Just like the real thing - only shorter! Help your child prepare for the SATS with these bite-sized National test papers. This book offers ten complete mini-reading tests which include fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. Question types and mark schemes match the format of the National tests and offer an authentic SATs experience, though the flexible format allows them to be used at any time of the day. A progress chart is also supplied to give you some indication of the scores your child is likely to attain, while a handy breakdown of all of the different question types in the Reading SATs tests will help you to identify your child's strengths and weaknesses.

Early Childhood Studies: Enhancing Employability and Professional Practice explores essential aspects of best practice within children's services in order to enhance employability skills, identifying how and why key aspects of best practice have emerged within children's services. The key elements of professional practice at the centre of the multidisciplinary work in today's children's services are considered, including: * different childhoods; * child development; * enhanced learning; * professional skills; * inclusion; * holistic practice. Each chapter draws together practical teaching experience with sound academic analysis to support those training to work in the early childhood sector, and those already practising, to raise their employability potential by identifying and evaluating best practice.

What are the issues that education raises for you? Beyond the technical skills and knowledge aspects of education, teachers and student teachers face questions which challenge their beliefs and approaches to their teaching and learning. This book contains a series of short articles each of which encourage you to reflect on your own practice and challenge your beliefs about how and what you teach. Questions explored include: When does inclusion become exclusion for the rest of the class? Do interactive whiteboards support or reduce creativity in the classroom? Is drama a luxury in the primary classroom? Should we be teaching other languages to children under seven? Learning outside the classroom, is it worth it? What makes a reflective practitioner? Essential reading for those training to teach children aged between 3 and 11, as well as practicing teachers looking to develop their practice.

According to author Dan Gates, decisionology is the analysis, study, discussion, and exampling of the decisions that may determine the direction of your life. We put so much emphasis on the decisions and choices that high-school students are making and will continue to make for the rest of their lives because these choices can potentially create- or destroy-a bright future.

"Decisionology" is designed to be a simple and effective resource that can be used whenever challenges or decisions arise. This guide does not provide the answers required in a given situation; rather, it explains the many different types of decisions that are available and the potential consequences that each may bring.

"Dan Gates' Book, Decisionology, should be mandatory reading for the parent as well as the child as it definitely emphasizes the consequences of one's decisions and more importantly-it prepares the students and parents for the decisions that are certainly coming and have to be met."
-Hon. Ed McLean, Sitting District Court Judge,
Fourth Judicial District for Missoula and Mineral Counties in Montana

"Decisionology provides a plethora of real life examples which makes it relatable to an extremely large audience. It would be perfect for the entire family." -Jessica L. Weinert-Science Educator

Secondary schools are continually faced with the task of preparing students for a world that is more connected, advanced, and globalized than ever before. In order to adequately prepare students for their future, educators must provide them with strong reading and writing skills, as well as the ability to understand scientific concepts. The Handbook of Research on Science Literacy Integration in Classroom Environments is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the importance of cross-curriculum/discipline connections in improving student understanding and education. While highlighting topics such as curriculum integration, online learning, and instructional coaching, this publication explores practices in teaching students how to analyze and interpret data, as well as reading, writing, and speaking. This book is ideally designed for teachers, graduate-level students, academicians, instructional designers, administrators, and education researchers seeking current research on science literacy adoption in contemporary classrooms.

The increasing lack of discipline in South African schools and the impact thereof is well known. In most instances, existing punitive measures do not yield the required results. Yet, schools continue to scramble to find alternative punishments that will result in a disciplined environment conducive to teaching and learning. Albert Einstein rightly said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”

Restorative School Discipline: The Law and Practice seeks to provide an alternative approach to discipline. However, to implement this approach, a complete mind-shift is required. This mind set requires an understanding that to discipline learners is to teach socially acceptable behaviour. The restorative approach entails moving away from an approach that merely focuses on the ill-disciplined learner to an approach that focuses on preventing disciplinary problems, changing the culture of the school and restoring the harm done to those affected by the misconduct. The restorative approach involves focusing on finding solutions to address the needs and interests of all the role-players in the school community, rather than finding suitable punishments. Thus, focusing on the best interests of every learner as well as those of educators. Restorative discipline is a value-driven approach that respects the human rights of every stakeholder and also protects, promotes and fulfils everyone’s human rights.

This book explains the restorative approach to discipline in detail. The role of every stakeholder in the implementation of this approach also receives attention. Furthermore, it highlights the social justice implications as well as the impact of discipline on the neurological functioning and development of the child.

Restorative School Discipline: The Law and Practice provides practical advice for SGB’s, educators, school social workers and other role-players, such as the Department of Basic Education, on how to implement the restorative approach to discipline. It also examines the Constitutional imperatives and the legal framework related to school discipline. This ground-breaking book will provide guidance for school administrators, practitioners and academics on this innovative school discipline practice.

This book explores the ability of the Norwegian school system to support the achievement of formal competencies among children with physical disabilities, as well as its role in the informal dimensions of social participation and networking. Schools contribute to social inclusion in several ways: they are arenas for building official competencies, ensuring future access and success in the labour market. They are also sites for meeting other children, and developing friendships - friendships are not only important for strengthening cognitive development, but are vital to both good mental health and the building of various forms of social capital. By examining schools and the ways in which inclusion is incorporated early, this book aims to bridge the opportunity and employment gap that people with physical disabilities are more likely to face later in life.

Educational Wisdoms for All Children ... This book is a collection of "Educational Wisdoms" and guiding principles for all children in grades K - 5. Over the years, as parents and teachers, we have made great efforts to teach our children these wisdoms and principles. With some we have been successful and with others not as much so. This hands-on treasure will be a valuable tool to any parent, grandparent, teacher in the classroom, and especially home school parents who foster great one-on-one learning. In addition, young children as well as older children can learn much from this terrific book, which might help to inspire success, build personal development and more self-esteem at the childrens' various levels of maturity. Still, this book can serve the older children as a self-help guide that can remind them to make good choices, inspire self-discipline, and reinforce their images of what success looks like. Finally, with parents helping to guide younger children to study this book of instructional wisdoms each day, and with each BEE character leading the way, they will quickly gain an understanding of the helpful concepts it shares. Success is imminent if these educational wisdoms are nurtured and practiced.

This innovative volume is focused on the impact of religion on the realization of democratic citizenship. The researchers contributing provide empirical evidence on how religion influences attitudes towards citizenship and democracy in different countries. The book also tackles the challenges and opportunities for citizenship education. Experts contributing from sociology, political science, theology, and educational science look at the impact of religious beliefs and practices on democratic attitudes and behavior. Chapters also concern how religion influences the recognition of others as citizens. The text appeals to graduates and researchers in these fields with a secondary market for the general interest reader.

This book provides an overview designed to help educators collaborate more effectively in the areas of content area literacy for the sake of their K-6 ELL students. The book weaves the practical and theoretical aspects of collaboration and suggests ways for teachers to form long term partnerships. Each chapter extends collaboration in the areas of skill and content based learning so ELL students can achieve necessary proficiency to thrive in content areas classrooms and minimize gaps in instructional learning.

The School Leadership Program (SLP) is a federal grant sponsored by the United States Department of Education. A hallmark of the grant is the connectivity between various agencies to provide quality leadership preparation and development programs for aspiring and current school leaders. These collaborative efforts involve community and educational stakeholders including districts, universities, city agencies, not-for-profit entities, foundations, private academic organizations, and others involved in the development of school leaders. Since its inception in 2002, over one hundred grants have been funded. This edited book's purpose is to share innovative, research-based practices from the federally funded grants that are sustainable after the life of the grant and are able to be used throughout the field for preparing and developing aspiring and current school leaders. This book features the work of current and past grantees around their innovative practices and lessons learned about school leadership preparation and development, especially around the issue of sustainability of these practices upon completion of the grant. SLP Grantees share practical, usable lessons learned from their experiences with the grants, based on their research, project data, and practical experience.

Schooling is one of the core experiences of most young people in the Western world. This study examines the ways that students inhabit subjectivities defined in their relationship to some normalised good student. The idea that schools exist to produce students who become good citizens is one of the basic tenets of modernist educational philosophies that dominate the contemporary education world. The school has become a political site where policy, curriculum orientations, expectations and philosophies of education contest for the 'right' way to school and be schooled. For many people, schools and schooling only make sense if they resonate with past experiences. The good student is framed within these aspects of cultural understanding. However, this commonsense attitude is based on a hegemonic understanding of the good, rather than the good student as a contingent multiplicity that is produced by an infinite set of discourses and experiences. In this book, author Greg Thompson argues that this understanding of subjectivities and power is crucial if schools are to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and challenging world. As a high school teacher for many years, Thompson often wondered how students responded to complex articulations on how to be a good student. How a student can be considered good is itself an articulation of powerful discourses that compete within the school. Rather than assuming a moral or ethical citizen, this study turns that logic on it on its head to ask students in what ways they can be good within the school. Visions of the good student deployed in various ways in schools act to produce various ways of knowing the self as certain types of subjects. Developing the postmodern theories of Foucault and Deleuze, this study argues that schools act to teach students to know themselves in certain idealised ways through which they are located, and locate themselves, in hierarchical rationales of the good student. Problematising the good student in high schools engages those institutional discourses with the philosophy, history and sociology of education. Asking students how they negotiate or perform their selves within schools challenges the narrow and limiting ways that the good is often understood. By pushing the ontological understandings of the self beyond the modernist philosophies that currently dominate schools and schooling, this study problematises the tendency to see students as fixed, measurable identities (beings) rather than dynamic, evolving performances (becomings). This book suggests that there is more to becoming good than sitting quietly in class and doing well on tests. Students are daily involved in complex negotiations between competing expectations of the good and continually try to navigate what is a very complex terrain. These negotiations impact on their engagement with, and expectations of, schooling. It informs their behaviour, their relationships with each other and with authority figures. Through asking students their experiences and understandings of what constitutes a good student, a vastly different education terrain opens up than what is often understood. This book offers unique insights on high school students in the new millennia. For those studying teaching and for those working with student teachers in university contexts it offers a different perspective on how school students understand school and their interactions with teachers. It argues that through uncovering these student voices a more subtle and nuanced pedagogy can evolve. Who is the Good High School Student? is an important book for scholars conducting research on high school education, as well as student-teachers, teacher educators and practicing teachers alike.

Academics, policy makers and professionals explore the development of EU education policy, its impact on practice and potential future directions after the Lisbon treaty. "Schools for the Future Europe" brings together a team of leading academics, policy makers and education professionals to explore the emergence, development and application of European education policy up to the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and beyond. This book charts the historical development of a Europe-wide education policy, and examines how that policy has sought to address such issues as European citizenship, human rights and bilingual schooling. Taking as examples the intended future extension of the European Schools and the European Baccalaureate, and a case study of work towards the first British European Academy at Culham, UK, this book critically explores the interplay of EU action programmes, policy and rhetoric on secondary education. In the final section, the editors draw on the insights of the previous chapters to outline an achievable programme for the future development of education policy structures and practice in schools for Europe.

This book contains seven tried-and-tested creative writing projects for pupils aged 8-14. Each project is delivered through a series of workshops and enables pupils to explore a literary genre or writing style, discuss themes and topics and receive constructive feedback about their writing. The projects cover topics such as identity, cultural heritage, tolerance, empathy, morality, dreams and much more. Teachers wanting to run creative writing projects will find this book easy to follow, practical and timesaving. Each project allows students to: * explore a certain literary genre or writing style in detail * be creative and have fun while learning * think about, talk about and discuss themes and topics * receive constructive feedback about their writing * pursue their own ideas * see themselves as 'real' writers with a 'real' audience * understand that writing can be enjoyable, artistic and relaxing * experience creativity to improve their wellbeing. These ready-made projects are invaluable for teachers who are looking for new and successful creative writing projects for a range of students. They will enable teachers to immediately start making a difference to their students' confidence and writing skills, allowing them to be as creative and imaginative as possible and use creativity as a springboard for their own writing.

Political rhetoric and popular concern about the presence in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe of immigrants from predominantly-Muslim societies has remained largely detached from the actual reality of the lives and the contributions of these immigrants and their children. The studies presented here seek to correct this ignorant reaction by presenting objective information from schools that such immigrants have created and sustained. The first looked at seven explicitly-Islamic secondary schools, focusing on the formation of character and American citizenship, while the other studied public charter schools established by immigrants from Turkey, focusing on academic outcomes. Do faith-based schools cause social divisions? Do their students fail to become good citizens who can cooperate with those of other faiths? This familiar accusation against Catholic, and more recently against Evangelical, schools, is now directed against Islamic schools in Western societies. The studies presented here offer objective information from schools established by Muslim immigrants across the United States, with reassuring results.

This book presents the Preschool Peer Social Intervention (PPSI), a manualized comprehensive social curriculum to enhance peer-interaction for pre-schoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in three key domains: play, interaction, and conversation. The book outlines the PPSI's transactional approach in each of the three intervention domains and incorporates developmental features and age-appropriate play, interaction, and conversation skills while accounting for individual differences in social communication abilities. The intervention is designed to be implemented within the child's natural social environment, such as preschool, and it includes the child's social agents, namely, their peers, teachers, and parents. PPSI intervention curricula addressed in this book are based on typical play, interaction, and conversation development, taking into account the social and communication challenges found to characterize young children with ASD in these domains. Building up the ability to play, interact and converse more efficiently with peers may render a substantial impact on preschoolers with ASD, with vast potential for improving not only these children's immediate social experience with peers, but also their future social competence that relies on these early building blocks.

This book explores international perspectives on quality improvement within the field of early childhood education and care. Many countries and governments are focusing on preschool quality as a way to improve entrenched inequalities and reduce social disadvantage and segregation: this book draws together various global case studies to showcase how different countries tackle aspects of quality improvement. The concept of quality is understood in different ways both culturally and contextually, and the implementation of measures to improve quality will differ from country to country. The book draws together case studies from numerous contexts to showcase various ways of working with aspects of quality improvement. Sharing important insights into policy and practice, this book guides a shared understanding of the complex nature of quality improvement within early childhood education and care.

This book is an edited volume addressing specific issues of significance for individuals involved with the undergraduate mathematics content preparation of prospective elementary teachers (PSTs). Teaching mathematics content courses to this group of students presents unique challenges. While some PSTs enter their teacher preparation with weak mathematical skills and knowledge, many also hold negative attitudes, anxiety, and misguided beliefs about mathematics. This book is designed to support instructors who teach these students in mathematics content for elementary teachers courses. Elementary teachers need a richly developed understanding of the mathematics they are teaching in order to teach it effectively. Providing them with the needed preparation is difficult, but can be eased with a solid understanding of the mathematical concerns and limitations PSTs bring to the learning of mathematics and a familiarity with the standards and curricula topics PSTs will be expected to teach. Chapter One makes the argument that elementary mathematics is not trivial. This is followed by an analysis of four central issues related to the mathematical preparation of elementary teachers, specifically: (1) selecting/creating/modifying and implementing mathematical tasks (2) noticing/understanding children's ways of thinking as a foundation for learning mathematics, (3) developing mathematical habits of mind in PSTs, and (4) understanding the role affect plays in the mathematical learning of PSTs. The final chapter presents three international examples of programs that currently consider these factors in the implementation of their courses.