For several years, the author's fifth-grade students raised and observed plants, kept journals, and analyzed the functions of the parts of a plant. But this year, a near disaster taught her a lesson and increased the value of the activity for her students. Not only did students learn about plants, they now understand what a variable is and how…

Edward Foote is a special education teacher at Jefferson Avenue Elementary School in Fairport, New York. Foote's fourth- and fifth-grade students, who he teaches in a self-contained classroom and also in inclusion classes with the general student population, have disabilities that range from severe physical and emotional needs to autism. His…

Developing meaning for symbolic representations is an important part of the middle school mathematics experience for all students. Teachers must not see simply writing symbolic representations as the end goal, but focus on the internal meaning that students ascribe to these symbols. Too often, students lack a deep understanding of the algebraic…

Judgments about actual and hypothetical events were examined. The study, conducted in elementary (first, third, and fifth grades) and junior high (seventh grades) schools, included behavioral observations and assessments of judgments. Observations were conducted of 108 events classified as moral, as conventional, and as mixed type. Participants'…

It is enchanting when over twenty students' quilt squares make a quilt. The common, yet diverse techniques for making a quilt transform the students' quilt squares into a shared quilting experience. A quilt made by students in one classroom can demonstrate a unique characteristic of each student by combining their squares into a quilt about a…

Prompted by a recent review in American Anthropologist, I interviewed two people who played central roles in the training and dissemination of MACOS, a social studies curriculum unit designed for the fifth grade during the era of intensive curriculum reform beginning in the sixties. The article briefly discusses both how MACOS came to be and what…

The assessment and structure of personality traits and small group learning during classroom discussions are both research fields that have undergone fast development in the past few decades. However, very few studies have investigated the relationship between individual personality characteristics and performance in discussions, especially with…

This study is conducted to investigate the relationship between fifth grade students' metacognition levels, and their study habits and attitudes. Participants of the study consist of 221 students, 125 female and 96 male, enrolling to six public primary schools in Turkey. The results revealed that there is a medium positive relationship between…

The purpose of this research was to examine preservice elementary teachers' knowledge of vocabulary instruction and their success in implementing it in their partner teachers' classrooms. Study participants were three preservice elementary teachers student teaching during the first of two student teaching blocks. One preservice teacher taught…

This report presents results from the second year of CRESST's three-year evaluation of the WebPlay program. WebPlay is an online-enhanced arts education program for K-12 students. The evaluation occurred during the three-year implementation of the program in Grades 3 and 5 in California schools; this report focused on results from the second year…

Background: Within the context of students' self-regulated learning, the interplay between learners' individual characteristics and the context of testing have been emphasized for assessing learning outcomes. Aims: The present study examined metacognitive monitoring and control processes in elementary schoolchildren's test taking behaviour and…

Accompanying the rise in the number of working parents is a growing demand for after-school care schemes for children. After-school care schemes, in addition to school, provide pupils with more learning opportunities than the experiences that school provides. The hypothesis is that after-school care schemes offer a better knowledge-basis for…

We examined (a) how rapid automatized naming (RAN) components--articulation time and pause time--predict reading accuracy and reading fluency in Grades 4 and 5, and (b) what cognitive-processing skills (phonological processing, orthographic processing, or speed of processing) mediate the RAN-reading relationship. Sixty children were followed from…

Some students enter the world of mathematics with a disadvantage. The authors explored the causes for this from a language-processing perspective. They were particularly concerned with students with potential learning disabilities or specific language impairments. They also explored the role of language-mediated instruction in creating an…

Students participate in a "social community" of learners. For children with learning problems, mastering the skills needed to actively participate in this community can be a challenge. How can teachers find time to provide social skills instruction, given the pressures to teach academic subjects first and foremost? This article shows school…