Curriculum Dilemma: The Early Reader Mom, I never READ in school

My child read before he started kindergarten. Now he only reads at home at night, because they don\u27t do much reading in school, just letters and sounds. It is very discouraging for him and me. These are the words of a frustrated parent. Could it be that teachers are ignoring the literacy knowledge children bring to school

Response of Vegetation to Livestock Grazing at the Texas Experimental Ranch.

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Meaning-making from wordless (or nearly wordless) picturebooks: what educational research expects and what readers have to say

Wordless (or nearly wordless) picturebooks are intriguing in terms of how readers make meaning from them. This article offers a conceptualization of existing studies in the field of education that use wordless picturebooks with young readers. While some of these studies contribute to understanding meaning-making, the pragmatic use of wordless picturebooks often does not take account of their particular nature and of the heightened role of the reader, leading to a mismatch between what the picturebook expects from the implied reader and the researchers’ expectations of what ‘real’ readers must do with these books. By highlighting observations from children’s literature scholarship and reader-response studies, this article aims to encourage a more interdisciplinary understanding of meaning-making. It also seeks to persuade educational researchers and mediators to consider investigative approaches that are not based on verbalization but are more in tune with the invitations that wordless picturebooks extend to young readers

Marking Stress ExPLICitly in Written English Fosters Rhythm in the Reader’s Inner Voice

Spoken English has a stress-alternating rhythm that is not marked in its orthography. In two experiments, the authors evaluated whether stylistic alterations to print that marked stress pulses fostered the rendering of rhythm (experiment 1) and stress (experiment 2) during silent reading. In experiment 1, silent readers rated the helpfulness of the stylistic alterations appearing in the last line of poems. In experiment 2, silent readers rated the helpfulness of the stylistic alterations appearing in heteronyms embedded in prose. As predicted by linguistic theories, when the stylistic alterations mapped onto the rhythmic pulses of the poems, and the lexically stressed syllables of the heteronyms, silent readers rated these alterations as more helpful compared with the incongruous conditions. In experiment 2, readers’ inner voices were more tuned to the prosodic nuances of the first syllable than the second in the bisyllabic heteronyms. This prosodic tuning for the first syllable in a word was likely afforded by the strong tendency for stress to appear word-initially. In addition, the stylistically marked stress was viewed as more helpful in the early half of the sentence, when readers likely recruited more bottom-up processes. In both experiments, prior exposure to poetry was related to a refined prosodic awareness. In experiment 2, exposure to poetry predicted participants’ prosody sensitivity, after controlling for the other predictors of academic achievement. The authors’ ongoing studies are evaluating whether marking stress explicitly in written English might aid struggling readers and late speakers of English

Adapting building information modeling (BIM) for affordable & sustainable housing

textThe purpose of this thesis is to determine if Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an effective means for encouraging stakeholder collaboration throughout the building design/construction process and improving upon affordable and sustainable strategies for infill housing development. The research methodology includes literature reviews, interviews, case studies, simulations, and experimentations. Literature reviews include documentation regarding BIM, housing affordability and policy, sustainable design strategies, and integrated design practice. I conducted interviews with local stakeholders who had participated in local affordable/sustainable housing projects. The primary case study was the Alley Flat Initiative (2003-2010) which I had the opportunity to be involved with in various capacities as a participant observer. Simulations were performed using a BIM software tool to ‘redesign’ the first Alley Flat Initiative prototype and compare design workflows. Finally, experimentation was done involving the instruction of BIM software and exploring its use within an academic design studio environment. The findings indicate four significant conclusions. First, the research suggests that inflated soft project costs (overhead, administration, and services) can be reduced if local city governments were to adopt BIM in conjunction with housing review and permitting processes. In addition, the city could use BIM data to quantify building impacts on energy and resources over time. Second, sustainability innovation can be easier to integrate within a BIM workflow due to the high-capacity of the software to exchange information with third-part analysis tools. One particular barrier that must be overcome, however, are financial barriers due to software and staff training costs associated with BIM technology. Third, BIM requires ‘front-loading’ projects with more information earlier in the design process, which encourages greater transparency and more direct collaboration between stakeholders. A fully leveraged BIM workflow may not be feasible beyond local small-scale architects and builders due to the relatively steep learning curve and higher software costs, but a hybrid approach might be possible depending on how residential construction practices and BIM software development evolves in the near future. And fourth, BIM can make project information centralized, accessible, and long-lasting – serving as a communication and learning tool across disciplines and between expert and non-expert participants. The product of this research includes recommendations for all stakeholder groups engaged in leveraging BIM for affordable and sustainable housing development. Additional related topics of inquiry which fell outside the scope of this research are also included for future investigation.Architectur

Some effects of a rotational grazing treatment on cattle preference for plant communities.

Rotational grazing is commonly assumed to improve livestock distribution compared to continuous grazing, but little evidence supports this contention. Research was conducted on the effects of rotational grazing (RG) compared to continuous grazing (CG) on the preference of cattle for plant communities. Different livestock densities in the RG treatments were created by varying the size of paddocks in a 465-ha, 16-paddock, cell designed RG treatment stocked at a rate of 3.6 ha/cow/yr. Paddock sizes of 30 and 10-ha were used to simulate RG with 14 (RG-14) and 42-paddocks (RG-42), respectively. The CG treatment consisted of a 248-ha pasture stocked at 5.9 ha/cow/yr. Data consisted of hourly daylight observations of cattle location and activity during 8 seasonal trials lasting 6-15 days. These data were expressed as a percent of the time cattle were observed in each of 4 plant communities and the area surrounding permanent water. Relative electivity (RE), a preference index, and a selectivity index (SI) that measures departures from random distribution were calculated from these data. Relative electivity (i.e., preference) for plant communities was not affected by grazing treatment. However, cattle were less selective for plant communities as livestock density decreased from the RG-42 to the CG treatment. In the RG-14 treatment, the cattle were either unaffected or less selective on the last day than on the first day in a paddock. We hypothesize that grazing systems influence cattle preference for plant communities by affecting the availability of forage biomass per unit land area rather than by their effect on grazing pressure