This study reports on the capabilities of 53 Year 4 students as they completed the final stages of their first complete statistical investigation. In the context of becoming acquainted with students in a sister school in another city, students in both schools wrote and refined questions, which were answered by all students in an on-line survey.…

The purpose of the study is to explore the effect of writing to learn activities including letter, summary, and poster on academic achievement in the fourth grade science course called introduction to matter unit. The study was carried out via pre-test post-test control group design, one of the quasi experimental research designs. The achievement…

Purpose: This study explores to what extent health promotion policy in practice and leadership engagement is reflected in school actors' experiences of health dialogues (HDs) and their ideas about promoting health and learning in schools. Design/methodology/approach: The 93 participants consisted of 44 school nurses, 37 students in grades 4, 7 or…

Parental behavioral and relational engagement in school include components of trust, communication, and respect that are positively predictive of student academic success. Parents who report high levels of trust with their child's teacher are more likely to be involved in school and related programs and events. Direct teacher-parent communication…

This article describes a fourth grade project involving elementary students, their teachers, elementary preservice teachers, and university faculty. The project focused on a work of juvenile historical fiction, culminating in social studies lessons that were interdisciplinary. This collaboration between educators was made possible by a…

History labs invite students to examine primary and secondary source documents related to an essential question. The sources used in a history lab should represent multiple perspectives so that students are aware of the varying accounts of and opinions about historic events. By being exposed to multiple perspectives, students also learn about…

The Cognitively Based Assessment of, for, and as Learning ("CBAL"™) research initiative is aimed at developing an innovative approach to K-12 assessment based on cognitive competency models. Because the choice of scoring and equating approaches depends on test dimensionality, the dimensional structure of CBAL tests must be understood.…

This quasi-experimental and pre/posttest study was designed to examine whether fourth-grade students who engaged in collaboratively writing letters to 11th-grade students performed better on tests of conceptual understanding of a unit on force and motion than students who did not. The participants included 835 fourth-grade students and 416…

This study involved the development, implementation, and assessment of a comprehensive schoolwide mailing program as a practical tool to communicate enthusiasm towards writing to children and actively engage them in letter writing. The author played the dual role of teacher-researcher and worked for one school year with one teacher from each grade…

A large body of evidence shows that many of the academic difficulties Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) children have may be related to their problems in executive control. However, the particular case of expressive writing has not been deeply explored. The present study examines the typical school exercise of writing a letter.…

In this study, 38 preservice teachers enrolled in two sections of a language and literacy course at a small university in Montana were paired as pen pals with 14 fourth graders in Kansas. The purpose of the research project was to determine in what ways and contexts the literate identities of the children emerged through letter exchanges with the…

In this exploratory study, reading, writing, and discussion were examined within the context of a pen pal intervention focusing on authentic literacy tasks. The study employed a mixed-method design with a triangulation-convergence model to explore the relationship between authentic literacy tasks and the literacy motivation of elementary students…

In the study described in this article, fourth-grade teachers and students of different abilities and language backgrounds were interviewed before, during, and after participating in an Internet pen pal program. Results reveal that the program's authentic tasks and texts facilitated communication and enabled students to learn about a different…

When teachers and students are from different cultures, dissonance can occur in classrooms, which can be debilitating for effective literacy teaching and learning. Researchers have conducted studies in urban schools for many years, but the problem of cultural dissonance continues to plague many classrooms. It is imperative that teacher education…

One of the most difficult problems of modern school practice is how to prevent overcrowding the curriculum, breaking up the school day into small fragments of time devoted to disconnected tasks, and dissipating the energies of the children to such an extent that the process of education is hindered rather than helped by the attempts to enrich and…