Here we are poised to begin another new year. There is always much talk about resolutions and what we want to change about ourselves for the coming year. I have tried to make at least one resolution each year. That resolution is to contribute one important thing to the early childhood community. I hope to publish something in 2009 and hope that it will be helpful to teachers and caregivers. Here's to 2009 and everything we an accomplish between now and 2010. Good Luck.

As this is the period when reviews of the year are published, today's post gathers together some of the most significant childhood and education reports and events from 2008.

Rather appropriately, it seemed like there were a lot of reviews being published this year - the Bercow Report looked at services for children with speech, language and communication needs, while the Byron Review examined ways of ensuring children's safety while they are online. There were even two competing reviews with regards to primary education - Sir Jim Rose has been commissioned by the DCSF to carry out a review of primary education and his interim report appeared this month, with the final version set to appear next year; meanwhile, the Primary Review from the University of Cambridge generated a string of reports on various aspects of education throughout 2008, and its final report is also due next year.

From an international perspective, UNICEF's recent report The Child Care Transition caused a bit of a ruckus by placing the UK only about half way in a league table comparing children's services in developed countries. UNICEF also published its annual The State of the World's Children report (a new one is due next month), while UNESCO released Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance Matters, which looks at access to primary education in developing nations. Those of our students who carry out research into education in other countries should also be interested in a piece of DCSF research entitled Comparison of the Core Primary Curriculum in England to those of Other High Performing Countries.

With regard to contemporary issues, two major studies on children's play were published in 2008. Play and Exercise in Early Years: Physically Active Play in Early Childhood Provision is available to download online, while Play England recently released a mammoth study entitled Play for a Change - Play, Policy & Practice: A Review of Contemporary Perspectives. As there is currently a lot of talk about the concept of childhood wellbeing, readers may want to look at a DCSF study entitled Childhood Wellbeing: Qualitative Research Study. Elsewhere, a snapshot of the future of staff roles within the childcare sector is provided by For Love or Money: Pay, Progression and Professionalisation in the ‘Early Years’ Workforce, while you can read about current perceptions of the sector in Childcare and Early Years Survey 2007 Parents’ Use, Views and Experiences.

Two major changes with regard to professional practice have taken place this year. In September the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) was implemented in schools - you can find full details about the EYFS from its website. And last month, the Children & Young Person's Act 2008 was passed by parliament; these explanatory notes should help clarify some of its main points.

A round up of some random other useful items: The Sure Start Journey: A Summary of Evidence is an independent assessment of the progress of the Sure Start project; Ofsted's annual report is the first review of the organisation under it's new remit of assessing early years care as well as schools; Harnessing Technology is Becta's annual review of ICT use within schools; Becta were also behind a report entitled A Review of the Evidence on the Use of ICT in the Early Years Foundation Stage; and the ever-present topic of child poverty was covered by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's annual publication of Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion.

Within the College, since the summer all students now have access to the CCInform service, which provides access to detailed information for professionals who work with children and young people; take a look at this previous post for an overview of the service and a link to a user guide.

Finally, it seems an odd thing to mention in a review of 2008, but the most regularly viewed post on the blog all year has been one about something that occurred 30 years ago. So in case you missed it the first time, click here to read about how you can access the full text of the 1978 Warnock Report, a study on special educational needs which proved to be something of a landmark.

That should keep you all going for the holiday break - for child-related festive fun, try taking a look at the Peanuts site, which gives you free access to the archives of this legendary comic strip. Merry Christmas to all our readers!

I was out breaking the ice on our pond (winter has arrived!) so that the turtles hibernating in the bottom will have oxygen. While breaking the ice I was thinking about the discussion that happens every year at this time about saying "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." It all boils down to validation. Human beings want to validated in their beliefs and cultural surroundings. I sometimes think that I should just say, "Merry Everybody and Everything." Actually, I think that is a good idea. As teachers we accept (or should accept) any child that crosses the threshold into our classroom. However, sometimes we adults forget to do that to each other. We are so busy trying to prove we are right, we think the only way to do so is to prove everyone else is wrong. I often think of Dr. Seuss's book, "The Sneetches," when it says..."that day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches and no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches." Validation is the oxygen we need and I want to spend my time breaking the ice.

Two documents released last week by the DCSF:

• It is 12 months since the publication of the Children's Plan (see this previous post for details); now the DCSF has released a progress report which details what has been done so far across a range of areas

• The Play Strategy describes how the DCSF intends to create and develop play facilities for children across the country
  

Readers with an interest in early years provision in other countries should be interested in a new report from UNICEF. Published yesterday, The Child Care Transition examines early childhood education and care in 25 economically advanced countries by utilising a league table system, measuring each country against a set of benchmarks which are considered important elements of good practice in childcare.

The UK appears in the middle of the table, and is credited with having achieved 5 of the 10 benchmarks which were applied to each country. However, the DCSF has disputed the results of the study, claiming that there are several inaccuracies in the report. Sweden came top of UNICEF's league, having achieved each of the 10 benchmarks on which countries were assessed.

This week has seen the 10th anniversary of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's annual Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion report. The 2008 edition is slightly different from previous versions, in that it analyses trends in this area for the whole of the last decade. The conclusions are mixed: good progress is reported in increasing the number of homes which meet government standards, and there has been a steep reduction in the number of low income homes without a bank account. However, other issues such as the number of pensioners claiming their full benefit entitlement, or addressing the number of under-16 pregnancies, have shown little or no progress, or the situation has even worsened.

You can read the full text of Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2008 online. A supporting website, with figures, further analysis and links to other relevant sites can be accessed by clicking here.

Many of our readers may be interested to learn that this week is Wider Workforce Week on Teachers TV. All week the service (Freeview Channel 88) will be dedicating a large proportion of its schedule to programmes which focus on the roles of staff such as Teaching Assistants, HLTAs, lunchtime supervisors and others. If you miss any of these programmes, they are free to watch at any time from the Teachers TV website.

Since January of this year, Sir Jim Rose has been carrying out an independent review of primary education in the UK, on the instructions of the DCSF. The importance of this review can be easily gauged by the amount of press attention that the publication of today's interim report has generated.

Among the proposals put forward are suggestions that teaching children about emotional well-being and social skills should be a compulsory part of the curriculum. Other proposals include offering summer-born children the chance to start school earlier, and exploring ways to make the primary curriculum more "joined up" with nursery and secondary education. The full text of the interim report is online now, while the final report is due to appear next spring, so that the government can implement the recommendations it accepts from 2011.

The issue of faith schools is in the news again, following the release of a new report from the Runnymede Trust. This new research is likely to add further fuel to an already controversial topic; among its claims are the suggestions that popular faith schools are becoming a way of preserving privilege, and that they could help to improve social cohesion by stopping the selection of pupils according to religion.

The full report, entitled Right to Divide? Faith Schools and Community Cohesion, is available online now. A summary version is also available, while if you have a particular interest in this topic then you may also want to take a look at a 2006 report from the Centre for the Economics of Education entitled Faith Primary Schools: Better Schools or Better Pupils?

I am in the middle of interviewing students from my Introduction to Teaching courses at the university. I am so excited about the number of students who are forging ahead with the teaching programs. We know all of the negatives about teaching, such as lower salaries, behavior problems with students and lack of support from home. However, I think the biggest negative of all is poor teaching, whether it is the cynical-nothing works teacher or the instructor who lacks teaching skills. Both of those groups give all teachers and education a bad name. I have tried to relay to my students that it does not have to be that way. You can be a successful, organized and efficient teacher without being mean or constantly in survival mode. I believe it takes just as much effort to be a lousy teacher as it does to be a good teacher. I'm hoping this new crop of teachers will be the latter. We so desperately need more GOOD teachers. It makes me want to go back and teach kindergarten again...which I will do at least one more time before I die...at least I hope. :-)

El presente material es una guía para trabajar los diferentes tipos de Disglosias. Provee de:

• Repaso de conceptos básicos
• Terapia miofuncional
• Tratamiento fonoaudiológico (logopedico) para los diferentes tipos de disglosias labiales, mandibulares, linguales y palatinas.

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-2

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-3

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-4

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-5

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-6

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-7

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-8

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-9

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-10

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-11

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-12

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-13

que-le-falta-dibujalo-y-colorealo-14

Something for our Family Support Workers today; a few months ago the Family & Parenting Institute published Homes Fit for Families: An Evidence Review. This paper explores the literature which is available on how children and families can be affected by their housing and neighbourhood, and suggests solutions to ensure that family housing is fit for purpose.

Details of more useful items which have been published in the last week:

• The latest report from Every Child A Reader suggests that the programme to help struggling children has had "spectaular" results; on average, pupils boosted their reading age by two years in just four of five months. For a closer look at the evidence, click here.

• A joint report from the Smith Institute and The Centre for Social Justice thinktanks has called for the state to take on a larger role in helping to bring up the most disadvantaged children in society. The pamphlet, entitled Getting in Early: Primary Schools and Early
  Intervention, argues that such children need to receive support with communication skills, as well as lessons in empathy and self-control.

• A number of students have been asking for statistical information lately; the just-published Education and Training Statistics for the United Kingdom: 2008 gives an incredibly detailed overview of all levels of education in Britain.
  

Material didáctico "TAR en imagenes" (TAR modificado) fue elaborado durante las prácticas 2007 para hacer mas fácil la evaluación articulatoria de:

• Fonemas
• Dífonos vocálicos
  
• Dífonos consonanticos
• Polisilabos
  
• (No contempla imagenes para las frases y oraciones)

There is always plenty of new research and reports being published in the Childhood and Early Years sectors, but lately there seems to have been a particularly large amount of new information being made available, so the posts for today and tomorrow will be a jumble of 'bits and bobs' to fit them all in. Today's blog entry will cover several reports from the DCSF which have just been released.

• Primary Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL): Evaluation of Small Group Work is a report on the national SEAL programme, which was introduced in primary schools to improve children's behaviour and attendance. The study suggests that the programme has had little or no effect on pupil's behaviour.
• On behalf of the DSCF, the EPPE Project has delivered its final report on the primary phase of its Pre-school, School and Family Influences on Children’s Development during Key Stage 2 (Age 7-11) project.
• Anyone with an interest in teaching should find Beginner Teachers’ Experiences of Initial Teacher Preparation, Induction and Early Professional Development: A Review of Literature very useful as a source of further reading
• The role of men in childcare is an area which seems to have attracted interest in the last couple of years, so A Review of How Fathers Can be Better Recognised and Supported Through DCSF Policy should interest those of you with an interest in this topic. This previous post also contains suggestions for further reading.
• Finally, The Impact of Parental Involvement on Children’s Education is a short review of practice in this area.
  

Here's a round up of several items of interest from recent weeks, which fall into two broad areas: children's services and bullying.

Last week saw the Children's and Young Persons Act 2008 pass into law. The act contains provisions in relation to well-being of children and young people, private fostering and much more. Like most legislation, the Act itself is very detailed and pretty hard to follow, so this set of explanatory notes may be of use to may readers.

On a similar theme, The Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People’s Services (C4EO) has recently published three separate scoping studies on improving outcomes for children by examining effective practice in integrating various early years services. You can find links to each of the studies by clicking here.

Those of you with an interest in bullying have two new documents to look through. The National Healthy Schools Programme has just released a booklet entitled Anti-Bullying Guidance for Schools, while the Beatbullying charity have published a report entitled Interfaith Report. This contains research which investigates the extent of bullying among children belonging to different religious groups.