This action research project evaluated the impact of a program for enhancing interpersonal problem-solving skills on academic achievement in elementary students in an industrial, urban Illinois community. The lack of social skills and inability to think critically were documented through office referrals and teacher observations of kindergarten,…

This book supports the National Science Education Standards by giving children an understanding of the characteristics of organisms, outlining the life cycles of organisms, and showing how organisms relate to their environments. Interweaving life science with literature, mathematics, and physical sciences, the unit begins with children…

Learning how to think is essential for children to grow into responsible citizens and contribute to society. Schools need curricula that support a variety of thinking strategies as students read, write, and study content-area subjects, and learn to evaluate and manage what they do. This book for teachers provides a framework for creating a…

Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction, in collaboration with Wisconsin citizens, developed academic standards in 12 curricular areas. The dance education standards go beyond emphasizing mastery of individual student areas--they weave five essential characteristics of literate individuals throughout: application of the basics, ability to…

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Curriculum and Evaluation Standards puts great stress on the mathematical processes of problem solving, communication, reasoning, and making connections. NCTM standards also emphasize new and emerging content areas for middle school students such as algebra, data analysis, and probability.…

Creative thinking and how to foster it is the focus of this resource book for teachers. Part One of this book emphasizes the theoretical background of the creative thinking concept and discusses the relationship between creative thinking, problem solving, science, and technology. Part Two focuses on three levels of inventing, each examining…

This study investigates the relationship between reading ability, working memory capacity, and readers' use and recall of the mechanism of prediction. Reading ability was measured by free recall and by comprehension questions, and working memory capacity was assessed by the Reading Span Test (Daneman and Carpenter, 1980). Twelve Brazilian speakers…

The Reach System is a set of direct instruction (DI) programs designed to bring students who are performing as low as grade 1 level in language arts to performing at grade 8 level within 2 years of instruction delivered 3 hours per day. It involves a comprehensive system of professional development, curriculum, and instruction within the larger DI…

This paper consists of seven short essays concerning teaching in general and college teaching in particular. Then first five essays were published in "APA Perspective," a newsletter of the National Association for Asian and Pacific Islander Education, and were revised for this paper. The final two essays are new. The titles are: (1)…

This book, developed for adult educators who teach or tutor reading in General Educational Development (GED) classrooms and for teacher trainers, contains 18 fact sheets on learning and thinking, each about 10 pages long. The following fact sheets are included: (1) Literature Is Not Science; (2) Making Connections; (3) Mental Models; (4) Thinking…

This on-going study explores the hypothesis that stock fund managers who underperform do so because they make bad decisions, and examines whether their choices can be improved by using a decision model that invokes principles of brain hemispheric consensus. The study, begun in fall 1999, involves two groups of business students: the control group…

This action research project implemented and evaluated a program to address the academic needs of all students in a heterogeneous classroom. The targeted population consisted of middle school students in a rural western Illinois community. Evidence of academic underachievement was documented by teacher observation, surveys, test scores, and…

Child labor in the United States is the focus of this unit of study for grades 5 and up. This unit contains four elements: (1) a list of documents with their specific archival reference numbers and a brief synopsis of their historical significance to the unit's theme; (2) a set of reproductions of documents; (3) 13 separate classroom activities;…

This paper describes the design and orientation of a collaborative writing model for culturally diverse college students, noting that collaborative writing has grown in popularity in recent years because of its success in engaging diverse students more fully in the writing process. The model is premised on a socially designed and consensus…

Working on an open-ended task such as designing an engineering artifact is a rich learning experience for students, although they generally receive little direct guidance and instruction from their professors. In order to be successful on such a task, students need to set reasonable goals for themselves and adopt intrinsic standards for success so…