This action research study examined the impact of a summer literacy program on summer reading setback. Gaining Ground is a summer intervention program designed primarily for economically disadvantaged students in Grades K-5. By granting access to self-selected books and implementing project-based curriculum, Gaining Ground aims to improve reading…

Research on early childhood robotics education often focuses narrowly on teaching young children STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) concepts and skills. In this qualitative case study, our research team examined what happened when we worked with young children (age 7) and combined the technologies of robotics education with…

Research Findings: Children's readiness to handle the expectations of elementary school depends heavily on their self-regulation skills. Self-regulation includes both cognitive and behavioral elements; however, past studies have typically looked at cognitive and behavioral self-regulation in isolation or as a composite score rather than examining…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of explicit instruction, compared to constructivist instruction, in teaching subtraction in schools with a high concentration of students from a disadvantaged social background: eighty-seven second graders (mean age in months = 90.95, SD = 5.30). Two groups received explicit versus…

Background: Prior research shows that teachers' working conditions are important for teacher and student outcomes, such as teacher retention and student achievement. Because National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) can be effective in the classroom and as instructional leaders, they are well positioned to create favorable working conditions for…

In the face of rising economic and social inequality, American parents increasingly seek to promote their children's academic achievement through provision of enriching learning opportunities. In this study, we hypothesized that parental investments in both home and out-of-home learning resources may partially explain socioeconomic disparities in…

Although the average daily attendance rate for Tennessee students is 95 percent, almost 45,000, or 10 percent, of Tennessee K-3 students missed at least a month's worth of school days during the 2014-15 school year. These "chronically absent" students present a particular problem for schools that are charged with developing foundational…

To support elementary school students in finding a solution to an engineering problem, the authors developed a series of five lessons using the 5E Instructional Model (Bybee 2014). The lessons align with the "Next Generation Science Standards" and the "Common Core State Standards" and integrate the teaching and learning of…

Relevant, non-fiction texts became primary teaching materials for second grade English Learners in a poor urban school in the Midwest United States. Politics, news and other current events captured children's attention, helping to engage, explore and extend their literacy confidence in the real world. The Principal Investigator employed the…

Demographic information often proves useful for finding subpopulations in educational data. Unfortunately, it is often not collected in the log files of online learning systems, which serve as one of the primary sources of data for the Educational Data Mining community. Recent work has sought to address this issue by investigating school-level…

The purpose of this study was to identify an indicator that the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) could use to measure the percentage of entering kindergarteners who are on-track to read on grade level by the end of grade 3. To develop the indicator, this study examined relationships between student scores on SDP's different assessments that…

Since 2007, nineteen Houston Independent School District (HISD) campuses have partnered with Literacy Now to offer the Reading Intervention program. The Reading Intervention program provides individualized, small group reading tutorials for at-risk students in kindergarten to second grade to create proficient readers by the end of third grade.…

Previous studies about ELs have reported data on active English Learners--defined as those students who have not yet reached proficiency on a state English test--at a specific moment in time. This study, for the first time, analyzed the long-term trajectories of 18,000 CPS students who began kindergarten as ELs and followed their progress all the…

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a universal prevention program designed to increase academic engagement and to decrease disruptive behavior in elementary school-age children. Teachers and other school personnel use interdependent group contingencies to improve students' behavior in the classroom. Previous research indicates the GBG is efficacious…

Studies examining the well-being of British children find that about 5-10% are at risk of developing problems. This study aimed to examine the emotional and behavioural development of six to eight year olds in an area of socio-economic deprivation in Glasgow (Scotland) and compare this with UK norms. Furthermore, it aimed to look at overlap…