If educators want to engage girls in learning, they must align teaching practices with girls' specific needs. In a study modeled after Reichert and Hawley's study of boys, the authors learned that lessons with hands-on learning, elements of creativity, multimodal projects, and class discussions all worked to stimulate girls'…

Using an article about labor leader Cesar Chavez's grape boycott and hunger strike, students at Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Washington, D.C., are doing a "close read," a skill prized by the new Common Core State Standards being put into practice in the District of Columbia. As an English/language arts teacher in the common-core era,…

This supplement describes national adaptations made to the international version of the TIMSS 2011 background questionnaires. This information provides users with a guide to evaluate the availability of internationally comparable data for use in secondary analyses involving the TIMSS 2011 background variables. Background questionnaire adaptations…

Media headlines often announce that U.S. students do not shine in international comparisons in mathematics and science, but seldom does any one focus on the specifics of how instruction differs among countries and how U.S. educators can alter their practices to improve student achievement. Examining key findings from the Third International…

Teachers have the ability to give students opportunities to produce alternative, artistic responses to concepts they learn in school. When a student writes a poem for a character in an assigned story or engage in other activities, the classroom becomes a more interesting space, and students think in new ways. For gifted children, such…