Fall catches our attention, sometimes in subtle ways. A brisk wind, a seed pod. Consider the nondescript tree that you never notice until its golden or garnet leaves flutter to the ground. For those of us who don't like cold weather, the beauty of fall makes up for the pain that is coming. But despite the riot of color, fall is more than a pretty…

The purpose of this case study was to examine how iPads could be integrated into literacy instruction in a fourth-grade classroom in ways consistent with new conceptions of literacy and in ways that transform traditional literacy instruction by supporting readers in creating multimodal responses to reading. Results indicate that several features…

The purpose of this study is to understand the perspectives of using content-based approach on college students in International Trade Business English (ITBE) Class. Content-based Approach (CBA) viewed as language learning with contents for academic subject matter. It provides a cognitive and motivational basis of language learning. CBA approach…

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) incorporates challenging literacy standards into middle grades and high school content areas within a variety of academic disciplines, not just English/language arts courses. The Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) provides schools with instructional tools needed to help teachers understand and implement…

Electronic communication and social networking are effective and useful tools in the process of teaching and learning and have increasingly improved the quality of students' learning outcomes in higher education in recent years. The system encourages and supports students' active engagement, collaboration, and participation in class activities and…

As a science adviser, the author visits many schools and experiences many approaches to teaching and learning and the curriculum. Over the years, he has developed a very close working relationship with a very "special" school, Marjory Kinnon School, in Bedfont, Middlesex. The pupils present moderate and complex learning needs or autism,…

The experiences in the school districts highlighted in this article clarify a set of broad goals that all professional learning communities can use to assess their effectiveness: (1) Culture; (2) Knowledge; (3) Practice; and (4) Achievement. These schools and districts have an ongoing commitment to all four goals. All of them have instituted…

The acronym STEM--the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and math--now a familiar term in education, is evolving into STEAM--STEM plus "A" for art. Educational researcher Martin Storksdieck's studies have shown that infusing art into STEM allows for "a different way of perceiving and knowing and dealing with the world, as a means to…

Fostering students' scientific inquiry competence has been recognised as being an important and challenging objective of science education. To strengthen the understanding of science theories or notations, researchers have suggested conducting some learning activities in the field via operating relevant devices. In a traditional infield scientific…

As a society, we are looking to schools to be or become settings where our children learn the skills for successful adulthood. We are asking educators to teach an increasingly heterogeneous population of students, some of which face additional learning challenges. Many of these students have--or will have--a significant need to develop not only…

Ability to evaluate information is a critical component of information literacy. This article provides strategies for engaging students in learning about information evaluation in the contexts of the scientific publication cycle and communication in the digital age. Also included are recent findings regarding undergraduate student research…

In this study, we used targeted active-learning activities to help students improve their ways of reasoning about carbon flow in ecosystems. The results of a validated ecology conceptual inventory (diagnostic question clusters [DQCs]) provided us with information about students' understanding of and reasoning about transformation of inorganic and…

This research examines the preparation of middle grades social studies teachers by investigating opportunities for learning in 2 social studies methods courses in distinctive teacher education pathways: a specialized middle grades program and a secondary social studies program. The findings suggest that, although both methods course instructors…

This theory-to-practice article focuses on interdisciplinary classroom activities based on principles of minimalism in modern music, art, and poetry. A lesson sequence was designed for an inner-city Grades 4 and 5 general classroom of English language learners, where the unit was taught, assessed, and documented by the authors. Included in the…

Increasingly, music teachers are required to assist, tutor, or teach reading skills in the music classroom. In the effort to meet such mandates, music teachers may be challenged to either relinquish valuable music instruction time or attempt to combine instructional strategies of both music and reading into singular lessons, units, and classroom…