This curriculum unit focuses on the Aztec settlement in Mesoamerica comparing it with present-day Mexico. The unit is oriented to teach basic communicative skills to beginning English language learners in small groups of approximately five students. It helps Mexican Spanish-speaking students embrace their own culture and build on their prior…

Purpose: The purpose of this action research presentation is to discuss how explicit comprehension instruction can take place along with writing, in the kindergarten classroom. Methodology: This action research project took place in a suburban kindergarten with learners of diverse ability levels and ESL students as well. In this classroom small…

Everyone talks about "best practice" teaching--what does it actually look like in the classroom? How do working teachers translate complex curriculum standards into simple, workable classroom structures that embody exemplary instruction--and still let kids find joy in learning? In this book, the authors present seven basic teaching structures that…

This paper considers how active learning events in the form of problem solving/discussion events can be combined with the traditional lecture to better support good teaching and student learning in information systems (IS) education. A single case study is used to illustrate and evaluate the effectiveness of small group problem solving and…

Online collaborative documents can be used effectively for conducting collaborative research and for learning collaboratively via the Internet. Collaborative documents are dedicated online workspaces that allow individuals or groups to use the Internet to share their work with others, edit it, and finalize it. This paper identifies Basic Support…

How students used computers and Internet access in the day-to-day work of the problem-based learning (PBL) classroom was studied with second year medical students working in small learning groups. Fifteen students, one from each PBL group, met as a focus group to discuss computer and Internet use. Several themes emerged from the discussions.…

Every year the Supreme Court hears dozens of cases related to key constitutional issues. These cases can be used to teach enduring concepts in government and law. With this lesson plan, students learn about important concepts in Fourth Amendment law and stage a mock Supreme Court oral argument in small groups on a case decided in the 1999-2000…

Developed by classroom teachers during the development phase of Minnesota's Graduation Standards, this performance package is made up of locally designed assignments that, taken together, show whether a student has learned and can apply the knowledge and skills related to speaking to an audience or interact with a group. It begins with reference…

A learning environment is described in which students collaborate in small groups to develop screen movies in which they use a statistical cognitive tool to interpret published research and to demonstrate their understanding of least squares statistical concepts. Evaluation data are reported, which indicate that, although some groups thrive in…

A hyperbook is a form of distance education that promotes computer-mediated learning and collaborative/constructive learning in the development of multigenerational learning communities. A hyperbook is composed of hypertext that resides on the Internet. Hypertext is text with embedded links that allow the reader to move around in the text or to…

Females are now doing as well as or better than males on many indicators of achievement and attainment, according to a new study by the U.S. Department of Education. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), females outperformed their male peers on reading (2003) and writing (2002) assessments at the fourth, eighth and twelfth…

The purpose of this study was to measure the relative effectiveness of two methods of teaching drug education to preservice elementary school teachers. The methods compared were the traditional teacher confined approach, and the value clarification group-centered process. The latter approach was found to be superior in all ways measured. (Author)