A model of reading development was tested by examining preschool children's knowledge of print, their interactions with a teacher, and their parents' perceptions of children's attitudes toward printed materials. The central tenet of the tested model was its hierarchical notion of children's progress in learning to read, leading to the assumption…

Discusses a collaborative writing assignment on the Annunciation and the difficulties posed by summoning personal experiences to help in writing about an unfamiliar situation. The resulting poem is included. (HTH)

Provides a strategy for teachers to use to help students relate their concrete nonschool experiences to the abstract content of social studies textbooks and nonschool learning to school learning. Suggests use of a Nonschool Activity Student Profile to provide teachers with information about their students so that this may be achieved. (AEM)

Argues that children need to be taught how to extract, synthesize, organize, and integrate important information from texts into their own knowledge structures and describes some techniques that can be used to activate prior knowledge. (HOD)

This study explores difficulties that prospective elementary mathematics teachers have with the concepts of ratio and proportion, mainly when they are engaged in solving problems using algorithm procedures. These difficulties can be traced back to earlier experiences when they were students of junior and high school. The reflection on these…

This paper examines research on students' learning in small tutorial groups, highlighting: (1) cognitive processes elicited by small group discussion and their effects on achievement; and (2) the influence of tutors on student learning. The studies examined problem based learning (PBL) in small groups in high schools and universities. Researchers…

A 56-year-old Canada Native took a college course on Australian Indigenous approaches to knowledge. He observed that initially many students were hindered by their past experience with linear paradigms of structured academic processes. Eventually they let their minds access spirit and feeling in addition to thought, allowing a recall of life…

Investigated seven-year-old children's understanding of certain geographical terms. Found that children this age have considerable difficulty with some concepts and that even vernacular terms are often misunderstood. Results support the idea of children's alternative conceptions and suggest that, for teaching to be more effective, children's prior…

Interviews with three kindergarten teachers examined the effect of an in-service program which introduced them to findings from emergent literacy research with a developmental perspective. Although subjects used teacher-led instructional methods, they considered active child-centered kindergartens preferable. They enumerated external constraints…

New neuroscientific knowledge is redefining possibilities for K-12 education. There are five critical variables in the brain's learning process: neural history, context, acquisition, elaboration, and encoding. This article tracks one student's unique brain activity throughout her school day to illustrate these variables. (MLH)

This paper examines the use of students' lived experiences in an urban elementary science classroom. Students bring different funds of knowledge that are accumulated through their lived experiences into the classroom, and I examine what those funds of knowledge mean to an elementary science teacher working in an urban school. I describe how a…

The concept of waves is fundamental due to its occurrence throughout the natural world. Because the concept occurs in so many places, students come to the classroom with prior knowledge, as well as misconceptions, about waves. Students have misconceptions about what is waving in a wave, what properties of the medium determine wave speed, and how…

This quantitative study compared the instructional effects of two web-based animation strategies against static graphics by high and low prior knowledge participants. One strategy used animation to gain attention; the second to gain attention and provide elaboration. Participants were 111 college student volunteers. Two-way multiple analysis of…

In the following article the author presents a methodological framework for the teaching of intercomprehension. Competence in intercomprehension is seen as a realisation of the general human faculty for using and understanding language, which includes the ability to comprehend texts and utterances in "unfamiliar" languages. This competence can be…

The present study examined characteristics of students who took advantage of the opportunity to learn Algebra II from a highly skilled teacher. In particular, student information was gathered concerning: (a) the amount of mathematics students knew prior to the class, (b) their motivation for learning mathematics, (c) the number and types of…