Effects of goal setting on motor skill performance were studied with 93 fifth graders who were asked to set their own performance goals, given high but attainable teacher-set goals, or given a general goal (do your best). Specific goals set by student or teacher produced higher levels of performance. (JHZ)

First- and fifth-grade children were presented a hypothetical case in which a child, who circumstantial evidence suggests might have committed a "crime," is punished by a parent. Subjects were asked to indicate whether or not they believed the punishment to be fair and the child guilty. (Author/RH)

Two-hundred-fifty fifth graders participated in this study of the effects of evaluation condition and task difficulty on motivation to return to an initial task. The significant effect for difficulty level resulted from the interaction of difficulty level with evaluation condition. Implications for classroom practice are discussed. (Author/MT)

Fifty fifth-grade students read passages at three readability levels from four content areas, then answered vocabulary, literal, and interpretive questions based on each passage. Significant differences in comprehension were found across ability levels and content areas. One sample passage is appended. (FL)

Details classroom use of SuperCalc, a software accounting package developed originally for small businesses, as a computerized gradebook. A procedure which uses data from the computer gradebook to produce weekly printed reports for parents is also described. (MBR)

Reports on a study that examines the effects precis writing and outlining have on students' ability to identify ideas in a text and generate and elaborate on those ideas in a written form. (FL)

Concludes that when presented stories, some of which were inconsistent because of missing pages, less skilled readers were poorer at reporting a missing page, placing it correctly, and fixing the story than were skilled readers. Stories are appended. (FL)

Effects of two procedures for increasing students' ability to draw inferences when reading were studied and are presented in this article. Results support the use of strategy and question procedures for teaching inference skills to disabled readers. (Author/DF)

Significant positive Pearson correlation coefficients were found for students'(N=91) interest in and attitudes toward science (0.58), interest in science and curiosity (0.47), and attitudes toward science and curiosity (0.40). Implications for science instruction and curriculum development are addressed. (JN)

Details a study designed to determine the effects of passage content (schemata) and syntactic structure (clause order) on the inferential comprehension of causal relations of fifth grade students. (FL)

This study examined the hypothesis that perceptual errors on a task requiring subjects to take different viewpoints could be explained in terms of response bias. Results were consistent with response bias hypothesis: making an egocentric error is different from behaving in an egocentric manner. (Author/SB)

This methodology report provides technical information about the development, design, and conduct of the fifth-grade data collection of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). It begins with an overview of the ECLS-K study. Subsequent chapters provide information on the development of the instruments, sample…

We use administrative data on North Carolina public schools to document the tendency for more highly qualified teachers to be matched with more advantaged students, and we measure the bias this pattern generates in estimates of the impacts of various teacher qualifications on student achievement. One of the strategies we use to minimize this bias…

Developed for fifth graders studying United States history, this lesson addresses the following National Council for the Social Studies thematic strands: Time, Continuity, and Change; People, Places, and Environments; Individual Development and Identity; Individuals, Groups, and Institutions; Power, Authority, and Governance; Production,…