Picture book reading is essential in the early stages of learning and development. The current study aimed to incorporate picture books to improve first graders' scientific thinking, including scientific reasoning and creativity. The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design. There were 24 students in the experimental group and 23 in the…

Understanding how children demonstrate creativity assists educators in designing learning experiences that foster this key competency. Frameworks such as the "A-E of Children's Creativity" assist in the analysis of children's creativity, presenting their creative thinking characteristics as five connected processes: agency, being…

Creativity plays a pivotal role in a child's development. However, schooling sometimes hinders instead of encouraging this developmental process. This article reviews five tasks designed to teach English as a foreign language and simultaneously encourage students' creativity. The impact those tasks produced in a first-grade class are presented.…

Disparities in school discipline data indicate that children of color, particularly boys, receive more frequent and harsher disciplinary actions than their white peers, and this begins in early schooling. Within today's print-centered, bodily restricted school curricula, literacy instruction is often reduced to highly controlled, leveled readers…

With the goal of supporting students' writing and content area learning using play as a pedagogical model, teachers' action research projects involved kindergarten and grade 1 students collaborating to create texts for a range of purposes. The authors analyzed the project activities for their starting points or motivators, student and teacher…

Background: Teaching English as home language (EHL) could be a complicated process in a country like South Africa, where there are eleven official languages operating in a multicultural society. This requires capacitating teachers with appropriate and relevant strategies to strengthen their teaching, especially in the foundation phase. Aim: This…

With an emphasis on high-stakes testing and a focused curriculum, it would seem at times, the joy of creativity is missing from the classroom. This article describes a curricular approach the children named "Creative Endeavors", as implemented by a first grade teacher. The approach is described in three phases. In the exploratory stage…

Across the nation, educators continue to face challenges as they work to individualize instruction to meet the specific needs of their students. However, theory suggests that teachers who possess a clear vision for teaching creatively weave their personal convictions for teaching with instructional practices. Drawing upon a teacher's (first…

This article sets out how the author believes mathematics might be taught in creative ways. It is about the author's developing thoughts on how he teaches mathematics, how his class responds to his teaching, and how he adjusts his teaching through assessment of children's learning. Through observations and assessment of learning following his…

Art and science are intrinsically linked; the essence of art and science is discovery. Both artists and scientists work in a systematic but creative way--knowledge and understanding are built up through pieces of art or a series of labs. In the classroom, integrating science and visual art can provide students with the latitude to think, discover,…

In Romania postmodern education system is built on a new philosophy of education, which promotes a new concept, as the social fact and reference value in building human capital. Integration effects, of globalization, poor management and poor government policy, have brought out another aspect of Romania, poverty, which leaves its mark on the…

In this article, the author describes an exciting project, written for first-graders, wherein students got to put themselves into their art using a camera and just one computer. In this project, students were challenged to invent their own fantasy place where anything could happen. Using the camera, the author took their picture in their chosen…

In an effort to understand how children's literacy is affected by their life experiences, this article analyses the natural disposition of children to engage in musical activities that connect them to previous experiences and allow them to build new thoughts. Music is inherent to children's experiences and is related to sounds heard everyday,…

This article begins by revisiting an old dispute between the children's writer Chukovsky and the child psychologist Vygotsky on whether and how child literature should mediate development. It then considers child language language lessons in South Korea for clues about how such mediation might happen, and finds the development of rote language,…

The traditional kindergarten program often reflected a rich but generic approach with creative contexts for typical kindergartners organized around materials (manipulatives or dramatic play) or a developmental area (fine motor or language). The purpose of kindergarten reflected beliefs about how children learn, specialized training for…