada into a great country is being challenged right now.”
The survey suggests Canadians also embrace community, acts of kindness, openness, the environment and compromise.
“The results couldn’t be more Canadian — we share an overwhelming consensus of what it means to be a good Canadian citizen,” says Michael Adams, President of Environics Institute. “Obeying the laws and paying taxes are important, but they’re not enough. This is why the world wants the Canadian experiment to succeed.”
Other key findings include that most Canadians believe that everyone — regardless of whether they’re Canadian or foreign-born — can be a good citizen; newcomers are very nearly as likely as native-born citizens to fully-feel like a good citizen in this country (75 per cent versus 78 per cent), and are even prouder to be Canadian (88 per cent versus 82 per cent).
http://www.news1130.com/2012/02/16/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-good-canadian-citizen/
Most Canadians feel immigrants
are just as likely to be good citizens as people who were born here,
a recent Environics Institute survey suggests.
Canadians also don't appear to have problems with dual citizenship or with Canadian citizens living abroad, according to the telephone survey, which the Environics Institute says is the first poll to directly ask Canadians their views on citizenship.
A group made up of five national organizations – CBC, the Environics Institute, Maytree, The Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the RBC Foundation – commissioned the public opinion poll, which asked over 2,000 Canadians what they think are the characteristics of a good citizen and other questions about citizenship.
"It's not only to take what the country offers but to give back, as well."
Although she did not take part in the survey, Jhangiryan echoes the views of many of those who responded to the poll.
When asked what makes a good citizen, the top five responses were: obeying laws, actively participating in the community, helping other people, being tolerant of others and sharing or adopting Canadian values.
But when asked to list what they did to be good citizens, respondents cited volunteer work, being kind/generous to others, paying taxes, obeying laws and voting.
The survey suggests Canadians have a broad, inclusive view of citizenship and see immigrants as their equals: nearly 9 out of every 10 respondents agreed that a person born outside Canada is just as likely to be a good citizen as someone born here.
"There's no real evidence of people feeling threatened or a sense that, 'Well, people can come live here from other countries, but they're not quite the same,'" said Keith Neuman, executive director of the Environics Institute.
Usha George, dean of Ryerson University's Faculty of Community Services, says the survey's findings confirm a lot of what those working with new Canadians know already.
The willingness of Canadians to not view a person's foreign background as an impediment to citizenship is a product of the country's multicultural policies and the visible effect of immigrants on the economy, George said.
Integration of immigrants has worked in Canada because the government has funded programs that teach immigrants about Canadian values and society has adapted its institutions to accommodate diversity.
"The mutual recognition that we should be respectful to each other and celebrate diversity in a genuine way, those values permeate the whole society," said George, whose faculty trains many of those who provide social and other services to new immigrants.
For Amal Ibrahim, a Palestinian who became a citizen last year along with her two children, Canadian citizenship is primarily about respecting differences.
"It's a great diverse culture where people learn how to live in harmony with each other while they have different ideas, different religions and different backgrounds," she said.
Tolerance of others who are different was among the top five behaviours survey respondents considered a "very important" part of being a good citizen. Others were:
"People might think … that newcomers are coming [into]
this country … with their own sense of what it means to be a citizen, and they don't really buy into the same perspective that native-born Canadians have," he said.
"And this research pretty clearly suggests that they're largely the same perspective, and the more somebody is in this country, the more immigrants buy into the native-born view."
Canadians are generally satisfied with the rules for obtaining citizenship, the survey suggests. Only 26 per cent of respondents said the rules were not strict enough. Six per cent felt the rules were too strict, though that number tripled for permanent residents.
Canada's willingness to allow multiple citizenships also got broad approval in the survey: 71 per cent of those surveyed felt Canadians should be allowed to hold dual citizenship.
That sentiment was even higher among 18- to 44-year-olds, with 80 per cent supporting dual citizenship, but lower for those 60 and over, at 58 per cent.
"I am equally proud of both citizenships," said Natasha Nikolovska-Angelova, 32, who became a Canadian citizen last April. "Macedonia is more like my mother … the country where I was raised, and Canada is the country I chose to live in. It's like the spouse you choose.… It's the country of my future."
Nikolovska-Angelova is part of the roughly 2.8 per cent of Canadians who hold at least one other citizenship.
Most of those surveyed also didn't have a problem with Canadians living abroad. Sixty-six per cent of respondents who were born in Canada said it was generally a good thing to allow Canadian citizens to live abroad, compared to 55 per cent of respondents born outside of Canada.
The survey of 2,376 adults was conducted between Nov.18 and Dec. 17 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points 19 times out of 20 (+/- 4.3 percentage points for the foreign-born subsample group). Only households with landlines were surveyed.
AND THE USA
-----------------------
--------------
Canada- from the streets-
What does it mean to be a good Canadian citizen?
by News Staff
Posted Feb 16, 2012 7:45 am PDT
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Being a good citizen is about more than just waving the flag or obeying the law. News1130 hit the street, finding out what it means to be a true Canadian.
“It’s accepting everyone,” says Pushpa, originally from Nepal. “That’s what makes me proud to be a Canadian — the inclusiveness. That’s the beauty of Canada.”
Acceptance, equality and inclusiveness are indeed high on the list in Canadians on Citizenship, a national survey from Environics. It suggests 95 per cent of us believe being a good Canadian citizen is about treating men and women equally. Eighty-two per cent feel it is about accepting those who are different, while 65 per cent say it is about respecting other religions.
“I think one of the central values has to be having a sense of tolerance,” adds Ryan, who feels Canada is also a country of mediators. “But I’m concerned our present government is taking away from what are really the core values of most Canadians, trying to somehow manipulate that into a more aggressive tone. I think what has really built Canada into a great country is being challenged right now.”
The survey suggests Canadians also embrace community, acts of kindness, openness, the environment and compromise.
“The results couldn’t be more Canadian — we share an overwhelming consensus of what it means to be a good Canadian citizen,” says Michael Adams, President of Environics Institute. “Obeying the laws and paying taxes are important, but they’re not enough. This is why the world wants the Canadian experiment to succeed.”
Other key findings include that most Canadians believe that everyone — regardless of whether they’re Canadian or foreign-born — can be a good citizen; newcomers are very nearly as likely as native-born citizens to fully-feel like a good citizen in this country (75 per cent versus 78 per cent), and are even prouder to be Canadian (88 per cent versus 82 per cent).
http://www.news1130.com/2012/02/16/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-good-canadian-citizen/
Immigrants the proudest Canadians, poll suggests
Environics Institute survey 1st to probe Canadians' views on citizenship
Canadians also don't appear to have problems with dual citizenship or with Canadian citizens living abroad, according to the telephone survey, which the Environics Institute says is the first poll to directly ask Canadians their views on citizenship.
A group made up of five national organizations – CBC, the Environics Institute, Maytree, The Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the RBC Foundation – commissioned the public opinion poll, which asked over 2,000 Canadians what they think are the characteristics of a good citizen and other questions about citizenship.
Armenian-Canadian
Sara Jhangiryan became a citizen last year and says giving back to the country
that let her in is an important part of her idea of citizenship. (Roma
Andrusiak/CBC)
"To be a good citizen, it
means to contribute to the society, to obey the laws of the country, to help
other citizens, to volunteer, and it's a rewarding feeling when you do all
those things," said Sara
Jhangiryan, an Armenian-born resident of Toronto who became a
Canadian citizen last year."It's not only to take what the country offers but to give back, as well."
Although she did not take part in the survey, Jhangiryan echoes the views of many of those who responded to the poll.
When asked what makes a good citizen, the top five responses were: obeying laws, actively participating in the community, helping other people, being tolerant of others and sharing or adopting Canadian values.
But when asked to list what they did to be good citizens, respondents cited volunteer work, being kind/generous to others, paying taxes, obeying laws and voting.
The survey suggests Canadians have a broad, inclusive view of citizenship and see immigrants as their equals: nearly 9 out of every 10 respondents agreed that a person born outside Canada is just as likely to be a good citizen as someone born here.
"There's no real evidence of people feeling threatened or a sense that, 'Well, people can come live here from other countries, but they're not quite the same,'" said Keith Neuman, executive director of the Environics Institute.
Policies, profits help integration
When it comes to immigration and citizenship, the views of the majority of Canadians born in the country and the 20 per cent born outside it are largely aligned. Canadian-born and foreign-born respondents were equally likely to feel fully like citizens (78 per cent versus 75 per cent).Usha George, dean of Ryerson University's Faculty of Community Services, says the survey's findings confirm a lot of what those working with new Canadians know already.
The willingness of Canadians to not view a person's foreign background as an impediment to citizenship is a product of the country's multicultural policies and the visible effect of immigrants on the economy, George said.
Integration of immigrants has worked in Canada because the government has funded programs that teach immigrants about Canadian values and society has adapted its institutions to accommodate diversity.
"The mutual recognition that we should be respectful to each other and celebrate diversity in a genuine way, those values permeate the whole society," said George, whose faculty trains many of those who provide social and other services to new immigrants.
Gender equality, obeying laws important to citizenship
Whatever Canada is doing, it seems to be positively influencing immigrants' views of the country, the survey suggests: 88 per cent of respondents who were born outside Canada said they were very proud to be Canadian, compared with 81 per cent of those born here.
Vikram
Kewalramani immigrated to Canada from India in 2006 and is now a Canadian
citizen living in Toronto. (Roma Andrusiak/CBC)
"Canadians who were not
born in Canada are more proud than naturally born Canadians simply because
we had the choice of being Canadian," said Vikram
Kewalramani, who immigrated to Canada in 2006 from India. "It
wasn't something that, literally, was a birthright. We consider it a
privilege."For Amal Ibrahim, a Palestinian who became a citizen last year along with her two children, Canadian citizenship is primarily about respecting differences.
"It's a great diverse culture where people learn how to live in harmony with each other while they have different ideas, different religions and different backgrounds," she said.
Tolerance of others who are different was among the top five behaviours survey respondents considered a "very important" part of being a good citizen. Others were:
- Treating men and women equally (95 per cent ranked this "very important").
- Following Canada's laws (89 per cent).
- Voting in elections (82 per cent – the same as tolerance of others).
- Protecting the environment (80 per cent).
"People might think … that newcomers are coming [into]
this country … with their own sense of what it means to be a citizen, and they don't really buy into the same perspective that native-born Canadians have," he said.
"And this research pretty clearly suggests that they're largely the same perspective, and the more somebody is in this country, the more immigrants buy into the native-born view."
Canadians are generally satisfied with the rules for obtaining citizenship, the survey suggests. Only 26 per cent of respondents said the rules were not strict enough. Six per cent felt the rules were too strict, though that number tripled for permanent residents.
Regional differences
The survey revealed some regional differences in which behaviours Canadians consider "very important" to good citizenship. Read how Canada compares East to West.Canada's willingness to allow multiple citizenships also got broad approval in the survey: 71 per cent of those surveyed felt Canadians should be allowed to hold dual citizenship.
That sentiment was even higher among 18- to 44-year-olds, with 80 per cent supporting dual citizenship, but lower for those 60 and over, at 58 per cent.
"I am equally proud of both citizenships," said Natasha Nikolovska-Angelova, 32, who became a Canadian citizen last April. "Macedonia is more like my mother … the country where I was raised, and Canada is the country I chose to live in. It's like the spouse you choose.… It's the country of my future."
Nikolovska-Angelova is part of the roughly 2.8 per cent of Canadians who hold at least one other citizenship.
Most of those surveyed also didn't have a problem with Canadians living abroad. Sixty-six per cent of respondents who were born in Canada said it was generally a good thing to allow Canadian citizens to live abroad, compared to 55 per cent of respondents born outside of Canada.
The survey of 2,376 adults was conducted between Nov.18 and Dec. 17 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points 19 times out of 20 (+/- 4.3 percentage points for the foreign-born subsample group). Only households with landlines were surveyed.
With files
from Roma Andrusiak, Sujata Berry
AND THE USA
A
citizen
is a member of a community, state, or nation. Citizens have rights
and responsibilities as family members, as students in a classroom and
school, and as members of their community, state, and nation.
Being a good citizen means:
following rules and laws
being responsible and respectful helping others
At Home
Rights: Children have the right to the basic
needs of life, including food, shelter, and clothing. They also have the
right to live in a safe home where they are protected and can receive love,
comfort and care. All family members have the right to be treated with
courtesy and respect. A healthy lifestyle that includes protection and the
right to health and medical care should be the right of every child.
Rules: Families set their own rules for the
protection and well-being of each member of the family. Rules are usually set
by the adults who want to make sure that their children stay healthy and are
safe. Rules help things to run smoothly in the family. Rules may change as
children get older and have more responsibilities.
Rules may involve bedtimes, household chores, visiting friends, or playing outside. Working and playing by the rules helps families manage their time together and live together peacefully. Cooperation is important in families.
Responsibilities: Being a responsible family member
means knowing and following the family's rules. It means helping parents or
care-givers and cooperating with brothers and sisters. It is the
responsibility of family members to be honest and fair to each other.
Families should work together while respecting each member of the family as
an individual.
At School
Rights: All students have the right to be
treated fairly and with respect. They have the right to learn in an orderly,
safe classroom. Students have the right to be encouraged and challenged to do
their best.
Rules: Our classrooms and schools have rules to
keep students and staff members safe and healthy. They help to make it easier
for everyone to learn in a pleasant setting. It is important for every
student to follow school and classroom rules and not upset other students by
interfering with their learning.
Responsibilities: It is the responsibility of all
students to attend school and try their hardest to learn. A
responsible person wants to be the best he or she can be. Being responsible
means making decisions about what is right and what is wrong and then
choosing to do and say the right thing. It means respecting the
rights of other students and listening to their ideas. When we accept
individual differences we learn that everyone has something to offer.
Students can show respect for others by sharing, and waiting to take their
turn. Sometimes respect means making compromises. This means you don't
always get your way when solving problems or differences. It means doing what
is best for the majority.
Responsible students are careful with their property and belongings. They also care for things that belong to others. They help keep their school and classroom clean and orderly and willingly help others. Joining clubs and participating in school activities and events helps us to be better citizens. By working together we learn respect.
.
In Your Community, State, and Nation
Rights: All individuals are given certain rights
by the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights (See http://www.studyzone.org/testprep/ss5/b/valsamdeml.cfm
.) that cannot be taken away. A good citizen does not interfere with or take
away the rights of their neighbors or other members of the community.
Rules and Laws: It is important for everyone to
follow rules and obey laws. Laws create fairness and protect the health and
safety of all individuals. They protect our freedom and democracy. We must
obey laws or pay consequences. Good citizenship for
adults also means serving on jury duty and paying taxes.
Responsibilities: As an adult, being an informed
citizen about our government and community is an important responsibility.
Voting in elections is just one responsibility of all good citizens. Volunteering
to help in the community, joining worthwhile community events or
organizations, and helping people who need assistance are other
responsibilities. It is important for citizens to be active in their
community and help others whenever possible.
There are many ways for children to be good citizens too. Young people can volunteer to help clean up their community by adopting a street or highway, or cleaning up a vacant lot. They might visit hospitals or nursing homes and share their talents or simply chat with those who need a friend. Children might offer to help a neighbor, or mow a lawn or shovel a driveway for an elderly person. By volunteering and helping others, people build better communities. Being involved makes volunteers feel good about themselves too.
Definitions
|
||
citizen: a person who
is a member of a community, state, or country
|
||
compromise: an
agreement made by finding a middle ground through give and take
|
||
majority: more than
half of the people
|
||
consequences: the
effect of an action; what happens to someone because he or she has done
something
|
||
volunteer: people who
give their time to help others without getting paid
|
||
Copyright
© 2001-2011 Oswego
City School District
Elementary Test Prep Center Studyzone.org |
||
-----------------------
What Cultural Differences Can Reveal About the Way We Learn
by
May 13, 2015
Beijing at Twilight. A longitudinal study
is comparing students at USC with those at Beijing Normal University in
China—two groups with different ideals about when and how to
appropriately express emotion. Image via Flickr user Jonathan Kos-Read.
How does one learn to read? If you’ve helped a child of your own learn
her letters, you probably would tell me about words and letter sounds; how
you helped her make the connection between language and
symbols. But two more vital factors may be at play that you’ve
likely never considered: emotion and culture. New work from Mary-Helen
Immordino-Yang’s lab at the University of Southern California (USC)
Rossier School of Education has revealed that emotions powerfully
shape the way that we experience the world around us—as well as how
we learn from it. What’s more, emotion is strongly influenced by an
individual’s culture and social environment.
Says Immordino-Yang:
“There’s a lot of evidence—and we all intuitively sense—that individuals
construct different kinds of meaning out of emotional and social
situations. We wanted to get a handle on the ways in which that
meaning-making process influences how kids come to experience the world and how
they learn. We’ve long assumed that emotion had no place in
learning. That, in fact, it may actually interfere with it. But
studies have shown that that is a false assumption. It’s impossible—actually
neurobiologically impossible—to have any kind of complex, meaningful thought
without some emotional content in it. We are biologically built not to
waste energy thinking about things we don’t care about.”
Immordino-Yang and colleagues are currently in the middle of a
cross-cultural longitudinal study, comparing students at USC
with those at Beijing Normal University in China—two groups with different
ideals about when and how to appropriately express emotion. For
example, typical Chinese culture puts emphasis on being less
emotive, while Americans are generally encouraged to be more
outwardly expressive. In the first phase of the study, participants’
brains were scanned as they viewed 40 true documentary-style narratives about
extraordinary teenagers from around the globe. The stories were intended
to elicit an emotional response: compassion for physical pain, admiration
for a physical skill, empathy for social pain, or admiration for a
virtue. The researchers discovered some intriguing brain differences from
the two different cultural groups in the anterior insula, the area of the brain
that maps visceral states and makes us aware of our feelings in the context of
our environment, suggesting that our ability to construct conscious
experiences of social emotion is influenced by the culture in which we are
raised.
“There were no differences at all in how much these young adults’ brains
were activating when they responded to our emotional stories—and no differences
in the strengths of emotions that participants in the different cultural groups
reported,” says Immordino-Yang. “But there was a strong cultural
difference in how patterns of neural activity corresponded in real-time with
participants’ experience—in how people became aware of their emotion.”
Guinevere Eden, a scientist at Georgetown University’s Center for the Study
of Learning says the study’s findings so far
are compelling. Her own work, for example, has demonstrated that
unlike American children, who learn to read mainly by listening, Chinese
children’s reading abilities are strongly tied to their writing
skills because of the language’s particular meaning-based alphabet. So an
understanding of both cultural norms and practices when it comes to language
acquisition—and the emotions such practices may influence—may help us develop
better interventions for helping individual children who may be struggling with
literacy in the future.
“Reading is a cultural skill, it’s uniquely human—it’s essentially a very
special skill acquisition that is critical to academic outcomes,” says
Eden. “But some aspects of learning to read are trickier than
others. And it would make sense that emotional and cultural aspects would
influence what is a very complex process.”
Immordino-Yang says that the education system could really benefit from
harnessing more emotion in teaching practices when it comes to reading or
learning about other academic subjects. Finding ways to make students care
may help them better learn the things they need to succeed. Adds Immordino-Yang:
“Think about all those four-year-old kids who fall in love with
dinosaurs—who want to know all about them. It’s not that we expect all
these kids to become paleontologists one day. But they are demonstrating
an intrinsic satisfaction in becoming an expert in this domain. Nobody is
drilling them on dinosaur flash cards. They want to learn and they can
learn about dinosaurs because teachers and parents will point them to
resources, show them how to use them, and then let them see what it feels like
to follow their interests. Such experiences shouldn’t be limited to
preschool. We should provide kids of all ages with really rich learning
environments where there are resources and opportunities for them to really
engage, and experts to help steer them. Schools don’t emphasize that
feeling of satisfaction enough, that feeling of learning about something you
really care about. And that’s the kind of learning we should be
supporting all through the school years in age-appropriate ways.”
But beyond that, Immordino-Yang argues that new results about emotion,
culture, and the brain challenge many assumptions that scientists and educators
have about how human beings learn in general. They give us new ways to
consider teaching practices and academic environments, she says—and raise new
questions to investigate. She says:
“We’re learning that what’s happening on the outside—the same story, the
same lesson—can be interpreted differently, experienced differently, by
different learners. So we really need to start to unpack the roles of
school culture and individual variability when we think about how children
learn. We need to understand that the way kids feel matters. Their
embodied experience in the classroom powerfully influences what children take
away and how they grow both academically and personally. What science is
teaching us, in short, is the need to understand the holistic emotional
experience of a person, and the need to account for subjective experience when
we design and evaluate educational environments. Doing so can hopefully
inform more effective teaching practices.”
We think words mean power, and so should you. Through Project Literacy, GOOD and Pearson are
building partnerships for a more literate future. Follow the #ProjectLiteracy hashtag and
visit good.is or projectliteracy.com to tell us your
stories, help us ask the right questions, and take action in your community.
---
----------
Learning How to Read Needs to Be More Hands-On. No, Really.
by
April 15, 2015
Science says that to learn new words (“explode,” for
example), it helps to involve the hands in the process. Image via MakerEd
Two years ago, the
Albermarle County school system in Charlottesville, Virginia, moved forward
with a rather bold experiment: They abandoned traditional explicit
instruction in all summer school classrooms, replacing classic lesson plans
with student-directed summer making programs, run as part of Maker Ed's Maker Corps program—an educational subset of
the “maker movement” (a widespread cultural push to teach both kids and
adults more hands-on and do-it-yourself skills).
“I have never believed
that literacy is a matter of decoding alphabetic text,” says Ira Socol,
Assistant Director for Educational Technology and Innovation for Albermale. And
so far, he says, the summer making programs seem to be proving him right.
“I was having this conversation with a child from rural poverty who was at
summer school because he’d failed (badly) the state’s third-grade reading
assessment,” Socol says. “He was building a suspension bridge from
newspaper, and he said to me, ‘You have to understand, when you’re making a
suspension bridge, the cables always have to be taut.’”
“Taut,” of course,
was a word the student had struggled with on an assessment just a few
months earlier. “Once language has purpose,” says Socol, “we can make
literacy work.”
Increasing
research suggests that to connect words with purpose, it helps
to directly work with the hands; the connection between our
hands and our words is a very old one. In his book The Hand:
How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture,
neurologist Frank Wilson argues
that the evolution of our hands shaped the evolution of our brains, not the
other way around. And this perspective is particularly critical for language
development.
In The Hand,
Wilson highlights findings that point to how “the verbal behavior of
a child undergoes a long metamorphosis during which words that [signify
objects] come increasingly to be manipulated and combined, just as real objects
are manipulated and combined by the child.”
Image via Flickr user Philippa Willitts
So block play
may be more serious than we ever imagined. What Wilson’s
research makes clear is how little attention mainstream education pays to the
role that our hands have in learning how to communicate. Experiential
learning, especially when it comes to our hands, is a deep but fairly new area
of research, and its implications for childhood literacy are enormous. Wilson
points out that:
“Every new human body,
equipped with H. sapiens sapiens genes, is ‘adapted’ for this
mode of learning. Touching, handling, taking apart, assembling, dropping,
throwing, tasting, dropping into water, talking to, signaling and pretending
with, carrying, cooking, etc. This is what children do with and through their
hands, beginning in the first year of life and continuing to the end. The hand
has become the central player in the human sensorimotor system—the closest
thing we have to a ‘center of personal agency.’”
This approach to
language development runs counter to how we’re used to thinking of literacy.
But some curriculum developers have been paying attention. Developmental
Studies Center (now called Center for the Collaborative Classroom), a small
education publisher based out of Oakland, developed a vocabulary program for
early learners called Making Meaning that incorporates
constant use of physical action and description (a teacher might act out the
word “ecstatic,” for example), and repeatedly calls on students to relate
vocabulary words to their own lives.
The philosophy behind
their program, says Dennis Binkley, an Associate Director of Program
Development, comes straight from the work of education researchers like Dr.
Isabel Beck, whose focus is on robust vocabulary instruction driven by
experiential learning. “What it means to know a word is clearly a complicated,
multifaceted matter, and one that has serious implications for how words are
taught,” Beck says in her book Bringing Words to Life. Getting it
right is crucial. She mentions studies that reveal how “vocabulary is tightly
related to reading comprehension across the age span.”
In piloting Making
Meaning, Binkley worked to incorporate teacher feedback that related
how eager children typically were to use words that enabled them talk
about their experiences. “So it was an effective way to both engage the
students and help them learn and remember the words.” The approach is
especially effective for English Language Learners, who, he points out, might
struggle with verbal learning and discussion and “benefit from a kinesthetic
approach to learning and instruction.”
Dr. Susan Goldin-Meadow
also focuses on this area, especially when it comes to gestures. In
her 2011 TEDx talk,
she showed not just how we use gestures to communicate, but how gestures
themselves can change the way we think. Goldin-Meadow’s research touches on the
importance of gestures in, for example, corrupting eyewitness testimony. The
way we use our hands changes the way we perceive reality—as well as how we
create understanding in our own brains. Goldin-Meadow’s work shows
that “gestures not only reveal what is on a child’s mind, but can also
help change a child’s mind in order to support instruction and learning”
[Ed. note: Emphasis in original.]
Making the link between
this view of language—that it is a tool to be manipulated rather than an
abstract concept—to how our hands can strengthen literacy is a powerful but not
necessarily a new idea. The Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s work has long
been instrumental in shaping child-centric or child-led programs. Vygotsky
maintained that language was simply one of the tools we use to organize and
mediate our experiences of the world, and that learning, to be effective, must
be based on a child’s practical activities in the real world.
Tools of the
Mind, which uses
a Vygotskian approach to develop curricula involving make-believe play and “scaffolded
writing” activities for kindergarteners and preschoolers, also uses
symbols to promote self-regulation and executive function in young children. Tools
of the Mind is often praised for teaching children to manage emotions
and expectations, but it doesn’t just have an impact on classroom behavior. One
low-income school that shared data with Tools of the Mind revealed that
the percentage of students reading on or above grade level rose from 60 to 90
percent after the program had been in place for just one year.
Seeing words as
manipulatable objects and our hands as the driver of our learning, is
a way of thinking that can be slippery to get a handle on. Hands-on learning
often needs more attention from educators than rote memorization and decoding,
for example, and requires more thoughtful, non-standardized assessments, but
looking at the examples like those from Binkley and Socol it’s clear that this
approach to literacy comes from a deeper and more effective understanding
of how humans use language and what for.
The best path to
literacy might be very simple: use your hands and know that the words will
follow.
We think
words mean power, and so should you. Through Project Literacy,
GOOD and Pearson are building partnerships for a more literate future. Follow
the #ProjectLiteracy hashtag and visit good.is
or projectliteracy.com to tell us your
stories, help us ask the right questions, and take action in your community.
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THE VOICE- Sawyer Fredericks and the youth of The Voice allowed the world 2 see the absolute innocence and purity and intelligence and beauty of the real deal American youth of 2day.... millions of us old folks tuned in.... we were in awe at the calibre and real raw and righteous talent.... Megan was also incredible... but Sawyer and the youth stole the show and kept it... rightfully so. America- why are u hiding your decent and wondrous innocent youth
What does it take to be a good school citizen?
How can students become better citizens at school? Engaging, age-appropriate program hosts help students understand five pillars of good school citizenship:
- being respectful of other people and their property
- being respectful of school property
- following school rules
- displaying good character (responsibility, honesty, good listening, kindness)
- giving back to the school community.
AND..
Questions about homeschooling
in Canada ... (1)A foreign national may not work or study ...
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You are a child of the universe- like the trees, the stars and the sky... u matter
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What Does it mean to be a Global Citizen?
As technology advances and governance is
increasingly conducted beyond the parameters of the nation-state, the concept
of global citizenship remains mysteriously absent. What does the term mean in
historical terms and what practices might help its evolution into a coherent
and democratic political practice? A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices. Such a definition of global citizenship is based on two assumptions which this article explores: (a) that there is such a thing as an emerging world community to which people can identify; and (b) that such a community has a nascent set of values and practices.
Historically human beings always have organized themselves into groups and communities based on shared identity. Such identity gets forged in response to a variety of human needs - economic, political, religious, and social. As group identities grow stronger, those who hold them organize into communities, articulate shared values, and build governance structures that reflect their beliefs.
Today the forces of global engagement are helping some people identify themselves as global citizens, meaning that they have a sense of belonging to a world community. This growing global identity in large part is made possible by the forces of modern information, communication, and transportation technologies. In increasing ways these technologies are strengthening our ability to connect to the rest of the world: through the internet; through participation in the global economy; through the ways in which world-wide environmental factors play havoc with our lives; through the empathy we feel when we see pictures of humanitarian disasters, civil conflicts and wars in other countries; or through the ease with which we can travel and visit other parts of the world.
Those who see ourselves as global citizens are not abandoning other identities; such as allegiances to our countries, ethnicities, and political beliefs. These traditional identities give meaning to our lives and will continue to help shape who we are. However, as a result of living in a globalized world, we find we have an added layer of responsibility. We have concern and a share of responsibility for what is happening to the planet as a whole, and we are members of a world-wide community of people who share this concern.
The values being proposed for the world community are not esoteric and obscure. They are the values that world leaders have been advocating for the past 100 years. They include human rights, religious pluralism, gender equity, the rule of law, environmental protection, sustainable worldwide economic growth, poverty alleviation, prevention and cessation of conflicts between countries, elimination of weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian assistance, and preservation of cultural diversity.
Since World War II efforts have been undertaken to develop global policies and institutional structures that can support these enduring values. Such efforts have been made by international organizations, sovereign states, transnational corporations, NGOs, international professional associations and others. They have resulted in a growing body of international agreements, treaties, legal statutes, and technical standards.
Yet, despite such efforts, we have a long way to go before there is a global policy and institutional infrastructure that can support our emerging world community and the values it stands for. There are significant gaps of policy in many domains, large questions about how to get countries and organizations to comply with existing policy frameworks, and issues of accountability and transparency. Most importantly, from a global citizenship perspective, there is an absence of mechanisms that enable greater citizen participation in the growing number of institutions practicing global governance.
Governance at the global level, for the most part, is in the hands of the representatives of sovereign states and technocrats. Global governance organizational leaders are usually distant and removed from those that their institutions serve. Therefore most people feel disconnected and alienated from the global governance arena, making it difficult to build a sense of grass-roots community at the global level.
There is an urgent need for a cadre of citizen leaders who can play activist roles in forming world community. Such global citizenship activism can take many forms, including: advocating, at the local and global level, for policy and programmatic solutions that address global problems; participating in the decision-making processes of global governance organizations; adopting and promoting changes in behavior that help protect the earth’s environment; contributing to world-wide humanitarian relief efforts; and organizing events that celebrate the diversity in world music and art, culture and spiritual traditions.
Instinctively, most of us feel a connection to others around the world facing similar challenges to ourselves, yet we lack adequate tools, resources, and support to act on this emotion. Our ways of thinking and being are still colored by the trapping of old allegiances and ways of seeing things that no longer are as valid as they used to be. Nonetheless, there is a longing to pull back the veil that keeps us from more clearly seeing the world as a whole, and finding more sustainable ways of connecting with those who share our common humanity.
The Global Citizens’ Initiative seeks to bring together people and organizations to promote the practice of global citizenship and the building of world community. For more information visit: www.theglobalcitizensinitiative.org
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6 ways to be
a better global citizen
One of
the side effects
of international travel is that you lose the luxury of thinking of yourself
only as the citizen of your hometown or country. Unless you cloister yourself
in a walled resort, you’re going to come into contact with citizens of other
countries and places, and you’re suddenly going to realize how closely your
lives are linked — your politics, your economies, your environment. Becoming a good global citizen is a difficult thing to do, and it can be incredibly overwhelming if you’re confronting your place in the world for the first time. Here are some easy things you can do in 2014 to make yourself a better global citizen.
1. Learn about the stuff you buy.
Look, for the time being, we live in a capitalist’s world. We’re not getting rid of consumerism and rapacious free markets any time soon. But as a relatively affluent member of a relatively affluent country, you have the ability to buy your food, clothes, and gadgets not because they are cheap, but because they are ethical. Of course, it’s insanely difficult to be a totally ethical consumer: Should I eat meat? How do I find locally made gym shoes? Does the company that makes my Extra Virgin Olive Oil actively campaign against gay rights? Does my bubble tea company pay its employees a living wage?And so on. There are some things you just can’t buy ethically, and to some extent, you’re probably going to fail in your effort to be a conscious consumer. But here’s one hugely positive step you can take: Get out your smartphone — yes, the one made with conflict minerals — and download the Buycott app. Buycott allows you to join user-created campaigns that you believe in, like “Campaign for Ecological Responsibility” or “Say No to Monsanto” or “Equality for LGBTQ.” Next, take your phone into your pantry, closet, or fridge and start scanning your products’ barcodes. Buycott will tell you — based on your campaigns — which of your products are ethically made, and which aren’t.
You may not be able to buy everything ethically, but you can certainly start.
2. Travel sustainably.
Unfortunately, travel can leave a pretty huge carbon footprint if you’re not careful. So how can you get from Point A to Point B without poisoning the lungs of your great-great grandchildren? If you have the time, try traveling by bike, or walking, or kayaking, or sailing, but if you need to be moving a little faster than that, check this out: The Union of Concerned Scientists put together a guide a few years back for traveling green. Turns out, the best way is one of the cheapest: Take a motor coach. You can see the best travel methods ranked here (they depend on the number of people you’re traveling with and the distance you’re going), but the worst ways to travel are to fly first class or drive in an SUV.There are a ton of other ways to travel more sustainably. National Geographic has a set of tips, as does Conservation.org. The basic rule, though, is to just do your research, and don’t be a dick.
3. Volunteer locally.
The popular maxim is “Think Globally, Act Locally.” If you’re trying to help make a better world, the best place to start is in your own little corner. One way to do that is to volunteer. If you’re at all like me, you always mean to but never quite get around to it. Here are a few resources to help you get over that hurdle.The first is VolunteerMatch. Punch in your location, your email, and the causes you’re interested in, and each week they’ll send you a newsletter with opportunities nearby that you can sign up for. Another similar site is Idealist.org, which can do the same but with jobs as well as volunteer opportunities.
4. Donate, but donate smart.
Philanthropy is important to being a good global citizen, but it’s far from the most important thing you can do, and is also one of the most fraught decisions you can make. You may have read the excellent Three Cups of Tea a few years back, about an American named Greg Mortenson who built schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was an awesome story, so naturally a ton of people rushed to donate to Mortenson’s charity, the Central Asia Institute. Problem was, a lot of Mortenson’s story was a lie, and his charity was horribly managed. So if you donated money, it likely wasn’t going towards building those schools.How can you know which charity to trust? Fortunately, there are a number of sites that do this work for us. The first is The Life You Can Save, an organization founded by philosopher Peter Singer that’s focused on giving your charity money the most bang for its buck. Very few charities meet their very high standards, but they hope to add to their list over time.
Another site to check out is Zidisha, a microlending site. You’ve probably by now heard of Kiva, the more famous microlending site that allows you to lend money to causes and small businesses around the developing world. Zidisha is similar but cuts out intermediary institutions, making it more of a peer-to-peer website than Kiva. Zidisha also has a much lower interest rate for borrowers, which is important for those that worry that microlending simply puts the borrowers into serious debt. Kiva, on the other hand, has a slightly higher repayment rate. Since this is, in fact, lending and not giving, you could theoretically use the same $25 over and over again endlessly, and support countless small businesses in the developing world.
For a full breakdown of the differences between Kiva and Zidisha, check out this article.
5. Read everything you possibly can.
This sounds simple, but one of the best ways to engage with your world is to read everything you possibly can. If you aren’t a big reader, start listening to podcasts. If you’re a more visual person, start watching the news. If you aren’t a big TV person, try comics journalism. Seriously — it’s a thing, and it’s incredible.The point is that, to a critical reader — a reader who’s skeptical of the source and its bias and engages with the material instead of accepting it — nothing is harmful. Not even bullshit-heavy conservative mouthpieces like Fox News. And this isn’t even limited to nonfiction — there’s no shortage of thought-provoking fictional material out there. The goal, with your reading, is to get yourself thinking in different ways and to be more engaged in the world around you. To find new stuff, check out Goodreads, TasteKid, and Shelfari.
6. Get involved in politics.
Volunteering is great, but at the end of the day a lot of the problems with the world are systemic, and volunteering is usually focused on a more personal level. Fortunately, most of the people reading this page right now are probably in democratic countries, where there are plenty of avenues to legally make a difference in the political system.Getting involved in politics can mean any number of things (and don’t believe the assholes who tell you democracy ends at the voting booth, and that if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain). The quickest way is to start letting your representative know what you think about the issues that are important to you. If you’re in America, here’s a tool to find your Congressperson’s Twitter account. Here’s how to find their email. Trust me — someone’s at least gonna glance at your missive.
If you don’t like your representative, campaign for their rival. The New Organizing Institute is a great organization with a ton of awesome resources designed to help you organize for political campaigns. You can also, on a lower level, give to campaigns you approve of. It may sound boring, but politicians do operate on money, and they do need your money just as much as they need your time.
Finally, if you belong more to the “We Shall Overcome” crowd, Lifehacker
put together a great guide on how
to safely protest, the law blog LegalFish did a piece on how
to legally protest, and the Economist explains why, if you’re going
to break the law protesting, you should
do it peacefully
3D Printed Dolls Embrace Diversity With Hearing Aids and Birthmarks
by admin
on May 20, 2015 • 6:18 am
Childhood toys straddle a strange line between “encouraging fantasy” and “reflecting reality.” Ideally, a toy—especially an action figure or doll—should both inspire unbounded flights of imagination, while still being realistic and recognizable enough that a child playing with it can form some sort of attachment to the toy. That can be a tough needle to thread, and more often than not, toy makers count on the former trumping the later, opting not to produce toys that accurately depict the full spectrum of shapes, colors, and physical features that kids likely see everyday in their friends, family, and community.
Thanks to British toy maker Makies, children playing with their line of 3D-printable dolls will be able to accessorize the toys with small, but significant elements such as walking canes, hearing aids, and even birthmarks. Explains Makies in a blog post published last week:
British-based toy developer MakieLab has responded to the call by creating a selection of Makie doll-sized impairment aids and accessories, using 3D printing to deliver them within days of demand.
Toy Like Me is a growing, grassroots movement, in which “parents of disabled kids makeover toys in call for better representation and diversity in the toy box,” according to their Facebook page. The toy hacks created by these crafty parents are truly impressive, but it’s one thing for a few people here and there to modify existing products. It’s quite another for an entire company to address the issue of diversity in the toy industry head on.
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BLOGGED:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS- Schools need 2 teach from ELEMENTARY LEVELS ON- about money- and how 2 save/about First Aid and CPR/About emergency and storms preparedness no matter where they are- and even their pets.... LET'S GIT R DONE CANADA - Kids and money, how young is 2 young/ showing children how 2 be safe in storms
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/12/canada-military-news-schools-need-2.html
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From a Canadian Grade IV student- our children and theirs... our glorious Canada is changing
BLOGGED- BLOGGED- BLOGSPOT- BLOGGED
CANADA MILITARY NEWS: OUR LOCAL LIBRARY- The saving grace of our identity- culture -gathering place and safe place of learning… and being and remembering who we are – KENTVILLE NOVA SCOTIA LIBRARY IS THE MOST VIBRANT OF ALL PLACES FROM POOREST OF POOR TO WEALTHY- We deserve a grand Library and parking like the old Harvey’s Restaurant Bldg.- We helped raised $$$hundreds of thousands of dollars 4 better??? What is going on? OPEN ARMS- are u open yet? Christmas Parade Kentville – 4 the children- the good things of which there are many.
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/11/canada-military-news-our-local-library.html
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CANADA- hey politicians wanting elected 2015-In Canada the Environment matters not 2 the tree cutting poster posers but everyday folks who live and work and are historically part of Canada’s communities- it matters-imho- SOUTH AFRICA NAILS THE TRUTH
https://nova0000scotia.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/canada-hey-politicians-wanting-elected-2015-in-canada-the-environment-matters-not-2-the-tree-cutting-poster-posers-but-everyday-folks-who-live-and-work-and-are-historically-part-of-canadas-c/
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