Creative thinking styles of Native American students were investigated to determine the existence of creativity as a homogeneous trait among this culture. Seventy-nine Cherokee students in grades 4 and 6, attending a small rural school in eastern Oklahoma, were administered the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking--Figural Form A. Thirty-eight…

This document describes "Food for Thought," a multidisciplinary project for grades 5 through 8, using nutrition as a focal point. The program focuses on the popular topic of food to make the study of different cultures and historic periods more relevant. In the program students research the diets and prepare the meals of cultures they…

Focusing on the point that female identities continue to form using the reference point of the male image or identity, a study juxtaposed a qualitative research project and the expressions of patriarchy represented in two television milk commercials. Subjects, 12 sixth-grade girls at a small Catholic elementary school in central New York, were…

Humor can be an effective element of classroom teaching, serving to reduce tension, increase motivation, aid instruction and strengthen teacher/student relationships. A review of the literature reveals that research in this area is incomplete and inconclusive. This study surveys 5th- and 6th-grade teachers (N=50) for information on how they vary…

This paper describes a framework for studying and evaluating learning environments which contextualize school science content within a larger real-world scientific endeavor, such as carrying on a space mission. A central feature of this framework is its incorporation of recent research on content-specific personal interest. This framework was…

An ethnographic study was conducted with the goal of evaluating the botanical concepts of sixth-grade students. One aspect of the study involved examination of the levels of abstraction students use for naming plants. Nine sixth-grade students were interviewed individually. Each was asked to identify the plants seen in a set of 64 slides and…

The problem addressed in this practicum was multifaceted: how to alleviate feelings of isolation experienced by hospitalized and homebound (H/H) children and their families; how to increase professional understanding of H/H teachers' sensitive and demanding roles; and how to increase the sensitivity of middle school students and faculty to the…

A study conducted in the Orange County Public Schools in central Florida investigated the reading interests of sixth-grade students. The study also gathered information from teachers regarding the nature and source of reading materials used for independent reading in their classrooms and on the implementation of sustained silent reading practices.…

To investigate the higher level comprehension strategies used by children reading basal reader stories, a study compared the results of an earlier investigation of 50 fourth grade level readers' comprehension strategies with findings gained from 30 subjects using a sixth grade basal reader. Subjects were asked to read aloud from a basal and stop…

A psycholinguistic analysis of oral reading miscue substitutions and of silent reading cloze substitutions was used to compare five dimensions of the oral and silent reading processes: grammatical function, syntactic acceptability, semantic acceptability, meaning loss, and correction. Subjects were third and sixth grade students with high,…

Part of the "Nutrition Education-Choose Well, Be Well" curriculum series, this guide was developed to help teachers, food service personnel, professionals, and parents provide nutrition education and make nutrition come alive in the classroom, home, or cafeteria. Organized by grade level (from fourth through sixth), activities described…

A study compared the foreign language proficiency levels and language and cultural attitudes of students involved in two kinds of elementary school Spanish language programs: immersion and Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES). The study also investigated the variation in achievement among children in the same program. Fifth and sixth…

To study the effects of motivation on cognition, 55 fifth- and sixth-grade students were randomly assigned to 3 motivational treatment groups: (1) ego-involved (ability oriented); (2) task-involved (mastery oriented); and (3) control (no orientation). The ego-involvement treatment attempted to make subjects feel that their abilities on the tasks…

The state of New Mexico requires all sixth grade students to take the year-long social studies course entitled Eastern Hemisphere Studies. Seventh grade students are required to take two semester-long courses, are in Western Hemisphere Studies and the other in New Mexico History and Geography. The year-long social studies course on U.S. History is…

After the 1984-85 evaluation of the Special Needs Project in the North York, Ontario Schools, it was decided to extend the standardized achievement testing for the 1985-86 school year. Because of previous test validity problems, testing was continued under more uniform conditions; practice tests were available and the achievement tests were…