Statistical literacy is essential in everyone's personal lives as consumers, citizens, and professionals. To make informed life and professional decisions, students are required to read, understand, and interpret vast amounts of information, much of which is quantitative. To develop statistical literacy so students are able to make sense of…

Amargosa Valley School in Nevada could be considered representative of almost any preK-8 school that serves a large proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students and is focused on turning around persistently low achievement. Like other schools supported by federal School Improvement Grants, Amargosa is beginning to implement a reform plan…

Pursuing student voice in your design of curriculum helps students take more ownership of their learning. Gaynor and Shanklin developed an open-ended survey to gather information about students' growing understandings of the purposes for reading and writing and to solicit feedback about the year's activities. The survey is presented here, along…

Teachers, parents, and librarians are constantly looking for methods and materials that engage students as readers and motivate them to increase the time they spend reading. In this article we describe findings from a study of middle schoolers' magazine reading habits that gave us a close look at the power of magazines as supplemental supports for…

This research highlights the effects of using literature and relevant curriculum to teach history in grade levels 6 through 8, and analyzes how students respond when learning complicated themes and events through the medium of historic fiction. Specifically, my research seeks to inform secondary educators concerning the use of the narrative and…

The messages students receive through popular media such as movies, television, the internet, and music videos have a powerful influence and can shape their thinking. A national survey of media use by 8- to 18-year-olds found the average adolescent spends over seven and a half hours daily with entertainment media (KFF 2010). Rather than viewing…

Statistics is the art and science of gathering, analyzing, and making conclusions from data. However, many people do not fully understand how to interpret statistical results and conclusions. Placing students in a collaborative environment involving project-based learning may enable them to overcome misconceptions of probability and enhance the…

Created by teachers for teachers, the Math Academy tools and activities included in this booklet were designed to create hands-on activities and a fun learning environment for the teaching of mathematics to the students. This booklet contains the "Math Academy--Let's Go to the Mall! Explorations in Combinatorics," which teachers can use to enhance…

This paper describes diverse language learners' use of dialogue journaling in an elementary school setting. The author, a teacher researcher, conducted a qualitative research study with eight participants, ranging from fourth to sixth grade; all were learners adding English to their language repertoire. Through an in-depth analysis of student…

Created by teachers for teachers, the Math Academy tools and activities included in this booklet were designed to create hands-on activities and a fun learning environment for the teaching of mathematics to the students. This booklet contains the themed program "Are You Game? Math Academy--Explorations in Probability," which teachers can use to…

Created by teachers for teachers, the Math Academy tools and activities included in this booklet were designed to create hands-on activities and a fun learning environment for the teaching of mathematics to the students. This booklet contains the "Math Academy--Dining Out! Explorations in Fractions, Decimals, and Percents," which teachers can use…

This article reports on the results of a mixed method case study investigating the relationship between professional learning community (PLC) activities and teacher improvement in a first-year middle school. Data were collected from core academic sixth, seventh, and eighth grade teachers using a professional development survey, teacher interviews,…