To assess the impact of economic hardship on 111 European American and 167 Mexican American families and their 5th-grade (M age 11.4 years) children, a family stress model was evaluated. Structural equation analyses revealed that economic hardship was linked to indexes of economic pressure that were related to depressive symptoms for mothers and…

Web-based learning is becoming prevalent in science learning. Some use specially designed programs, while others use materials available on the Internet. This qualitative case study examined the process of acquisition of integrated science process skills, particularly the skill of controlling variables, in a web-based learning environment among…

The main purpose of this study was to explore the effects of long-term constructivist-oriented science instruction on elementary school students' process of constructing cognitive structures. Furthermore, such effects on different science achievers were also investigated. The subjects of this study were 69 fifth graders in Taiwan, while they were…

In this article, fifth graders investigate biographies to expand their knowledge of what real scientists do. The goal of this activity is to find a way to show students that all kinds of people participate in the scientific enterprise. After finding picture-book biographies, the author's next job was to ensure that students saw more than a good…

Research on traditional classrooms paints a picture of teachers controlling talk patterns and of students producing minimal amounts of mainly procedural talk, recitation-type talk, or both. Often this bleak state of affairs is attributed to teachers' overreliance on inauthentic display questions--questions that impose tight thematic control and…

The article focuses on learning music among children. It is said that in general music, many concepts are introduced to young students. Most teachers have learned the mental health survival skill of teaching the appropriate use of an outdoor voice, an indoor voice, and a whisper voice. Tempo is much the same argument as volume. (Contains 2…

"Public art" is a broad term that refers to art in public spaces and includes architecture, landscape, and urban design. Public art makes public spaces more beautiful, encourages us to pause and interact with our environment, or reminds us of important people and events. Just as often, public sculptures become such a part of our everyday…

End-of-year student play days are frequently a tradition that provides elementary students an opportunity to be active in a fun, festive environment. Physical educators can use play days as a time to authentically assess their students while the students are enjoying the activities. Those planned by the students themselves have been found to be…

In 2 studies, an expectancy-value framework was applied to investigate effort expended on mathematics homework. In Study 1 (2,712 students in grades 5, 7, and 9; mean age=13.37 years), lower homework effort was found in higher grades. The effects of intrinsic value on homework effort were higher in the older cohorts, whereas the effects of the…

Grammar instruction has long been a troubling issue for many language arts teachers. This collaborative research between an elementary classroom teacher and university faculty, based on the assumption that grammar is most effectively taught in reading and writing, looks into the short- and long-term effect of error-based grammar instruction on the…

This article presents a case study of Mark Westin from his first to his fifth year of teaching fifth grade in an urban public school. Despite extreme management challenges and limited administrative support in a school with unusually high turnover, Mark persevered through his difficult novice years to become among the most respected and dedicated…

Panelists in an operational standard-setting study were asked to share their thoughts in written form at important points in the process itself--before the meeting started, after training, after completing the 1st and 2nd sets of ratings, immediately following the discussion between Rounds 1 and 2, and so on. The item mapping method of Plake and…

Correspondence journals between adults and elementary-school students promote child-centered discussion and learning that is often squeezed out of the curricula. Through an extended example of an exchange of letters between a fifth-grade classroom, including several English-language learners and a university classroom of preservice teachers, the…

The idea of using science notebooks as a classroom assessment tool is not new. There is general agreement that science notebooks allow teachers to assess students' conceptual and procedural understanding and to provide the feedback students need for improving their performance. In this study we examined the use of science notebooks as an…

We examined child characteristics of coping strategies, age, and gender as moderators of the association between family stressors and internalizing, externalizing, and peer rejection in a sample of 228 3rd-5th grade children. Consistent with previous research, children in the current study who experienced a higher number of family stressors were…