In this powerful collection of personal accounts, successful and respected teachers from across the country reveal how recent education policies have played out in their schools and classrooms in negative and counterproductive ways, and offer teacher-led alternatives for providing equitable, engaging, and empowering education. Framed by critical…

Involving students in authentic science work is one way to enhance their interest in science. This paper reports a project in which Year 4-7 students actively participated in a study that involved the provision of a suitable nesting site for local turtles. The students collected data on turtle nests at the site and evidence of turtle hatchlings at…

Erika was a failing student at a large urban public middle school. She was poor, Hispanic, bilingual, and had repeated fourth grade. She scored low on her standardized tests and was failing several subject areas. In class, Erika was a student who sat silently with her head on her desk, and rarely turned in any of her assignments. She was a…

This report presents results of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics at grades 4 and 8. The results from the 2009 assessment presented in this report are compared to those from previous years, showing how students' performance in mathematics has progressed over time. Results for students in the nation, the 50…

The purpose of this paper is to carefully examine the evolution of students' theory building and modeling, critical components of scientific epistemologies, over a unit of study on sinking and floating in one third/fourth grade classroom. The study described in this paper follows in the tradition of Design Experiments ( Brown 1992 , Collins 1990 )…

The Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) is the state's measure of student progress in achieving the challenging academic expectations, known as "Learning Results," adopted by the Maine Legislature in 1997. This report of student performance in writing, reading, mathematics, and science and technology provides a status report of student…

This paper describes a simulation in which students pretend to follow a favorite baseball team on the road and travel to major league baseball cities in North America. Students use the encyclopedia to answer questions about each city they "visit" and then report on what they have learned by designing a postcard to send back to the class.…

This active, interdisciplinary place-based curriculum, which includes a teacher's guide, a student field journal, and a related photo packet introduces fourth and fifth grade students to the concept of landscape and heightens their awareness of the relationship between landscape and people. The curriculum program is designed to introduce students…

Describes an instructional method where undergraduate child development students and a class of grade school students prepare and exchange written questions and answers. The questions focused on their educational experiences. Discusses advantages of this method over other interactive techniques. This exercise can be adapted for other courses. (MJP)

Reports that students from fourth and fifth grades, along with middle and advanced history students acting as mentors, planned and executed a five-month historical research field project. Student research teams carried out at a local site a two-week archaeological dig uncovering artifacts and discovering how their predecessors lived. (NL)

Experiences in using positive reinforcement while teaching on an Indian reservation are presented for teachers and administrators. Several "positive reinforcers," intended to prevent potential discipline problems from occurring, are described, including student involvement in deciding on classroom rules, election of classroom officers, class…

Discusses a comparative study of two fourth grade social studies teaching programs based upon study units concerning flight. Concludes that both Hilda Taba's Teaching Strategies Program and the published simulation program "Flight" were exciting alternative methods of teaching map reading to fourth graders. Reports that students using…