Students with disabilities often face barriers that hinder their capacity to access general education curricula and show their learning. Modifications to curricula and lesson plans can help reduce these barriers. Modifications are changes to what instruction is delivered--which tasks students complete and what content they learn. Previous research…

The driving question for this brief is based on the most common question that teachers, principals, school leaders, coaches, and grant writers ask the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) about Project Based Learning (PBL): What evidence exists that shows the impact of Project Based Learning on student learning in core content areas? Research shows…

The importance of adolescent literacy is well established, and the topic continues to be of both local and national interest. Practitioners need to know not only which programs and practices appear effective, but which have the scientific evidence to support that claim. To identify effective programs and practices for general education students in…

The Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL), examines how college- and career-readiness (CCR) standards are implemented, if they improve student learning, and what instructional tools measure and support their implementation. This brief presents findings from C-SAIL's Implementation Study, which uses interview and survey…

There is a growing consensus that teacher evaluation in the United States is fundamentally broken. Few would argue that a system that tells 98 percent of teachers they are "satisfactory" benefits anyone--including teachers. The nation's collective failure to invest in high-quality professional feedback to teachers is inconsistent with…

Research has long been clear that teachers matter more to student learning than any other in-school factor. Improving the quality of teaching is critical to student success. Yet only recently have many states and districts begun to take seriously the importance of evaluating teacher performance and providing teachers with the feedback they need to…

Discusses why and how writing can be taught in the elementary school and suggests some materials that can support an elementary writing program. (HOD)

Suggests three attitudes that teachers should cultivate to become good storytellers: awareness of the importance of telling stories, commitment to learning how to tell a favorite story, and respect for the listeners' rights to interpret the story for themselves. (AEA)

Encourages the use of dramatization as a way of building vocabulary by showing the meanings of words in the context of experiences associated with them. (DD)

Many students and teachers find creative writing to be too complex to manage. Teachers are unable to identify ways to help students develop necessary skills through creative writing. Teachers can make writing manageable by giving children opportunities that isolate, compartmentalize, and focus on specific aspects of the writer's craft. (Author/NQ)

The teaching activity presented in this paper focuses on giving students in grades four through seven a headstart on future computer classes, and provides a practical way for students to use language and logic. The paper presents a step-by-step lesson in flowcharting, including discussions of the special purposes for various shapes in a chart,…

Presents ten activity cards which can be used in developing students' defining skills. (DD)

Discusses the art of riddling and its potential contribution to the elementary school language arts program, including a description of stages of riddling competence of children in the five-to-11 year age range and an examination of riddling efforts gathered from two classrooms. (HTH)

Seven characteristics of an effective spelling program, supported by multiple independent research studies, are examined along with their implications for learning to spell. (HTH)

Suggests approaches to the teaching of figures of speech. (DD)