Resources

ARTS-INSPIRED TEST-TAKING SKILLS:

(The “cool links”  below were posted especially for those attending Dr. Charles Reichel's presentation in Savannah, Gerogia for the 19th annual Youth-At-Risk Conference and should prove helpful to all parents, teachers and mentors, and students themselves, as they help to put high-stakes testing into a new perspective.)

Search Institute
Search Institute is an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities. To accomplish this mission, the Institute generates and communicates new knowledge, and brings together community, state, and national leaders.

At the heart of the Institute's work is the framework of 40 Developmental Assets which are positive experiences and personal qualities that all young people need to grow up healthy, caring, and responsible. The 40 assets are divided into "External" and "Internal Assets". Dr. Reichel's experience in preparing over 2000 students for the SAT college entrance test, has shown that the artist's capacity for "reframing" things or seeing them in a different way or a "new perspective" is vital. It helps provide test-takers with the growth of the internal asset of "personal power" and,  by changing the student's perspective, can change the testing experience from harassing to "happening." Certainly, as a student takes tests "on purpose" or sees them as related to his or her own life-purpose, scores will increase. (Check the whole list of forty assets as every teacher, parent, and student should know what is needed for child health and development.)

See also how a teacher can change his or her perspective on those testing days and test prep days. The teacher can know that he or she is helping to develop the students' internal assets and not merely "wasting time" or "teaching-to-the-test." A student who is better equipped to “take-a-test” is helped for a life-time by this new skill!

(This Search Institute provides the most valuable and practical data and research- based solutions applicable to all our youth.)

The Connection Between Music and Test Results

This website has more than 60 pages, printed in landscape format, research in print and reasons why music has a positive effect on test score improvement and higher grades as well.
Knowing how to "run-your-own-brain" and shift (as in shifting gears in a car) your brain-wave states is a chief skill of accelerated learning and improved test scores. This research can help make the connections for any teacher, student, or parent who would like to make the music/grades/test-score connection. It is available to be freely downloaded from this site.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ASCD SmartBrief
Sign-up for the free  SmartBriefs daily e-zine briefing on national issues and top stories in K-12 education.

ASCD's (Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development) provides an outstanding network of state chapters and resources, including publications, and advocacy for education of the Whole Child--including creativity and the arts.

Teacher Magazine
Provides educators and others interested to Teacher Magazine online, Education Week online and a Research Center and more. You are able to register for e-newsletters to be sent directly to you inbox.

Landmark Editions
Soon to change its formal name to Landmark House, Ltd., with a new website, this organization grows from the work of David Melton and family. Landmark has, and continues to, provide resources and encouragement and know-how for teachers and parents to help their students write, illustrate and publish their own works.

Landmark sponsors an annual contest now called the "Kids-in-Print Book Contest for Students" that is currently featured in the contest section of this website. The company also sells wonderful children's produced stories and other resources. Great stuff!

Theatrefolk
Original playscripts for school perfomances

Georgia Thespians
Having just returned from this organization's "WOW! Event, and having been in collegial contact with Chaper Director, Frank M. Pruet, other Directors, Students and Parents, NCS refers you to the great resources, including scholarships, and coordination for the theater arts in Georgia schools, that the Georgia Thespians offer.

Georgia Assembly of Community Arts Agencies
Georgia's Statewide Arts Network, among other valuable helps and resources to communities provides a statewide Arts and Cultural Organizations.

Public Domain Music
Use public domain music as grist for your own creativity! Any song or musical work available tht was published prior to 1922 in the U.S.A. is considered public domain (free from royalty fees or copyright protection in general). In other countries the music is in the public domain usually 70 years after the death of the composer.

(Check each site or listing below for the exact usage details)

1) Musopen!
This site re;eases magnificent sections of classical music that are in the public domain. This "open museum" has great classical music recorded by indviduals, and college, and community orchestras throughout the United States.
This music is then stored online at this site and is searchable and with history notes and pictures and it notes most favored pieces. Wonderful for a learning site!

2) Nineteenth Century Americana
This is a wonderful source of public domain music from the early nineteenth to early twentieth century. The music has been searched and edited by Benjamin Robert Tubb and he has created MIDI files for listening. While the original sheet music sources are royalty free, see the site for details on acquiring the use of the MIDI files. This is a great resource for the study of early American and Civil War history.

3) Public Domain Music List
Popular songs from 1900-1922 searchable by key words. The sheet music can usually be acquired for a small fee and always, then, without the payment of continuing royalties for however you might choose to use it in your own creative works.

Arts In the Curriculum:

(The resources being added to this category by our NCS research team are links to help classroom teachers/others inegrate the arts into their curricular and teaching practices in order to build each student's higher-thinking and creative processes.)

Artful Thinking

The goal of the Artful Thinking program is to help stuents develop thinking dispositions that support thoughtful learning in the arts and across school subjects. It is a research project developed by Harvard's Project Zero and currently being used in the Traverse City, Michigan public schools.

This is a thoroughly practical site as well as theoretically useful for across the curriculum use of the arts and helping hte student to make good connections through the use of good questions. Asking "good questions:, we feel strongly, is vital to all higher-order learning!

It links as well to an international network of schools and ecuators who are using Harvard's similar Net Zero Project research in:

Visible Thinking

Each of these processes toward enabling student higher and deeper learning, has these interrelated components: A) The Artful Thinking Palette (these are the thinking dispositions at the core of the program), B) Thinking Routines, C) Works of Art--with access to online museums, D) Curricular Connections, E) Visible Thinking, and, F) Teacher Study Groups.

These are resources are like "priceless jewels" for teachers, students, and parents. Check them out, please!

http://mathforum.org/geometry/rugs/symmetry

This site is a basic, helpful and interesting primer on the geometry of pattern formation and uses oriental rug patterns as its demonstration. The basics of symmetry and asymmetry are discussed along with the tessellation of patterns.

www.mathcats.com/grownupcats/ideabankgeometry.html

This site is excellent for especially very young children to practice patterns and see the connection to creativity and art and design.

Teachers’ Lab Resources 

http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/math/patterns/word.html

This site expands pattern recognition from math to logic and word patterns and offers practice links.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.pattern/lesson1art.html

This site from Dartmouth University offers deeper and higher level thinking and lessons connecting math patterns, art and architecture. Great for you or your students to get into!

THE BRAIN WEB AND BRAIN INFORMATION

(“Cool Links” are the result of our editor’s searching and discovering websites with credibility and usefulness for students, teachers and parents)

Recent publicity on “Arts and Cognition: Findings Hint at Relationships” has brought the Dana Foundation into our awareness. The Dana Foundation’s website  http://www.dana.org/default.aspx  provides information to many excellent brain related  sites and free electronic and Dana Press publications dealing with detailed brain information. These free publications are available by online sign-up. 

The Dana Foundation, as noted, is also very interested in Arts, Learning, And the Brain and has made the results of their first three-years of research at seven U.S. universities available for download. The site also includes learning games and labs for “Brainy Kids” that includes lesson  plans for teachers by going to: http://www.dana.org/resources/brainykids/ . Of course for a lot more Arts Education resources, you may go directly to http://www.dana.org/artseducation.aspx. See what a good find the Dana Foundation might be for you too!

Regarding poetry, teachers, parents, and students should be aware of the great resources available through the National Endowment for the Arts. NEA makes many fantastic resource CDS, DVDs, and learning guides  available to schools and to the home-schooled for the instructional purposes/ 

For instance, go to www.poetryoutloud.org and learn about the national recitation contest you could enter. 

C-Span asked students to make a short video documentary about a political topic that matters to them. Watch the winning works online anytime at www.studentcam.org.