Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh initiated an education reform package, "Turning the Tide: An Agenda for Excellence in Pennsylvania Public Schools" in October 1983. The statewide competency testing program which followed was "Testing for Essential Learning and Literacy Skills (TELLS), and it tested reading and mathematics…

In this report, basic skills areas for three grade levels are covered, along with average grade equivalent scores on the California Achievement Tests for the 1981-1982 school year. Included are reading comprehension, language, and mathematics scores for grades 3, 5, and 8. The major findings from analyses of the statewide results indicate that…

In this report, basic skills areas for three grade levels are covered, along with average grade equivalent scores on the California Achievement Tests for the 1982-83 school year. Included are reading comprehension, language, and mathematics scores for grades 3, 5, and 8. The major findings from analyses of the statewide result indicate that the…

This study explores the use of design technology to teach a unit on poetry in a fifth grade class. The main goals of the poetry unit were to develop students' abilities to use their own creative voices to express themselves and to write descriptive poetry that creates detailed images for the reader. This unit was implemented in a fifth grade class…

Prepared for an outdoor education program that features day trips to a rural camp in Ohio, this guide stresses environmental education and interpersonal skills. Written for grade five, the guide contains a student handbook for camp activities followed by a brief section for teachers. The introductory section of the student handbook states the…

The effects of student socioeconomic status (SES) and four teacher behaviors--teacher structure, teacher affect, cognitive level of questions, and group size--on student reading achievement were analyzed. Subjects were 36 fifth and sixth grade classroom teachers and their 820 students. Data were collected with the Reading Comprehension Subtest…

This teacher's guide contains a unit of study for teaching about energy in grades four, five, and six. The guide is self-contained and includes the fact sheets students need to work out the activity problems. The unit is organized around the theme of the domed athletic stadium. The students begin by surveying the energy it takes to travel from…

A GENERAL, PROBLEM-SOLVING PROGRAM (GPSP), CONSISTING OF 16 CREATIVE PROBLEMS FOR THE FIFTH AND SIXTH GRADE LEVELS PRESENTED IN A SELF-INSTRUCTIONAL LINEAR FORMAT, WAS DEVELOPED AS A PROTOTYPE OF INSTRUCTIONAL LINEAR MATERIALS ON CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING. THROUGHOUT THE SERIES OF LESSONS, A STORY LINE IS MAINTAINED TO GIVE THE READER A SET OF…

Legends can be incorporated into elementary social studies curricula to help students understand how people transmitted history and culture from one generation to another before they learned to read and write. Taga the Great is a legend which helps explain the 16-feet high latte stones on the Mariana Islands, Tinian and Rota. According to legend,…

A study was undertaken to determine which types of verbal humor are preferred by children and to discover how well adults can predict what children will perceive as humorous. Fifteen adults (education students, parents, and teachers) were asked to rate 25 jokes on a four point scale ranging from not funny at all and not very funny to kind of funny…

This social studies unit includes a teaching guide, student text, study guide, teacher background material, and composite pretest/posttest covering archaeological methods, evolution, fossils and man, and development of culture during the prehistoric periods in the Old World. It is part of the Anthropology Curriculum Project and is designed for…

REVIEWED ARE (1) THE ACTIVITIES OF RESEARCH AND INSTRUCTION (R AND I) UNITS IN TWO MILWAUKEE SCHOOLS DURING THE 1966-67 SCHOOL YEAR, AND (2) THE RESULTS OF FIELD TESTING OF R AND I UNITS. PART 1 PROVIDES A DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTIVITIES OF THE PROGRAM. PARTS 2 AND 3 REPORT AND EVALUATE THE RESULTS OF TWO CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTS OF MOTIVATIONAL…

Intended for use with 5th grade students, this multicolor, hardbound textbook aims to give the students an understanding of the real situations faced by Mexican American people. Chapters are titled: (1) Who Are the Mexican Americans?; (2) Problems in Understanding Cultures; (3) How Does the Past Affect the Present?; (4) What Are the Barriers to…

An interdisciplinary career education program called Career Education Activity Kits (CEAK) for grades 5-6 are presented in the document. The materials in the teacher's handbook may be used as an aid to achieve pre-established instructional outcomes. Fourteen career generalizations were utilized to develop the CEAK materials. Each generalization…

To discover children's knowledge about computer operation and programing characteristics and its effect on children's perceptions of computer expertise, pre- and posttests were administered to 292 children from 5th, 7th and 9th grades. Children were randomly assigned to see a factual film on computers or to a film on another subject. It was…