Angela K. Salmon

Using music to promote children's thinking and enhance their literacy development

In an effort to understand how childrens 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 childrens experiences and is related to sounds heard everyday, which facilitate mental imagery. This article focuses on the use of music as a tool that is instrumental in engaging children in thinking activities that promote literacy development. The author shows evidence of how music serves as a scaffold to foster thinking, self‐expression and cultural awareness in children, including second‐language learners, based on findings from an action research project conducted with pre‐kindergarten to second‐grade children and their teachers. The project used their explorations with music and soundscapes (sounds that characterise the environment) to promote thinking and enhance their creative writing.

How Teachers Use Power in the Classroom to Avoid or Support Exclusionary School Discipline Practices

This study explored the relation between classroom interactions and exclusionary school discipline practices within and across four classrooms in a disciplinary alternative school. Critical social practice theory and critical microethnographic methodology supported the examination, interpretation, and analysis of interactive power to illuminate ways of transforming exclusionary school discipline practices. Data showed that exclusionary school discipline practices are mediated through power relations with insights into and implications for transforming exclusionary school discipline practices found in teachers’ discipline goals, ideology, and views of culture.

Engaging Young Children in Thinking Routines

I n early childhood settings, it is evident that routines play an important role in shaping the dynamics of the classroom, including learning environments. This article will highlight the importance of classroom routines in building a learning community, reflect on the power of thinking routines in creating thinking dispositions in the classroom, and explore how to make thinking visible so that children can see their own thinking and teachers can learn from children and improve their practice. Early childhood teachers must rise to the challenge of helping children both to think, and to think about thinking in their daily routines. The article pulls together classroom experiences from two preschools that are participating in an ongoing action research project. It focuses on early childhood theories and research and recommends specific practices for engaging children in thinking activities.

Learning by thinking during play: The power of reflection to aid performance

Coupled with reflection, play leads to the development of thinking dispositions and promotes deep learning and understanding. The twenty-first century world demands that children learn how to learn by becoming reflective, self-regulating inquirers capable of metacognition (thinking about thinking). This manuscript aims to analyse how young minds work and how children conceptualise thinking so that adults can better scaffold their thinking to help them understand their world. When adults help children make their thinking visible to themselves, children are likely to be more curious, more metacognitive and to develop thinking dispositions (tendencies that guide intellectual behaviour) as they find problems and try to solve them. The author reports research findings that reveal how adults can uncover childrens thinking by engaging them in reflective conversations about the thinking process that took place during play, which will eventually evolve into sustained dialogic thinking (shared theory) associated with high-quality teaching and learning.

Young English language learners making thinking and language visible

This paper aims to provide teachers with a resource to assist them in understanding the inner workings of young English Language Learners (ELLs) and how they externalize their thoughts in either their first or second language. This article not only analyzes how teachers can help children acquire a second language without sacrificing their first language and motivation, but also focuses on language processing in bilingual children through providing an understanding of both the interplay between language and cognition and the role of the environment. Results from an action research project implementing Harvard Project Zeros Visible Thinking ideas serve as evidence to discuss the benefits of creating a culture of thinking in the classroom to promote additive bilingualism in young children.