A sixth-grade class investigated the ecologies of two local retention ponds over the course of one school year. In this context, instruction assisted development as students designed models of the pond in one-gallon jars and attempted to stabilize these jars in sustainable ecosystems that could be used to study questions about the ponds.…

Accountability in the nation's public schools has become a matter of considerable urgency since the 2001 amendment of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. Under this most recent version of the ESEA, as of the 2007-08 academic year states and districts must assess the mathematics and reading proficiency of students…

The purpose of this study was to provide a description of an on-site professional development program for Russian teachers as they learned to teach Sport Education. A concurrent objective was to investigate the effectiveness of this professional development opportunity. Participants were two physical education teachers (one with 27 and one with 3…

While formal, standardized assessment instruments provide valuable and necessary information about students' various abilities and skills, the use of informal and qualitative assessment approaches has the benefit of leading directly to instruction based squarely on an individual student's needs, strengths, and existing skills. This article…

This study was conducted to determine 4th, 5th, and 6th grade Turkish primary students' conceptions about the particulate nature of matter via a test. The test consists of 36 items related to the changes of microscopic properties of solid, liquid and gas matters during phase changing, cooling, heating and pressing of them. The sample of the study…

Does history have to be boring and dry? Not if a person takes the familiar and adds an earthshaking twist! To begin the collaborative process, work with a willing teacher. This article talks about a teaching collaboration between the author as a library media specialist and Beth who was interested in literature circle titles for her 6th grade…

The extant literature on the social functioning of students with learning disabilities (LD) has indicated that whereas a majority belong to peer groups, a higher proportion are isolated and most have lower social status among peers in general than their typically achieving classmates. Although some work has examined these issues over short-term…

One hundred and forty-three Jewish and Arab 6th grade children in Israel participated in this study, which explored several attitude dimensions and willingness to communicate (WTC) in the language of the other. Analysis of variance indicated differences between groups, with Arab children having in general more positive attitudes and higher WTC in…

ASSISTments is a web-based math tutor designed to address the need for timely student assessment while simultaneously providing instruction, thereby avoiding lost instruction time that typically occurs during assessment. This article presents a quasi-experiment that evaluates whether ASSISTments use has an effect on improving middle school…

We compared 56 eighth-grade students who, 28 months previously, had received instruction in strategies for planning and revising their writing, with 21 students of similar academic ability from the same school who had not experienced the intervention. Both groups wrote an expository essay whilst logging their writing activities and completed…

Previous research has provided mixed results regarding the effect of anxiety on academic achievement. Building on this body of research, the present longitudinal study pursued two goals. The first goal was to describe trajectories of anxiety during elementary-school years. The second goal was to determine the predictive value of these trajectories…

The purpose of this publication is to share models and case examples of the process of inclusive arts curriculum design and evaluation. The first section explains the conceptual and curriculum frameworks that were used in the analysis and generation of the featured case studies (i.e. Understanding by Design, Differentiated Instruction, and…

This investigation examined the impact of opportunity to learn content and skills targeted by a writing assessment on the achievement of English learners (ELs), including the potential for differential impact of increased exposure to literary analysis and writing instruction. Results revealed several factors contributing to students' writing…

This report describes district-level results from the Austin Independent School District (AISD) 2008-2009 Student Climate Survey. [Abstract modified to meet ERIC guidelines.]

This study addresses the development of health-related behavior during childhood and adolescence and the protective influence of an authoritative parenting style. The study is based on two samples followed from Grades 2 through 5 and from Grades 4 through 7. The first sample consisted of 432 second graders with a mean age of 7.9 years at the…