The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how special education teachers describe selecting and applying differentiated instructional strategies for students with mild, moderate, to severe disabilities in self-contained classrooms within a school district in Arizona. Jean Piaget's social constructivism theory and Carol Ann…

Relative to their middle and high school teacher counterparts, elementary science teachers are both uniquely situated and uniquely challenged for excellent science instruction. More than 90 percent of elementary teachers work in self-contained classrooms, meaning they have opportunities to connect their science instruction with English language…

In this single-subject study, we examined the effects of a summarizing strategy on the written summaries of children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs). Six students with EBDs in fifth and sixth grades learned a mnemonic-based strategy for summarizing taught through the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) approach. Visual…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore ways in which third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers reported they successfully improved the reading achievement of students with LD as documented by an increase in test scores on standardized tests in reading. Moreover, this study is an examination of productive ways in which elementary classroom…

Teaching students to enjoy reading is important in middle level education; however, middle school students with emotional behavioral disabilities (EBD) frequently struggle with reading skills and frequently display motivational deficits during reading instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine if the presence/absence of a classroom pet…

Mathematics education in the elementary schools has experienced many changes in recent decades. With the curriculum becoming more complex as a result of each modification, immense pressure has been put on schools to increase student proficiency. The Common Core State Standards is the latest example of this. These revisions to the mathematics…

Roberta, an inclusive kindergarten teacher, and Rajan, an intermediate self-contained classroom teacher, were having a similar conversation with the reading coach who serves their schools. "One research-based strategy for engaging your students in meaningful rereading of texts is readers' theater," said the literacy coach. "Not only…

This study was designed to test the null hypothesis which states that there will be no significant difference in mean creativity scores on the verbal or figural subtests of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking among subjects with no creativity training, those with creativity training under traditional, and those with creativity training under…

Examined how children's books and textbooks affected fifth graders' knowledge acquisition and attitudes toward social studies and their textbooks. Students received instruction with either a children's book, a textbook, or both. Pretesting and posttesting indicated that students using children's books learned more, possibly because children's…

Study examined differences between self-contained and team teaching approaches when two groups of elementary teachers implemented a physical education curriculum during an inservice. Researchers collected lesson completion forms, specialists' reports, class observations, and teacher surveys. Results indicated those using self-contained approaches…

This study examined whether graphic organizer instruction would facilitate comprehension, recall, and information transfer, and how much explicit instruction was necessary for independent generation of graphic organizers. Fifth graders read social studies information with or without graphic organizers and explicit instruction. Explicitness and…