"If someone were traveling to our area for the first time during this time of year, what would you tell them to bring to wear? Why?" This question was used to engage students in a guided-inquiry unit about how climate differs from weather. In this lesson, students explored local and national data sets to give "travelers" advice…

Although they are valid and reliable, one-minute fluency measures are defining and capturing a reduced view of fluency as simply accuracy and rate in oral reading. Thus, they may lead astray our understanding of struggling readers' reading fluency development and instructional needs. Fluency is a complicated construct. The author discusses a…

In this article, Lindsay Cassedy, Catherine Flaherty and Michael Fordham draw upon their empirical research to assess what understandings their students had of historical interpretations at the end of their compulsory education in history. They found that most students operated with an underlying epistemological model that did not reflect the way…

The potential for music programs to promote psychosocial wellbeing in mainstream schools is recognised in both policy and research literature. Despite this recognition, there is a dearth of consistent research evidence supporting this link. Authors attribute this lack of consistent evidence to limitations in the areas of research design and…

Background: The relation between academic self-concept and achievement has been examined in a large number of studies. The majority of these studies have found evidence for a reciprocal effects model. However, there is an ongoing debate on how students' achievement should be measured and whether the type of achievement indicator (grades, tests,…

Visual elements that used in lessons are necessary because they make learning more permanent. Also the visuals that used in evaluation part of the lesson should decrease the anxiety of students and provide them with correct evaluation. The board games among the visuals which can be used in evaluation part are quite effective for getting feedback…

Performance assessment is an integral part of young musicians' development. Students enrolled in music programs frequently participate in adjudication festivals and many audition for select ensembles. Outcomes of such events are deemed consequential among all concerned: students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Furthermore, the number of…

The purpose of this study was to explore a cognitive approach to analyzing students' written responses to mathematics performance assessments to inform learning, instruction, and assessment design and development. The existing data used in this study were seventh grade students' written responses to, and item scores on, four released mathematics…

Educational assessment can be a powerful tool in enhancing classroom instruction and student performance. Yet, its effectiveness relies on the beliefs and knowledge of those who apply it on a daily classroom basis. This study explored attitudes, competence, knowledge, and practices of teachers about educational assessment. Participants were 165…

This study compared the creative outcomes in student work resulting from two pedagogical approaches to creative problem solving activities. A secondary goal was to validate the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) as a means of assessing creativity. Linear models for problem solving and design processes serve as the current paradigm in classroom…

This paper reports the results of a descriptive study on the use of a technology-enhanced formative assessment system called Accelerated Math (AM) for ELLs and their native-English-speaking (NES) peers. It was comprised of analyses of an extant database of 18,549 students, including 2,057 ELLs, from grades 1 through 8 across 30 U.S. states. These…

A wind energy focused curriculum for grades 4-8 was designed and implemented to promote the understanding of wind energy concepts with American Indian students. 57 students who participated in the 2009 summer program of the "Reach for the Sky" (RFTS) Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) received the curriculum. The…

This article describes a project where students in a low-performing suburban school learned about profit and area by forming their own companies and creating bids to re-surface of their school's floors. They learned by measuring floor area, calculating costs, performing cost analysis, determining desired profit, making a payment schedule and…

Based on data from a sample of 106 students in grades 2 through 8, we explored the psychometric integrity of the Universal Academic, Cognitive, Creativity, Emotion Screening Scale (Universal ACCESS; R. S. McCallum & B. A. Bracken, in press). We obtained Cronbach's alphas ranging from 0.95 to 0.98 across the eight scales of the Universal…

This study examined the performance of the FAS II in a general population of 17,545 students in grades 7, 9, 10 and 12 in the Atlantic provinces of Canada. The FAS II was assessed against two other measures of socioeconomic status: mother's highest level of education and family structure. Our study found that the FAS II reduces the likelihood of…