The authors employ hip-hop music as a literacy heuristic aimed at supporting the literacy development of kindergarten and first-grade students. How do young students learn to write hip-hop lyrics? How do young students engage in hip-hop reading and writing processes? The classroom examples show that students engaged in individual and interactive…

Art and science are intrinsically linked; the essence of art and science is discovery. Both artists and scientists work in a systematic but creative way--knowledge and understanding are built up through pieces of art or a series of labs. In the classroom, integrating science and visual art can provide students with the latitude to think, discover,…

As recommended by National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the first author regularly relies on her first graders' writing to assess their reasoning about important math concepts. Their writing serves as a culminating activity that allows her to better assess the depth of each student's understanding following class activities and…

In this Appendix, we provide details about the data used for the current study, the curricula used in the classrooms from which data were collected, and the current study's methodological approach. (Contains 14 tables and 5 footnotes.)[For full report, see ED544189.]

A fundamental assumption in the identification of specific learning disabilities (SLD) has been that the presence of a severe discrepancy between ability and academic achievement is a valid marker for the presence of a SLD. This assumption is based on the notion that discrepant low achievers constitute a unique group of children who are different…

The California class size reduction program provided schools with cash rewards for K-3 classes of 20 or fewer students. I show how program rules made it possible for schools to save money by using mixed-grade classes to meet class size reduction obligations while maintaining larger average class sizes. I also show that this smoothing of students…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 created the Reading First program to help ensure that all students could read at or above grade level by the end of grade 3. The program promotes practices recommended by the National Reading Panel for early reading instruction, highlighting essential components of reading instruction. As required by the…

"Science Briefs" summarize the findings and implications of a recent study in basic science or clinical research. This brief reports on the study "Contemporaneous and Longitudinal Associations between Social Behavior and Literacy Achievement in a Sample of Low Income Elementary School Children" (S. B. Miles and D. Stipek). In two groups of…