Purpose: The authors investigated mental representations of Piagetian conservation tasks in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing peers. Children with SLI have normal nonverbal intelligence; however, they exhibit difficulties in Piagetian conservation tasks. The authors tested the hypothesis that conservation…

A lot of good elementary science involves studying solids, liquids, and gases, and some inquiry-based activities that are easy to set up and do. In this article, the author presents activities pertaining to simple phase change. Using water as the example, these activities introduce upper-grade students to the idea of the arrangement of molecules…

The purpose of this article is to suggest ways of using research on children's reasoning and learning to elaborate on existing national standards and to improve large-scale and classroom assessments. The authors suggest that "learning progressions"--descriptions of successively more sophisticated ways of reasoning within a content domain based on…