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This is the VOA Special English Education Report

The International Primary Curriculum is an idea that began in Britain eight years ago. Today this curriculum is taught in more than one thousand primary schools in fifty-eight countries, including the United States.

Educator Martin Skelton co-wrote the International Primary Curriculum, or IPC. He says for children to learn and succeed, they need a program that permits them to learn individually.

MARTIN SKELTON: "Our view is the teachers should be thinking about their kids in their class and why they are not learning and trying to work out what they are going to be doing tomorrow to help individual kids learn much better."

He says the idea with the curriculum is to help today's children become good citizens of the world and twenty-first century leaders.

MARTIN SKELTON: "Most world problems are going to be solved internationally now. I mean no single country is going to solve the environment or terrorism. It's a multi-cooperational activity."

Mr. Skelton says the curriculum has activities built around the development of "international mindedness" starting from the age of five.

MARTIN SKELTON: "We encourage the kids to mingling with schools in other countries, and then of course things like Skype now make that fantastically easy to do."

The British American School of Los Angeles is one of a few American private schools that teach the International Primary Curriculum. Second grade teacher Alison Kerr says the main goal is to engage children in the learning process. This term, for example, her class is learning about people important in history.

ALLISON KERR: "I got the children to come in secret and dress up with several clues of a famous person. They had to research and bring us ten written clues and the rest of the class

had to guess who these significant people were. So the children do not simply just do the same worksheet type of format every single time."

The British School in Boston held a fair for students and parents called Around the World in a Day. Emma Northey, head of primary learning at the school, says fifty-one nationalities were represented. She described one activity designed to teach about similarities between different cultures.

EMMA NORTHEY: "The children were each given a passport. They basically knew that they were going around the world in a day and we said to them 'You have to come back with two similarities that you had seen between the different cultures.' Even the three-year-olds came back to me saying 'Gosh, you know everybody writes. Some people write going down. Some people write from left to right, some from right to left.'"

Another educator, Kate Foy of the British School in Washington, says the teacher's role is to enable students to discover for themselves.

KATE FOY: "And you kind of have to sit back a little bit. You have to make sure you're asking the right questions. You maneuver yourself around the classroom and enable the children to learn as opposed to telling them."

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. Tell us if you have experience with the International Primary Curriculum and what you think of it. Share your comments at

https://www.360docs.net/doc/fe16062668.html, or on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. You can also find captioned videos of our reports at the VOA Learning English channel on YouTube. I'm Steve Ember.

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

The Intel Science Talent Search is the top science competition for high school students in the United States. The forty finalists were honored in Washington last week. They met with scientists and politicians. President Obama welcomed them to the White House.

These forty students were selected from almost two thousand contestants nationwide. They had to present original research to be judged by professional scientists. The students showed their research projects on large posters. The winners were announced March fifteenth.

Wendy Hawkins is executive director of the Intel Foundation. She says the forty finalists represented excellence across many areas of science.

WENDY HAWKINS: "These students bring work that is ready for publication and in many cases has already been published in pretty much any branch of science that you can think of: physics, electrical engineering. And the projects are deep and rich and insightful."

Selena Li is from Fair Oaks, California. She wanted to find a more effective treatment for liver cancer. She began her research four years ago. A scientist at the University of California, Davis, taught her how to design and do experimental work in the laboratory.

SELINA LI: "I researched a new approach to targeting liver cancer by basically starving the liver cancer cells to death, while leaving the normal cells unaffected. And, to go one step further, I blocked a survival pathway to make the treatment more effective."

Ms. Li placed fifth in the Intel Science Talent Search and was awarded thirty thousand dollars.

Scott Boisvert lives near Phoenix, Arizona. He began using a laboratory at the University of Arizona at the age of fourteen. Over four years, he completed a project studying a fungus linked to the decrease in amphibians around the world.

He was trying to find out if different chemicals and substances in the water could kill the fungus. He collected and tested water samples across Arizona.

SCOTT BOISVERT: "My results were able to identify a list of chemicals that were significant in the growth and in the movement of the fungus."

He placed tenth in the Intel competition and was awarded twenty thousand dollars.

Evan O'Dorney of Danville, California, won the top award of one hundred thousand dollars in this year's Intel Science Talent Search. For his mathematical project, he compared two ways to estimate the square root of an integer, a number with no fractional parts.

Wendy Hawkins at the Intel Foundation says these young people represent the next generation of scientists who will help shape America's future.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. Visit the all-new mobile version of our website where you can read and listen to Special English programs and watch captioned videos. From your phone or other device, go to https://www.360docs.net/doc/fe16062668.html,. I'm Christopher Cruise.

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English

About three thousand delegates from around China are in Beijing for this year's meeting of the National People's Congress.

The government wants to prevent social problems, and Premier Wen Jiabao says one way to do that is to help the poor.

(SOUND)

Premier Wen recently held a public online chat. He said improving peoples' living conditions will be the starting point for every rule in China's next five-year plan. The plan lists Communist Party goals for twenty eleven through twenty fifteen.

The legislature will give final approval to the plan during its week-long meeting starting Saturday.

Premier Wen suggested that the government also plans to deal with two other problems, corruption and inflation. Inflation in January was just under five percent, but food prices rose more than ten percent.

On Friday, a legislative spokesman said China will increase defense spending by almost thirteen percent. This has been about the average since nineteen eighty-nine, except for a smaller increase last year.

Chinese officials have pointed out that their defense budget is much smaller than the American total. But some experts say China spends a lot more than its official amount.

China says it needs to modernize its forces. It says its plans are not a threat to any country.

Security expert James Nolt is dean of the New York Institute of Technology campus at Nanjing University in China. He says much of the defense increase will go toward rising costs for new equipment. He also says some of the money will be spent on higher wages for people with higher skills.

JAMES NOLT: "In my view it does not represent a significant change in capability. It represents an increase in costs in order to maintain existing capabilities, relative to other countries."

Even so, Japan's foreign minister says his country "cannot help worrying about what all the money is used for."

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

A huge earthquake and tsunami destroyed a large part of northeastern Japan last week. Survivors and rescue workers stopped for one minute on Friday to remember the hour when the earthquake struck.

The quake and tsunami killed at least six thousand people. More than nine thousand others are missing. About three hundred eighty thousand people have left their homes after they were heavily damaged or destroyed. Those displaced are now living in more than two thousand shelters.

There are shortages of food, water and fuel. Each day more roads are being reopened for trucks to take supplies to the survivors. But some communities remain cut off.

On Friday night, Prime Minister Naoto Kan spoke of the problems in a speech to the nation. The Prime Minister said he understands that people in shelters are cold and do not have enough food. But he said the government is doing all it can. And he said he hopes to return a sense of security to the survivors soon.

Mister Kan also said the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power center is the worst Japan has ever faced. He said police, firefighters and military workers were risking their lives to prevent a wider disaster. On Friday, workers continued to direct water on the damaged reactor buildings. It was an attempt to cool the highly radioactive fuel rods from overheating. Workers used powerful hoses to shoot fifty tons of water on the buildings. But the military and civilian firefighters had to keep their distance and limit the time they could be in the area because of the radiation.

Fires, explosions and a partial melting of cores have taken place at four of the six reactors at the Fukushima nuclear center.

Officials say the situation in the number three reactor is the most serious. Mixed oxide fuel rods are partly made of plutonium. These fuel rods are partly exposed. Without water, they will continue to heat up and possibly release a large amount of radiation.

On Friday, the government raised the severity rating of its nuclear disaster from four to five on a seven-point international nuclear event scale. Level five means an accident with wider results, including some release of radioactive material. It also means a high possibility of the material making contact with people.

In Washington on Thursday, President Obama said the United States will stand with Japan as it contains its nuclear crisis, recovers and rebuilds.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "The Japanese people are not alone in this time of great trial and sorrow. Across the Pacific, they will find a hand of support extended from the United States as they get back on their feet."

The president noted some of the steps the United States has taken to help.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "Search and rescue teams are on the ground in Japan to help the recovery effort. A disaster assistance and response team is working to confront the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. The U.S. military, which has helped to ensure the security of Japan for decades, is working around the clock."

Mr. Obama said the military has completed hundreds of flights to bring food and water to Japan.

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.