A total of 172 students in 4th, 7th, and 11th grades read 4 stories excerpted from reading and social studies materials featuring main characters as either traditional or nontraditional females, or traditional or nontraditional males. The study sought to determine (1) the impact of male main characters in nontraditional roles on student's sex-role…

Designed for 11th grade U.S. history students, the teaching unit combines the history of the U.S. Capitol building and its Greek and Roman revival architecture to tell the story of the nation's government buildings. While the unit uses the U.S. Capitol, any other public building could be used, such as a state capitol, court house, or public…

Designed to engage the learner in active learning while allowing for different degrees of guidance, this workbook represents an innovative approach to the instruction of Early American literature. The Personal Literacy Jackdaw workbook provides reading, writing, and speaking activities to help the tenth/eleventh grade language arts student develop…

A qualitative study examined the ways in which middle school and high school students create meanings when they are reading literary and non-literary texts. Subjects, 18 seventh-grade and 18 eleventh-grade students attending schools in an inner city or a suburban school district and judged by their teachers to be either above, at, or below average…

Since exploration of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, opinions, and beliefs about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is crucial to teenagers' ability to develop healthy attitudes and behaviors, and since the language arts classroom is a natural arena for such exploration, this sourcebook presents ideas on how to bring this kind of discussion…

The Reading Skills Committee of the New Jersey Department of Education determined that the Eleventh-Grade High School Proficiency Test (HSPT) reading test should be based on contemporary theories defining reading as a process and that requisite reading skills could best be identified in terms of text and tasks. The purpose of the test is to assess…

This paper reports the results of an analysis performed using data from the mathematics component of the 1986 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) for grades 7 and 11. The purpose of the analysis was to study the relationship between mathematics achievement and students' attitude related to learning mathematics for the two grades. The…

The experience of challenge has been proposed as an important mechanism through which individuals learn new and more efficient strategies of operating on their environments. This study examined the relationship between challenging and supportive parental roles and the academic performance of 8th and 11th graders. The social roles of associates…

A study examined age differences in the use of interaction management strategies. Students (13 seventh-graders and 24 eleventh-graders) were asked to describe how to play a game to a peer. Each speaker then became a listener in the next dyad. A tally was kept of speaker and listener use of six categories of feedback, and the quality of that…

Since the questions included in literature anthologies play a key role in the high school English class questioning process, a study examined the questions in four eleventh-grade American literature anthologies. The anthologies met the following criteria: textbooks (1) contained selections organized chronologically, (2) were major compilations in…

Since 1986, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has collected information from 11th-grade students about their employment activities. Out of the 29,000 students asked about work in the 1986 assessment, 54% reported working some amount of time each week, and over 28% reported working more than 15 hours per week. Thus, of 2.9…

The purpose of the Memphis Effective Schools Project (MESP), first initiated in the fall of 1982, is to help alleviate educational deficits that black students have acquired over the years of segregated schooling. The philosophy behind the MESP is that all students can learn in a conducive learning environment; this study assesses students'…

Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states were invited in June 1984 to participate in a project with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to assess the reading achievement of eleventh grade students. Florida, Tennessee and Virginia accepted and worked with SREB and NAEP staff to develop and administer the testing program.…

Student activities, teacher background information, and lesson ideas for teaching about law in social studies classrooms are presented. The first section provides students with a worksheet for determining the dates and historical significance of 15 great events (or documents) in U.S. history. A teacher resource list matches each event to pages in…

The interaction between student writers and word processors was the subject of a case study that assessed (1) how advanced high school students respond to learning word processing, (2) what immediate impact the machine has on the writing processes and strategies of students, and (3) whether the machine alters students' attitudes toward writing…