Author and educator Jason McKenna describes how teaching STEM education in his elementary school changed his classroom and his life, improving his students' and his own approaches to problem solving, collaboration, and general motivation to learn. Offering examples, tried and tested classroom projects, and collaborative strategies, this innovative…

What if multilingual learners had the freedom to interact in more than one language with their peers during classroom assessment? What if multilingual learners and their teachers in dual language settings had opportunities to use assessment data in multiple languages to make decisions? Just imagine the rich linguistic, academic, and cultural…

In many post-secondary, introductory mathematics courses failure and withdrawal rates are reaching as high as 50% and average GPA is steadily decreasing. This is a problem that has been witnessed across the globe. With widespread reforms taking place in K-12 mathematics education, many innovative teaching strategies have been created, implemented,…

Demonstrates how Likert scales, semantic differentials, and projective pictures, stories, and sentences can be used to assess secondary school students' attitudes toward social issues. The Likert scale lists positive and negative statements about an issue; the semantic differential indicates degrees of feelings, for example, good, neutral, bad.…

"Making Teaching Work" provides a down-to-earth, jargon-free book for teaching staff in universities and colleges, and includes reference to some of the best modern literature on assessment, teaching and feedback. By focusing on the learner in a variety of situations and contexts, the book explores how teachers can help learners to make learning…

Details the use of weekly reports, a structured journal form of formative assessment that allows instructors to receive information from students and alter their instruction based on student needs. (Contains 18 references.) (DDR)

Investigates student perceptions of the effectiveness of two methods of teaching students to create personal resumes. Offers a description of a method for teaching the design of resumes and application letters that involves evaluation of students' resumes by a business executive. Notes that advice from executives often means more to students than…

The writing program described in this lesson plan guides students in grades 3 through 8 in composing cinquain poems, a five-line form that uses the syllable count of two-four-six-eight-two. During the two 50-minute lessons, students will: describe the basic conventions of cinquain; interpret examples of cinquain; characterize the relationship…

The quick-writing activity described in this lesson plan guides grades K-2 students to write a simple cinquain as a follow-up to a subject they have been exploring in class. During the one 60-minute lesson, students will: write a poem about another topic, using the cinquain graphic organizer or outline; use words learned in the current thematic…

Emphasizes that consideration of students' reading attitudes is an essential part of reading assessment. Discusses different ways of conceptualizing reading attitudes that teachers might find helpful and makes suggestions on how teachers can actually measure the attitudes of their students. (AEA)

Provides a description of a project using a draw-a-scientist test to probe students' perceptions of who does science under what conditions. Details are provided regarding the methodology with research instruments included. Instructions for participating in a national study using the draw-a-scientist test are provided. (DDR)

To assess the effectiveness of various composition evaluation methods, a study asked two freshman English classes to respond to three questionnaires on the writing of personal essays and methods of evaluation they had experienced. Responses indicated that all students had a fear of having their essays evaluated. Evaluation methods considered a…

English teachers' approaches to the problems of assessment and evaluation have been characterized by uncertainty and confusion, and this uncertainty is communicated to students. It is not simply that students do not know "how" they are being judged; they do not know "when" they are being judged. They soon begin to stop taking risks and fail to…

Describes a process for teaching middle school students how to do research. Topics addressed include student attitudes; five major components of the research process; choosing topics that interest the students personally; assessing student progress; and benefits to the students. (LRW)

In an undergraduate course in international economics, students are required to answer all questions on examinations and to assign weights to the questions to be used in calculating grades. Seventy-three percent of the students like this format. One surprising result is that poorer students have a much better perception of their knowledge level…