A study was conducted in order to determine the specific classroom qualities and characteristics that promote and motivate students to develop attitudes and behaviors conducive to civic participation. One classroom is a bi-lingual sixth grade, located in an older neighborhood school in a coastal southern California city and the other is a…

This instructional unit designed to develop higher-level cognitive skills in fifth grade students focuses on a mid-nineteenth century newspaper from the Old Stater Print Shop. Purposes include: (1) to compare and contrast a century-old newspaper with a modern-day paper; (2) to begin planning for a newspaper and to organize a newspaper staff; (3)…

As fourth and fifth grade students study this unit in conjunction with their Indiana or U.S. history texts, they see how the Indiana pioneers ate and survived. Many of the foods taken for granted today were eaten by Indians in one of the Americas thousands of years ago. Students learn that the Native Americans had developed agricultural…

Describes a collaborative project called "Mystery from History" involving a rural Indiana elementary class and a computer education college class at Indiana University. Explains that the university students sent a mystery via e-mail to the elementary students in which they continued to send clues and questions until the mystery was…

This guide to Indiana's academic standards in English/Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and the Social Studies for Grade 5 students begins with a note to students and another note to parents. The guide spells out what students should know and be able to do in each subject, at each grade level. The guide also lists 10 things parents can do to…

The Indiana Weather Project (IWP) investigated how the joint application of situated learning and constructivist theory might support elementary school students' understanding of weather systems. Results indicated significant cognitive gains during the multimedia weather unit. (SD)