This paper reports on a study at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis that examined how two-way audio/visual interactive learning (2WAVIL) technology can be used to help prepare students prior to a museum visit, hoping that this preparation may help students interact with exhibits in a more constructivist manner. The study focused on children's…

This report describes an intervention to aid students in demonstrating their comprehension of reading material through an alternative instrument. The target population consisted of fifth grade students in a middle class community in central Illinois. Problems in comprehension were revealed through declining district test scores and teacher…

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to examine friendships of early adolescents in a culturally diverse fifth grade class in an urban elementary school in the southeastern United States. The study described and interpreted the experiences of being a friend and having a friend in a culturally diverse classroom. The approach was grounded in…

This report draws on two teacher-researchers' yearlong collaboration in co-planning, co-teaching, and co-researching a writers' workshop in a fifth-grade classroom. Alternatives were sought to a more traditional staff development model in which one professional who is considered to have greater expertise and skill supports and coaches another…

A study investigated the development of theme as five fifth-grade students read children's literature, recorded their responses in logs, and discussed their ideas in small, student-led peer groups. The five students met together as one group over the course of 5 weeks as they read historical fiction focused on Japan during World War II. Data…

Two experiments in instructional supervision were conducted to support teachers in changing their teaching behavior as they implemented a new math curriculum. The focus of the investigation was a method of teaching multiplication and principles of effective teaching. In the first experiment, instructional supervision, both with and without…

A classroom field experiment was conducted on the effects of preparation homework and practice homework on student achievement in a fifth-grade social studies class, when used in conjunction with cooperative learning. The study investigated whether cooperative learning with or without preparation or practice homework produces greater student…

This curriculum support package is intended to assist grades 5-8 teachers in Manitoba to start the process of integrating and implementing sustainable development in science and social studies courses. Containing four sections, the first section briefly outlines the origins of sustainable development, how it evolved, why it should be taught, what…

The Alberta (Canada) teaching guide for French native language instruction in the later elementary school years (grades 4-6) is intended as a resource for classroom teachers. Its objective is to help teachers integrate notional content and meaningful communicative activities, both oral and written. Introductory sections discuss the guiding…

This case study involved the incorporation of prototype multimedia instructional materials into a fifth-grade classroom in a public elementary school for a period of 6 weeks. The research was conducted in the Hillcrest School in a suburb of New York City. Shortly after their introduction into the classroom, microcomputers, interactive video…

The Family Life Education optional unit of the Manitoba (Canada) Health Education curriculum reflects the current emphasis in health education on preventive medicine, total well-being, and the assumption of individual responsibility for health. The unit as a whole consists of four components: an overview and three grade level guides designed for…

The role that reading achievement tests play in the education of limited-English-proficient children makes it important to understand the relationship between these children's reading test performance and their literacy development. A study employed both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify factors that influenced the English…

A collection of word problems for fifth and sixth grade students are presented. The problems, which are divided into four sections and which get progressively more difficult in each section, include: (1) 38 problems on ratio and proportion; (2) 40 multistep problems (problems which require more than one calculation); (3) 40 problems on geometry…

Uniting two areas of current interest in educational research, a project tested the effectiveness of computer software in observing the process of comprehension monitoring. Passages with embedded comprehension obstacles were presented to two groups of fifth grade students. Identical in content to those of the controls, the experimental subjects'…

A study was undertaken to examine the effects of teaching five writing rules on English summarization and comprehension under two conditions of reading instruction. The five summary writing rules taught included: (1) identifying unimportant statements, (2) identifying repetition of ideas in statements, (3) identifying lists of things or series of…