Having students express their understanding of difficult, new material in their own words is an effective method to deepen their comprehension and learning. Summary Street[R] is a computer tutor that offers a supportive context for students to practice this activity by means of summary writing, guiding them through successive cycles of revising…

Federal mandates have created a high-pressure climate of testing in today's classrooms, and educators are left to balance these constantly changing demands with lessons that will challenge the academic lives of their students. Technology and the wealth of information it makes available can and should change teaching and learning, but that …

Background: Understanding the relationship between preverbal skills and language development has important implications for identifying communication delay/disorders and for early childhood intervention. In the case of children with Down syndrome, it is well established that symbolic play is associated with the emergence of language. However, the…

Although fundamental beginning reading skills are highly related to later reading success (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000), it remains unclear how these beginning reading skills impact the social adjustment of kindergarten through second grade children. Therefore, the purposes of this study were: (a) to examine the…

The literature indicates that caring is beneficial to children both academically and socially. As teacher educators, then, one of their goals should be to create curricula and preparation programs that engender in preservice teachers an understanding of the pedagogical power of caring and a commitment to implementing care-centered teaching…

This article compared the language profiles of adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) and children with specific language impairment matched for nonverbal cognitive ability, and investigated whether similar relationships could be established between language measures and other capacities in both groups. Language profiles were very similar: Expressive…

This study considers the teaching of probabilities and statistics to a group of preschool children using traditional classroom activities and Internet games. It was clear from this study that children can show a high level of understanding of probabilities and statistics, and demonstrate high performance in probability games. The use of Internet…

With the recently passed Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004), federal law encourages monitoring student progress and gauging responsiveness to instruction. The Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (TOSWRF; Mather, Hammill, Allen, & Roberts, 2004) is a group-administered test that holds promise for monitoring student progress.…

In this article, the authors present eight strategies that integrate social studies and literacy by connecting assigned readings to students' contemporary knowledge and concerns. Each strategy begins with a reading assignment and is followed by an activity that connects students to the reading a second time by requiring them to go beyond…

There is no common agreement on the meaning of the word "understand". However, there is agreement on what students should be able to do with material they understand. Bloom et al. discuss kinds of tasks a student should be able to do, provided that the student understands. In a similar way, Biggs and Collis provide a taxonomy intended to evaluate…

Public schools in the United States are facing a growing literacy crisis. Approximately a quarter of the population of 12th-grade students are still reading below basic levels, which means that they are barely able to comprehend at a literal level, make interpretations, identify relevant information, make simple inferences, and recognize and…

Students enrolled in technical programs prefer hands-on activities over reading and writing. While hands-on learning works well for conveying technical skills, most technical jobs will also require good reading, writing, and oral communication skills. Effective reading includes more than just "mouthing the words"--it calls for understanding and…

School-age children's ability to distinguish among the concepts of aloneness, loneliness, and solitude was the focus of this study. This ability has been largely neglected by researchers. Also, the relation of this ability with self-reported loneliness was examined. Individual interviews were conducted with 180 second, fourth, and sixth graders…

The kinetics experiments on the ligand-C[subscript 60] exchange reactions on (dihapto-[60]fullerene) pentacarbonyl tungsten(0), ([eta][superscript 2]-C[subscript 60])W(CO)[subscript 5], form an educational activity for the inorganic chemistry laboratory that promotes graphical thinking as well as the understanding of kinetics, mechanisms, and the…

Most teachers in developed societies use ready-made programs to teach initial reading. The present study compares the effects of 3 such programs, covering 70% of the market. Programs differed with respect to their student versus whole-class orientation and the availability of teaching materials. The program outcomes investigated were Word Reading,…