In this portrait, Maleka Donaldson vividly illustrates how two teachers in real-world, public school settings convey their expectations for kindergarten student performance and set the tone for learning from mistakes and feedback. Research in psychology and education has established the benefits of corrective feedback on learning but has not…

According to former National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) president Cathy L. Seeley (2014), students experience more success when they engage in doing mathematics (i.e., writing about or discussing mathematics, modeling situations, or exploring ideas in the classroom). She further recommended that teachers pose challenging problems or…

Gain a new perspective on the sharing of erroneous solutions in classroom discussions. Based on their research in grades four and six, the authors reveal how student-to-student correction of errors promotes mathematical reasoning and understanding. Tips for teachers include strategies for using students' errors to encourage reasoning during…

To close the gap between reading research and the reality of instruction, the authors developed a reading comprehension approach for elementary school, aiming at explicit instruction and practice of reading comprehension strategies. Their approach encompasses two complementary cornerstones: explicit instruction in reading strategies and creating…

This study attempted to determine whether giving lower performing tutors preferential instruction over their higher performing tutees before they engage in peer tutoring sessions may help increase the reading achievement for these lower performing tutors. The preferential instruction consisted of giving adult-delivered instruction in a targeted…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two corrective feedback methods, word-supply and phonics-based, on the oral reading fluency of students with mild disabilities. The participants included three students in the fourth grade who were diagnosed with a Specific Learning Disability (SLD) or Emotional and/or Behavioral Disorder…

Three second-grade students at-risk for reading failure participated in an adult-directed repeated reading program that integrated isolated word reading practice, unison reading, error correction, and performance cueing and feedback procedures. During each intervention session, the participants practiced five difficult words key to a first-grade…

Introduction: The use of copy, cover and compare has been suggested as an effective class-room intervention procedure. The present case report examined the use of copy, cover, and compare with math facts for an elementary student with learning disabilities. Objectives: The purpose of this research was to increase the correct rate and decrease the…

Fluency has been identified as an important outcome of effective reading instruction, and intervention packages utilizing the method of repeated readings have been shown to improve oral reading fluency. In order to improve the efficiency of these intervention packages, more research is needed on the effectiveness of small group reading…

In this paper, I focus on a prevalent and controversial practice in English instruction, namely corrective feedback or repair. While the pros and cons of this practice have been rigorously debated by language scholars for many years, the issue is mostly approached from a cognitive point of view with the focus being on the individual learner and…

The paper reports data from an on-line peer tutoring project. In the project 78, 9-12-year-old students from Scotland and Catalonia peer tutored each other in English and Spanish via a managed on-line environment. Significant gains in first language (Catalonian pupils) modern language (Scottish pupils) and attitudes towards modern languages (both…

Most research on language awareness in a second language (L2) has been carried out with adult learners. This research presents data showing that pedagogical techniques can be devised enabling children as young as 8 to develop metalinguistic awareness of their emerging L2 system. Building on existing work by Canadian researchers, this…

Children usually improve their writing in response to teacher comments. HARRY is a computer tutor, designed to assist children improve their narrative writing, focusing particularly upon grammar and style. Providing assistance involved identifying aspects of grammar and style on which to concentrate, including ways to enable the computer to detect…

We examine eight cases of argumentation in relation to a proportional reasoning task--the "Paint" task--in which the "constant sum" strategy was a significant factor. Our analysis of argument follows Toulmin's (1958) approach and in the discourse we trace factors which seem to facilitate changes in argument. We find that the arguments of "constant…

Zo eplicates in a synchronous learning environment a study that looked at the effectiveness of providing two types of corrective feedback to students in the classroom. Elementary learners of L2 English (N = 31) completed two communicative tasks, during which time they received either recasts (implicit feedback) or metalinguistic information…