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You know that you are an upper elementary school teacher if this workbook cover makes you laugh, cry or break out in hives.

 

From On How to Write Good

• Subject and verb always has to agree.
• Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
• No sentence fragments.

Do you write good? How did that happen? Was it because of your early grammar lessons or in spite of them?

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001618.htm

Play as an Emergent System PLAY ... "is not purely entertainment or a luxury to be given up when things get serious ...playfulness is ... not only to be enjoyed but to be accorded high value for its fundamental role in the success of all organisms, including humans." - Paul Grobstein, Serendip's Playground

What is Play?  Play as an emergent process.  The role of play in the development of self-regulation.

Should teachers examine play as a model for instruction? 

 

 Dyslexia

The word dyslexia comes from the Greek root dys, which means difficulty, and lexis, which means word. Oswald Berkhan first identified dyslexia in 1881. Six years later, Rudolf Berlin coined the term “dyslexia” in Stuttgart, Germany.

Dyslexia is a learning disability that results from differences in how the brain processes written and spoken language. Dyslexic individuals experience difficulty reading, spelling, among other things. Although there is no cure for dyslexia, it can be overcome with proper educational support. How can we identify children with dyslexia and support them in the classroom?

 Grobstein writes about the "bipartite brain.”

“The basic idea here is that because of how the brain is organized all the things we experience (including perceptions, understandings, and aspirations) are inevi- tably "stories", ie one of a variety of ways to make sense of the world and our selves that are grounded in unexamined (and hence challengeable) presump- tions of which we are unaware. From this, of course, and the added feature that all brains are somewhat different, follows the notion that one cannot in principle find anything like a complete "neutral standpoint”...no unwobbly pivots or unchal- lengeable starting points.”

 

Welcome to my blog!

I am  Dr. Verolga Nix-Allen. I am a composer, arranger and have a choir of 30 adult voices called INTERMEZZO CHOIR MINISTRY singing my original music and Octavo music in Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass. I founded the INSTITUTE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSIC, the rationale being "Nothing but an echo of the past, yet I am the echo of the future, how will I ever know where to go, if I don'y know where I've been".  I am one of the two editors of SONGS OF ZION. a Supplementary Hymnal under writted by the United Methodist Church. I am interested in finding more information about: -

Parts of the brain for artistry, namely music, ie, singing

"A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.  I don't want to be at the mercy of my emtoins.  I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them." - Oscar Wilde

"Courage consists in the power of self-recovery."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Rember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more diffictul still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."  - Benjamin Franklin

"I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas." - Albert Einstein

 

 

I was born on December 2, 1955 at Albert Einstein Medical Center in North Philadelphia. At that time my parents' house was at 1307 Paper Mill Road in Erdenheim, PA - in Eastern Montgomery County. My sister, my parents and I lived in that house until I was eight years old. I was a child who was very curious about the world around me and even at the young age of seven, I was exploring nature by witnessing giant fish swimming through a small creek behind my house, catching tomato hornworm catipillars in my father's garden and pulling around a dead rat (in a toy wagon) that my cat had brought home. I was also fascinated by the ticks that my dog brought into the house, which when full of her blood would literally crawl up the wall of our den!

 

 

• Neuroscience for Kids
• The Care and Feeding of Your Brain at The Franklin Institute
• The Secret Life of the Brain