Describes the planning involved in implementing child-led parent/school conferences to review student portfolios in one second-grade classroom. Notes that the second graders conducted parent conferences very effectively, there was almost 100% attendance at the portfolio night, and no parent asked for a private conference with the teacher. Includes…

Highlights problems concerning the ways that researchers' assumptions about the world color their treatment of students and schools, outlining three ways students are commonly viewed (as inputs, aliens, and rebels) and recommending a more reflexive approach to research that is more sensitive to its own assumptions and limited uses. (SM)

Presents a model that identifies the reasons why parents become involved in their children's education, using the model to explain how such involvement influences the developmental and educational progress of children. The paper examines parents' choice of specific involvement and discusses why their involvement influences their children's…

Provides one teacher's personal account of an ongoing learning process in a sixth-grade classroom, and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of allowing for diverse interpretations, perspectives, and points of view designed to aid student learning. The dynamic relationship between student initiative and unpredictability that can result in…

Highlights the learner test-writing process, in which pupils write their own tests. The process consists of a number of steps, including reviewing the material learned, writing the questions, taking the test, and going over the graded test. (Author/VWL)

Examines data from the collaborative discourse of both preservice teachers and elementary students engaged in small group work to get a clearer understanding of the conditions of effective discourse. Particular focus is on the relationship between discourse and peer group directed inquiry. (Author/VWL)

Suggests ways in which a teacher or visitor can tell whether children are gaining from their science activities: classroom presence of real things to learn from, children working with these materials, and more talking by students than by the teacher. Lists observational questions about student work, behavior, and communication that can be used to…

An eastern Kentucky teacher has run the gamut of classroom challenges, from statewide educational reform to her own bout with technophobia. But through her application of the Foxfire approach, her students have engaged in active learning projects in their school and community and with other students in Nebraska and China, with lasting results.…

The author of this paper, a primary educator at Jack Jackter Elementary School in Colchester, Connecticut, describes several activities teachers can use to enhance character development lessons and help put children on track for becoming problem-solving citizens both in school and in society.

Despite recent British government moves to equip all Primary Schools with fast broadband connections to the Internet, it would seem that many schools as yet make little use of the increased capacity this affords other than to incorporate more and more rich multimedia in the form of interactive games or animated presentations to illustrate…

This booklet is a product of the UNESCO Associated Schools Project, a network of some 3,800 schools in 131 countries, which conducts pilot projects to promote education for peace, international understanding, and cooperation. Schools taking part in the project participated in an international contest asking for spontaneous reactions to the…

When children (particularly African Americans) have a different orthography, phonemic system, and deep structure from Standard American English (SAE) speakers, they may have difficulty grasping the correct SAE phonemes represented by the symbols and reading in general. Language acquisition is natural learning centered around the interaction of…

Supporting the constructivist view of language learning, a study by a teacher-researcher analyzed the thematic patterns in the writing of her 31 first-grade students for a period of 3 months. In the natural setting of the classroom the children were studied in the context of their own learning. Writing was collected daily, and stories were sorted…

A discussion of the role of sociolinguistics in the treatment of communication disorders focuses on issues related to dialect and language variation. It begins with an examination of linguistic diversity and dynamic description of language, reporting on a study of speech and language pathologists' judgments of sentences in African American…

This position paper discusses: (1) the definition, rationale, and goals for social studies in the early childhood and elementary years; (2) developmental characteristics that should be considered in the planning of a social studies program; (3) basic research on elementary social studies; (4) the status of social studies in the elementary school;…