Using Visual Highlighting to Teach Discriminations and Patterns

Every day in classrooms throughout the country one can find children experiencing visual discrimination problems. One can also find a massive amount of teaching effort directed towards correcting those same problems, too often with limited success. Recent research has raised many questions about the usefulness of the most popular commercially available training materials (i.e. Frostig, Kephart, Michigan Tracking). However, research has also identified useful techniques that classroom teachers might employ

Evaluating Prospective Teachers of Reading in CBTE

Competency based teacher education (CBTE) curricula are being considered or developed by at least half of the state education departments according to a survey by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (Andrews, 1972).1 Coupled with this is the development of an increasing number of competency based reading methods courses and curricula. Those working on the development of these programs, quickly become aware of the problems encountered when attempting to combine theory and practice. Solving problems of identifying competencies, timebased curricula, grading, faculty teaching load, etc., at times seems overwhelming. However, a single issue in CBTE involves each area mentioned above and is yet unique in itself. That is, How does one assess competence

Reconsidering Instructional Groupings

For over a half-century elementary school teachers have organized students for reading instruction into achievement groupings (sometimes mislabeled ability groups ). The traditional three group scheme-top, middle and bottom-was recommended shortly after the turn of the century as a better alternative to whole class instruction. The three group scheme has come under increasing scrutiny over the past few years as American society changed and our understanding of how children learn to read and write increased

Minimal Competencies in Reading for Secondary Content Teachers

In discussions among secondary reading teachers you are almost sure to hear the statement that every teacher should be a teacher of reading. This is a recurrent theme of reading conferences and the vigor with which an author espouses this end is one of the criteria by which secondary reading texts are judged. On paper or as a conference theme this is a wonderful concept. In reality though it seems at best difficult to achieve and at worst represents tremendous naivete on the part of reading educators

Remembering is Not Necessarily Understanding in Content Areas

Improving comprehension in middle-grade content areas would be an easier topic to address if we had available validated theoretical models, and hence an understanding, of 1) how one learns from text, and 2) how intellectual operations develop in adolescence. Our current state of ignorance in these areas has been aptly summarized by Miller (1976) and Neimark (1975) respectively. We are then, like everyone else who would discuss improving comprehension of text, reduced to drawing upon the available body of literature and from this attempting to produce a framework from which useful strategies can be developed

Spectroscopy of arcs in the rich cluster Abell 963

Spectra are presented for portions of the two arcs observed close to the dominant cD galaxy in the rich cluster Abell 963 (z = 0.206). The spectrum of the northern arc displays a strong emission line at 6600 Å which is seen along the entire arc. The feature cannot be understood unless the redshift is greater than that of the cluster, the most likely interpretation being [O II] 3727 Å at z = 0.771. The southern arc is considerably fainter and its spectrum shows no obvious features. However, new CCD photometry is consistent with a near-constant blue color ( B – R ~ 0.3) along both arcs, supporting the suggestion that they arise from the gravitationally lensed light of a background object. The optical and infrared color is consistent with a spiral galaxy undergoing strong star formation at this redshift. We discuss briefly the implication of this result, and the possible role lensing surveys may play in the study of high-redshift galaxies

NEPC Review: Whole Language High Jinks: How to Tell When 'Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction' Isn't

In Whole Language High Jinks: How to Tell When 'Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction' Isn't, Louisa Moats contends that she provides "the necessary tools to distinguish those [programs] that truly are scientifically based... from those that merely pay lip service to science" (p. 10). This review finds that Moats exaggerates the findings of the National Reading Panel (NRP), especially the effects of systematic phonics on reading achievement. She also ignores research completed since the NRP report was issued seven years ago. Perhaps most disturbingly, she touts primarily commercial curriculum products distributed by her employer &ndash; products that have far fewer published studies of effectiveness than the products and methods she disparages. These flaws pervade the report's subsequent discussion of what "scientifically based reading instruction" should look like. In the end, the Fordham report works more effectively as promotional material for products and services offered by Moats's employer, SoprisWest, than as a reliable guide to effective reading instruction.</p

Development of integrated mode reformatting components for diffraction-limited spectroscopy

We present the results of our work on developing fully integrated devices (photonic dicers) for reformatting multimode light to a diffraction limited pseudo-slit. These devices can be used to couple a seeing limited telescope point spread function to a spectrograph operating at the diffraction limit, thus potentially enabling compact, high-resolution spectrographs that are free of modal noise

Multiomic analyses implicate a neurodevelopmental program in the pathogenesis of cerebral arachnoid cysts

Cerebral arachnoid cysts (ACs) are one of the most common and poorly understood types of developmental brain lesion. To begin to elucidate AC pathogenesis, we performed an integrated analysis of 617 patient-parent (trio) exomes, 152,898 human brain and mouse meningeal single-cell RNA sequencing transcriptomes and natural language processing data of patient medical records. We found that damaging de novo variants (DNVs) were highly enriched in patients with ACs compared with healthy individuals (P = 1.57 × 10-33). Seven genes harbored an exome-wide significant DNV burden. AC-associated genes were enriched for chromatin modifiers and converged in midgestational transcription networks essential for neural and meningeal development. Unsupervised clustering of patient phenotypes identified four AC subtypes and clinical severity correlated with the presence of a damaging DNV. These data provide insights into the coordinated regulation of brain and meningeal development and implicate epigenomic dysregulation due to DNVs in AC pathogenesis. Our results provide a preliminary indication that, in the appropriate clinical context, ACs may be considered radiographic harbingers of neurodevelopmental pathology warranting genetic testing and neurobehavioral follow-up. These data highlight the utility of a systems-level, multiomics approach to elucidate sporadic structural brain disease

Gemini GMOS and WHT SAURON integral-field spectrograph observations of the AGN driven outflow in NGC 1266

We use the SAURON and GMOS integral field spectrographs to observe the active galactic nucleus (AGN) powered outflow in NGC 1266. This unusual galaxy is relatively nearby (D=30 Mpc), allowing us to investigate the process of AGN feedback in action. We present maps of the kinematics and line strengths of the ionised gas emission lines Halpha, Hbeta, [OIII], [OI], [NII] and [SII], and report on the detection of Sodium D absorption. We use these tracers to explore the structure of the source, derive the ionised and atomic gas kinematics and investigate the gas excitation and physical conditions. NGC 1266 contains two ionised gas components along most lines of sight, tracing the ongoing outflow and a component closer to the galaxy systemic, the origin of which is unclear. This gas appears to be disturbed by a nascent AGN jet. We confirm that the outflow in NGC 1266 is truly multiphase, containing radio plasma, atomic, molecular and ionised gas and X-ray emitting plasma. The outflow has velocities up to \pm900 km/s away from the systemic velocity, and is very likely to be removing significant amounts of cold gas from the galaxy. The LINER-like line-emission in NGC 1266 is extended, and likely arises from fast shocks caused by the interaction of the radio jet with the ISM. These shocks have velocities of up to 800 km/s, which match well with the observed velocity of the outflow. Sodium D equivalent width profiles are used to set constraints on the size and orientation of the outflow. The ionised gas morphology correlates with the nascent radio jets observed in 1.4 GHz and 5 GHz continuum emission, supporting the suggestion that an AGN jet is providing the energy required to drive the outflow.Comment: Contains 18 figures. Accepted to MNRA