Investigated the role of various social support variables on the state and trait anxiety levels of 196 fourth and fifth graders. Results reveal a significant effect of living together with parents, but not grandparents, on state and trait anxiety and a positive correlation between state anxiety and love and affection for the teacher. (SLD)

Discusses the function of Spanish in the school lives of Mexican American children, documenting the discussion through the experiences of five fifth-grade friends. Spanish serves to unify them, but it also serves to keep others out of the friendship group. Educators must recognize that language minority children have special needs. (SLD)

Examined connections between culture and problem behaviors among 119 African American fifth and sixth graders. Results indicate that youth endorsed the Afrocultural orientation of spirituality and the Anglocultural orientation of effort optimism most highly. The Anglocultural orientation of person/object relations and the marginalized orientations…

Discusses an art activity for fifth-grade students that focuses on the teaching technique called scratchboard. Explains that the subject of the assignment was sunflowers. States that sunflowers make good subject matter for children since the shape is geometric. Addresses how to create the scratchboard sunflowers. (CMK)

Describes a mentoring program between an elementary school and a corporation that connects fifth and sixth grade students with adults who exchange email messages at least once a week to improve students' writing skills. Discusses benefits to students and offers suggestions for starting an electronic mentoring program. (LRW)

A study of acculturative stress in children who served as language brokers surveyed 36 bilingual Latino fifth graders from a Southern California elementary school. The least acculturated children reported higher frequencies of language brokering and greater discomfort in doing so. High levels of acculturative stress were associated with increased…

Examined how mathematical problems are articulated, i.e. identified and defined, in the context of a fifth-grade lesson on equivalent fractions. Notes that classroom discourse limited to serial tasks constrained students' opportunities to develop relational knowledge about the properties and principles of equivalent fractions. (38 references)…

A teacher-developed alternative assessment of reading comprehension was specifically designed for transitional English language learners. Use of the measure with 89 fifth-graders in their first year of English language instruction showed that the students could successfully engage with English texts and provided teachers with useful information to…

Discusses the importance of relating mathematics to students' everyday lives. Describes a journal-writing project developed in a 5th grade total-inclusion classroom and specifies the major features of the writing project, including the framework used to assess student learning. (KHR)

Describes a study conducted in a fifth- and sixth-grade classroom in Toronto that explored gender differences from two perspectives: student interaction patterns, and communication patterns. Examined interaction patterns of students' math and science learning in terms of taking turns, initiating conversation, and follow-up conversation; and…

Focuses on the importance of developing student listening skills. Describes a classroom project for fifth-grade students in which they created a music video, addressing the roles of the students and the teacher. Includes a section detailing the steps involved in completing this project. (CMK)

The traditional approach toward teaching spelling was compared with a copy, cover, and compare approach for 9 special education (learning-disabled) students in grades 4, 5, and 6. Spelling performance improved in the copy, cover, compare condition; and students preferred this approach. (SLD)

Examined strategy outcome perceptions of popular, average, neglected, and rejected third and fifth graders. Found that children's outcome expectations and strategy evaluations varied as a function of peer status, age, and gender. (RH)

A study of the writing processes of ten fifth-grade French immersion students examined 22 features of their writing in both English and French. Differences across languages occurred in eight features, and students displayed a wide range of writing process behaviors in both languages. (Author/MSE)

Examined effects of short-term memory, age, and reading ability on the instructional effectiveness of imagery during reading of sentences among fourth and sixth graders, half of whom were instructed to construct images representing sentence meanings. Half were uninstructed. Imagery instructions had a positive effect on learning efficiency among…