Math With Song Research To Be Demonstrated At CTQEL Meeting Today

The Advisory Council for Old Dominion University's Center for Teacher Quality and Educational Leadership (CTQEL) will get a demonstration of the use of songwriting to teach mathematics at its meeting Friday, April 3.

CTQEL is sponsoring a songwriting action research project at Norfolk's Monroe Elementary School, called Melodyville Players, which is being led by Tina Micula. Hired by the center to serve as artist-in-residence at College Park Elementary in Virginia Beach and Monroe Elementary in Norfolk, Micula is training teachers to use songwriting to address children's long-term memory.

The research project uses songwriting to enhance instruction as defined by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). At the opening of the advisory council's meeting, Micula will lead Monroe's second-graders in a song that they wrote for a Black History Month celebration. The song is aligned with Standards of Learning mathematics objectives.

The purpose of the CTQEL meeting is to review K-12 partnership activity. Participants at the meeting will include Harry Blevins, a state senator from Chesapeake; Philip Hamilton, a state delegate from Newport News; Pat Wright, Virginia superintendent of public instruction; and school principals and superintendents from across the commonwealth.

The Center for Teacher Quality and Educational Leadership is an outreach initiative of the Program for Research and Evaluation in Public Schools (PREPS), which is housed in ODU's Darden College of Education. Sponsored by the Virginia General Assembly, the center is a field of networked relationships, collaborative higher education/K-12 projects, programs and emerging research related to "authentic" or transformative public education.

More information is available at http://education.odu.edu/ctqel and www.ctqel.org.