One strategy for enhancing cognitive outcomes in physical education (PE) is placing PE learning centers in elementary classrooms. The center should have games (e.g., board games, card games, and puzzles) that were created or modified to focus on PE concepts. The article describes two board games created for use in PE learning centers. (SM)

This article presents hands-on, experiential science activities that use mittens to teach elementary students about classification and insulation. The first involves children sorting mittens. The second has them find out for themselves why mittens keep their hands warm. Across-the-curriculum activities are also described. (SM)

Presents a teaching idea to help elementary students gain a sense of the passage of 2,000 years. This time line lesson has students learn when the millennium began, create a personal time line with strips of adding machine tape (marking the tape with their major life events), create a historical time line, then create a 2,000-inch millennium time…

As the class is learning new names and new faces at the beginning of the school year, it's the perfect time to have fun with names and learn some math concepts at the same time. This document describes examples of different number games that can be played with students.

This article describes the author's experiences as a student participating in a general education program called "Reacting to the Past," in which college students play elaborate games set at pivotal moments in the past, their roles informed by great texts. She found that the experience of reenacting pivotal historical moments produced an intensely…

A group of science coordinators in the London Borough of Newham decided that they wanted to create an exciting, stimulating and creative curriculum for teaching science across key stages 1 and 2 (5-11 year-olds). They were motivated to do this because they were concerned about an overloaded curriculum, dominated by literacy and numeracy, with…

Pronouns take the place of other nouns. In the case of personal pronouns, they often take the place of nouns that identify persons. The pronoun highlights the difference by being formed differently, and by being placed in different spots in the sentences. Pronouns point out the differences as they change form, and vary their representational…

Innovation motivation is a social learning model of originality comprising two variables: the need to be different and innovation expectancy. This study examined their contribution to artistic creativity in a sample of undergraduates. Participants completed measures of both innovation motivation variables as well as intelligence, adjustment, and…

This article describes a mathematics unit developed with second-grade students based on the story, "Grandpa's Quilt." The activities encourage students to make connections with a number of areas of mathematics, particularly patterns and relationships, measurement, geometry, and spatial sense as well as multiplication activities. (Contains 7…

Many people believe that NASA could have faked the evidence showing that man landed on the Moon in 1969. Some opinion polls suggest that as many as 10-25% of the United States population also agree that there is the possibility that this could have happened. Numerous magazines, journals, websites and TV programmes now present the facts as…

Some teaching innovations arise from a combination of good intentions, last-minute planning, and incredible luck. In this article, the author discusses the different interpretations of the students on Constance Curry's 'Silver Rights' and David Cecelski's 'Along Freedom Road,' the two books he assigns to the class in the history of education…

In this article, the author reflects back to when he was in fifth grade, when his teacher taught the class to bake bread in school. It was November, and baking bread tied into the lesson. His teacher and some open-minded parents and students knew that to bake, sew, paint, sing, play an instrument, or dance as part of a lesson for a math class,…

In education, STS too often is viewed as a new kind of course--new material for use in teaching. However, this view of STS is fraught with the same kind of problems as traditional teaching of natural science and technology. This major problem is that information is merely transmitted to students by lecture, discussion, verification laboratories,…

It's no secret that many school programs don't give children enough opportunity to explore the natural world--i.e., to "mess about" and to have firsthand experience with nature and animals. Not so at the Muscota New School in New York City! This innovative public elementary school actively promotes inquiry-based learning and encourages…

This study examined the knowledge, beliefs and efforts of five prospective teachers to enact teaching science as inquiry, over the course of a one-year high school fieldwork experience. Data sources included interviews, field notes, and artifacts, as these prospective teachers engaged in learning how to teach science. Research questions included…