A recent employer survey sponsored by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills found that the skills new job entrants most need for success in the workplace--oral and written communication, time management, critical thinking, problem solving, personal accountability, and the ability to work effectively with others--are the areas in which recent…

The Martin Luther King School in Boston and nine other Massachusetts public schools used a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Education to expand their school days by at least two hours. Each school lengthened the time students spent in reading and math instruction. Farbman focuses on the Martin Luther King School's foray into an extended…

This is a compilation of reports on international literacy research. The report includes 3 separate reports on Argentina, Mexico, and France. In the first report, Melina Porto reports on a new implementation of a teacher-education program currently underway in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the leadership of teacher-researcher…

Unfortunately, many students, are failing to learn history. Fifty-seven percent of high school students scored "below basic understanding" on their knowledge of United States history. Interestingly, less than half of the students were familiar with Patrick Henry, the War of 1812, the Marshall Plan, or the Great Society. Perhaps the time…

Eisner, Gardner, and others have argued that the arts should be better integrated into the K-12 curriculum. In this study we examine three high school senior boys who, as part of a unit of instruction on identity, each produced a mask through which he artistically expressed his sense of self. Using a sociocultural framework based in the work of…

The benefits of cooperative learning strategies, such as group project work, have been advocated in a wide range of educational contexts. There is however, scant information on the outcome of such programs on students of low academic ability. In this study, interviews were conducted with four groups of low-ability students, with the aim of…

As Universal Pre-K efforts sweep the nation, so does the development of state standards that define the skills and the knowledge that young children should be developing. The goal of these standards is to ensure the school readiness of all students. While the goals mentioned in this article are taken from the New Jersey Department of Education's…

The Association Supporting Computer Users in Education (ASCUE) is a group of people interested in small college computing issues. It is a blend of people from all over the country who use computers in their teaching, academic support, and administrative support functions. ASCUE has a strong tradition of bringing its members together to pool their…

The alphabet can be used as a framework for identifying key issues, ideas, and factors that teachers and students need to consider in developing hypermedia projects. Rather than in alphabetical order, the terms are introduced as they apply to the discussion on the teaching of multimedia skills. The following terms and concepts are highlighted:…

The "Kids for Trees" program described in this guidebook is a hands-on natural resource management experience where students raise trees from seedlings to harvest and manage other natural resources in a sustainable manner. Sections of the book include key concepts, getting started, needs of different kinds of trees, learning about potential…

This book contains 49 science fair projects designed for 6th to 9th grade students. Projects are organized by the topics of soil, ecology (projects in habitat and life cycles), pests and controls (projects in weeds and insects), recycling (projects in resources and conservation), waste products (projects in decomposition), microscopic organisms,…

The merits of the video photo essay as a broadcast production teaching tool and as a genre of television news are examined in this paper. Suggestions are offered for using the video essay in the classroom, such as assigning students projects which involve producing a news story using only "nat-sound" and soundbites or music, and…

Documentation, in the forms of observation of children and recordkeeping, has long been practiced in many early childhood programs, particularly in the preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. Documentation typically includes samples of children's work at several stages of completion; photographs showing work in progress; comments by teachers working…

Teachers interested in fostering science learning through inquiry or projects must play a complex role in discourse with students. They must scaffold student activities in the classroom without taking away students' active roles. This paper provides a framework for a specific form of scaffolding open-ended science inquiry based on the notion of…

This informational packet contains the materials necessary to administer the annual Department of Defense Dependent Schools Pacific Region Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) at the high school and middle school levels. The symposium program is a calendar year research program which includes one week symposium of students (grade 8-12)…