How Does Incorporating Multi-Sensory Approaches Into Literacy Instruction Influence the Literacy Development of Preschoolers?

According to Marie Clay (2005), preschoolers know something about the world of print because of their environments. Viewing or experiencing environmental print, the print, symbols, and logos, which surrounds young children on a daily basis, is just one of the ways through which they start to understand that there is meaning behind a symbol or that print carries meaning. During this developmental stage, children are beginning to understand sound-symbol relationship (Pullen & Justice, 2003) and to associate sounds and letters with their name or with environmental print around them. They begin to manipulate those sounds to form sentences and express their ideas orally and in writing. I believe that preschoolers should have multiple opportunities to use their senses to manipulate, see, hear and say a variety of letters and sounds as a way to explore and refine their understanding of the alphabetic principle. Exposing preschoolers to these literacy concepts should be through multisensory activities such as songs, print around the room, read alouds, interactive writing (teacher and student share the pen when writing), and tracing letters with shaving cream or sandpaper may promote literacy development). Using multisensory approaches during literacy activities and instruction encourages preschoolers to work through new literacy concepts and social situations on their own. Multisensory approaches may support the literacy development of young children because they can use more than one of their five senses to help them with the learning process and retain information. Language and vocabulary development are crucial in emergent literacy development (Wasik, 2010). There are several purposes of this study. Perhaps most significant was for me to learn what happens when I integrated multisensory approaches into literacy instruction for preschoolers. I was curious to learn more about how the choices I make in terms of my instruction may influence the preschoolers \u27 literacy learning and their development

Documentary photography in a school setting

ThesisThis is quite a broad subject to look at. Documentary obviously meaning to document something or somebody. In other words, it deals with the natural history of man. Archaeological, industrial, travel, social behaviour etc. So, then you should be able to call your holiday pictures documentary photographs. Well, it is not that simple. Documentary is basically split into two forms. The one being socially motivated and the other politically motivated. l We walk down crowded streets interacting with other human beings every day. So few of us however, take notice of the other nervous souls that share our habitat. No one sees the middle aged men and women who stand in the hot sun minding peoples cars for a few cents change. These are people who were earning full time salaries a few years ago. It may sound inappropriate to mention car watchers but, can you imagine doing their job for a week? No one takes notice of the haggard bundles of children flowering on sidewalks. No one sees the hunger and pain in their eyes. It is this that documentary photography tries to capture. Not only the pretty family portrait, but the emotion ofreallife!2 People are blind to the corruption flooding our political sphere. No one notices how the governing bodies that are suppose to be high ranking officials have their cell phones cut off. Why? They cannot pay their bills because, not even the government knows were they have disappeared to. Someone needs to make a statement. This is were the trusty Documentary photographer comes in. Always there to catch the unusual and the unwary who think they could get away with something on the sly.3 Millions of Rands in taxes disappear without trace while aged men and women stand for hours waiting for unsure pensions. The documentary photographer is there to capture the hope and despair on their faces. It is said that a picture is worth a thous na~~.~lSs n knows this as well as a documentary photogra iiMf- PROPERTY OF Photographic images have been altering people's minds and rearranging their lives for a long time. Photographs have a swifter impact than words. They share the power of images in general, which have always played havoc with the human mind and heart, and they have the added force of evident accuracy

Making Meaningful Connections with STEAM for Elementary Aged Students in China

This program included a summer STEAM experience for over 130 Chinese elementary aged children. During the week they constructed and tested an egg drop package, explored the local natural history museum, learned about animal footprints and the habitats they live in, dug up dinosaur fossils, and launched rockets. For many, this was their one of their first formal experiences with STEAM activities. The experiences provided a positive introduction or continued support for STEAM at the primary level

The Impact of an Intensive Experience on Prospective Teachers\u27 Perception of the Uses of Digital, Interactive Text Among K-12 Students

The purpose of this study was to measure pre-service teacher perception, awareness, and potential use of digital literacies, media, and digital interactive text in their future classrooms. The study grew from the theoretical rationales of new literacies, technological pedagogical content knowledge, and constructivism. New literacies are essentially the skills teachers and students need to utilize and develop in order to interact with novel digital sources. Research was aimed not simply at exposing pre-service teachers to the possibilities, but to gauge their current knowledge, interest, and views of potential future application of said technologies and student learning needs before and after the experience. One hundred pre-service teachers participated in an intensive semester experience involving a variety of interactive digital text sources and related technologies throughout the course of a semester. Participants read and discussed a variety of articles and interacted firsthand with a number of digital literacy technologies. Data were collected throughout a semester in the form of pre and post surveys, recorded interviews, and recorded class discussions. Findings indicated that pre-service teachers generally maintained or strengthened their perceptions and understandings of digital interactive text, digital literacies, and digital literacy tools. There were several demographic categories that yielded significant results

Oral into written : an experiment in creating a text for African religion

Bibliography: pages 105-113.This study is a description, from the vantage point of a participant observer, of the development of a new, and probably unique, method of writing, teaching and learning about an oral tradition - a method which is grounded in ways of knowing, thinking and learning inherent in that tradition. It arose in the course of a co-operative venture - between two lecturers in African Religion and myself - to write a text for South African schools on African Religion (sometimes called African Traditional Religion). Wanting to be true to our subject within the obvious constraints, we endeavoured to write within an oral mode. The product, African Religion and Culture, Alive!, is a transcript of taped oral interchanges between the three authors within a simulated, dramatised format. The simulation provided the context for using the teaching and learning strategies employed in an oral tradition, but within a Western institution. We hoped in this way to mirror and mediate a situation in which many South African students find themselves: at the interface between a home underpinned by an oral tradition, and a school underpinned by a written tradition. In the book, knowledge is presented through myth, biographical and autobiographical stories, discussion, question, and comment. The choice of this mode of knowledge-presentation has been greatly influenced by the work of Karen McCarthy Brown. A further important requirement for us was to produce a text that would be acceptable to all the particular varieties of African religious practice. This need was met in a way that became the most important aspect of the method - the device of setting, as a core part of the work for students, a primary research component. Students are required to seek out traditional elders within their community and learn from them, as authorities on African religion and culture, the details of particular practice. This is a way of decentering the locus of control of knowledge and education, as well as of restoring respect for African Religion and preserving information in danger of being lost. The primary research component highlights fundamental issues relating to the 'ownership' of religion, knowledge, power, reality which are explored in the study. Also considered are the implications of writing about an oral mode while trying to preserve as much of the character of that mode - writing by means of speaking. Text as a metaphor provides a frame for examining the process and the product - in terms of text as document, as score, as performance, as intertextual event, and as monument and site of struggle. Suggestions are made for further research, both on the particular method of text-production under consideration, and also on the approach to teaching and learning about African Religion. Also considered is the relevance of this particular learning and teaching approach to the values inherent in the proposed new curriculum for education in South Africa

Implementation of solar PV system unified ZSI-based dynamic voltage restorer with U-SOGI control scheme for power quality improvement

The main challenge in today\u27s power system is to supply continuous, reliable power and satisfy the high demand. The incorporation of renewable energy sources into the utility grid system can be accomplished. However, the renewable sources are intermittent in nature and the loads work dynamically and cause imbalances to the system voltage within an immediate time. Intermittent renewable sources affect the voltage of the power grid system. Photovoltaic (PV) power generation with Z-source inverter (ZSI)-based dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) is used to avoid that. For step-up low DC voltage to required AC voltage for the compensation of the voltage disturbance, ZSI with the energy storage impedance network is used. DC-DC converters connect the PV cell and the battery storage to the impedance source network. This article also incorporates an upgraded second-order generalized integrator (U-SOGI) control system for the generation of reference voltage signals. The U-SOGI control reference voltage generation approach greatly improves system performance and decreases the harmonic voltage. The voltage-related problems in the system connected to the utility grid are mitigated with DVR. In different load and source conditions, the PV generation with DVR performance is verified by the digital simulation and experimental prototype