Background: This study investigates the effectiveness and fairness of teacher-led assessment of students' in-class participation and its effect on actual participation levels and language test scores, taking into account the diversity of second language learners' learning styles. Methods: The level of participation was measured across ten criteria…

The author, a 5th-grade teacher, offers strategies intended to assist and encourage ELL students to participate in academic conversations. They include insisting that children take part in conversations despite their apprehension and teaching them the language they need to communicate their ideas. One strategy is Think, Pair, Share--a simple…

Classrooms today have received a significant overhaul with the inclusion of ICT and new learning pedagogies. Advancements in computing and multimedia technologies in education have resulted in an emerging breed of technologically proficient learners. Today's students are "digital natives" and very influenced by current digital…

Research consistently demonstrates the benefits of employing classroom discussions; however, there has been less attention given to teaching students about discussions. The current research compared 2 advanced social psychology courses: 1 without (control) and 1 with (experimental) a week devoted to learning about and discussing discussions.…

In many early childhood classrooms, visual arts experiences occur around a communal arts table. A shared workspace allows for spontaneous conversation and exploration of the art-making process of peers and teachers. In this setting, conversation can play an important role in visual arts experiences as children explore new media, skills, and ideas.…

One challenge of teaching science is getting students to communicate as scientists do. Scientists employ many different forms of communication as they develop and pass on information to others. Unfortunately, in many classrooms, student communication about science concepts is limited to filling in information on worksheets, finishing…

Many faculty interpret student responses to faculty questions as evidence of an actively engaged classroom. Because of this conviction, class participation, whether graded or ungraded, appears in many course syllabi in colleges and universities and is often promoted as the responsibility of students to contribute to the learning environment. Class…

In college level chemistry courses, reasoning using molecular and particulate descriptions of matter becomes central to understanding physical and chemical properties. In this study, we used a qualitative approach to analyzing classroom discourse derived from Toulmin's model of argumentation in order to describe the ways in which students develop…

Classroom discussions of multimodal texts, in particular historical fiction picturebooks, offer an interpretive space where readers are positioned to construct meanings in transaction with the written language, visual images, and design elements created by authors, illustrators and publishers (Serafini & Ladd, 2008; Sipe, 1999). This study was…

Many educators would say that pencils, paint, and paper are the most important tools in the artroom, but are they really? If they look deeply at how students create art, it is their beginning ideas and concepts that gauge the success of a work of art. Without proper planning and guidance, even the most talented students will struggle through their…

In this article, the focus is on task construction and the importance of this process to develop and promote classroom communication in mathematics. The students' tests, examination of students' mathematical work, the teachers' lesson plans, and reports of the lessons' instructions are the basic data for this article. The analysis indicated that…

With classroom observation and stimulated recall interviews as research instruments, the present study investigated some of the factors that affected learners' attention to teacher talk in nine English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. The results revealed five such factors, namely, learners' self evaluation of their language knowledge, the…

This study examines how bilingual second-grade students perceived of their reading competence and of the work of reading in two contrasting settings where texts were regularly discussed: a monologically organized classroom (MOC) and a dialogically organized classroom (DOC; as determined by prior analysis of classroom discourse). Interview data…

The transgressive use of language by out-group speakers, or crossing is used in a variety of ways to achieve both affiliative and disaffiliative ends among youths. However, crossing can also be used as an affiliative resource in asymmetrical power relations between teachers and students. Reporting on the findings of a 1.5 year ethnography of an…

The accepted framing of mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as part of mathematical knowledge for teaching has centered on the question: What mathematical reasoning, insight, understanding, and skills are required for a person to teach elementary mathematics? Many have worked to address this question in K-8 teaching. Yet, there remains…