Practical examples from everyday life, spanning personal financial matters to traveling and even cooking conversions are the lessons offered in this useful guide. The vast majority of older students and adults who come to America come from countries that use the metric system. Learning a new system for measuring, telling time, and so forth is…

Let students travel to countries around the world and experience life in different cultures and times by using foreign films with English subtitles in the classroom. Author Kerry Holmes, contends that students want to read as they become involved in the plot of a movie, their interests are piqued by novelty, and their attention is attracted to…

How might the Tishman, Perkins, and Jay framework (the Harvard Model) for creating a culture of thinking be put to work in an urban high school? 150 English II students are co-creating a culture of thinking at a public high school in Washington, DC along with two facilitators (a collaborating teacher and an educational psychologist). Together,…

This manuscript is the outcome of the first year of a two-year project designed to explore what works in reading instruction for students who are highly mobile. The project includes several components. The first was to conduct an extensive literature review to identify what is already known (the focus of this document). In addition to the…

Part of a series, the purpose of this low-readability/high interest book is to enable students to use higher order thinking to develop their reading comprehension skills. The reading skills addressed in the book are based on state reading standards and assessment tests for grades three and four. The goal of this series is to teach students how to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how reciprocal teaching affected vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension in four at-risk students in a fourth grade inclusion classroom. A single subject research study method was used to measure the baseline of each student. Subsequently, students were assessed daily after receiving two…

English learners are the fastest growing student population in the United States. Many of these students are placed in classrooms with teachers who lack the preparation to help diverse children excel. This book helps bridge the gap between students' needs and K-12 teachers' preparation, offering an overview of English learners and…

Issues and patterns in second language learning are discussed, drawing on a 1985 study with learners of English as a second language in Australia. Discussion begins with an analysis of the process of learning one form of verb marking, the ending "-ing." The inherent complexity of this form in English is examined, and ways in which…

This study involving 84 eighth-grade reading students in a rural middle school measured the effects of the location of glossary (vocabulary) words in anthology text books. Control groups read from texts with glossary words only at the end of the texts, and experimental groups read from texts with the glossary words on the bottom of text pages. All…

Ways in which the lexicon of Irish Sign Language (ISL) has developed, and how it is being continually extended, are examined. Change occurs in several ways. Research to date indicates that there are 59 basic handshapes, from which all vocabulary items are created. Classifiers are used extensively in the nominal and verbal system of ISL, and 15 of…

A study investigated the effect of video and narrative presentations on children's comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. Participants were students in four heterogeneously grouped eighth-grade English classes (n=16, 22, 21, and 11) in a rural school district in southwestern New York. The short story selected was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's…

This action research project highlights the implementation of reading strategies that work for at-risk primary students. The targeted population consists of first grade students located in a suburban at-risk school. The dilemma of how to best teach children to read who are at risk for academic failure upon entering school has been documented…

This spider unit focuses on students' development of cooperative learning and inquiry-based skills. Students read "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle, and then work in cooperative groups using the Internet to research and synthesize important information about spiders. Technology is used for vocabulary instruction and to create a…

This research provides information for improving organizational skills in writing through the use of graphic organizers. The targeted population consisted of second, third and fifth grade students in a suburban community. Evidence for the existence of this problem included anecdotal records, teacher observations, student surveys, and assessments…

Based on Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle," this lesson plan presents activities in which students make a list of books that convey strong social messages, discuss the literary strengths and weaknesses of these books, and understand how literature reflects life and can be used as a vehicle to bring about change. It includes objectives,…