Recent changes to the budgetary basis of schools in Russia has received a mixed response from parents, with a variety of views on whether the quality of education is being improved. Reductions in state support for preschool education raises questions about the ability of less affluent parents to prepare their children for first grade. Perhaps more…

The purpose of this paper is to share the effectiveness of the word study program "Words Their Way" (Bear et. al., 2008) to improve spelling retention of first graders in a regular education classroom in the Spring of 2012. After implementing a traditional spelling program and seeing students continuously spell previous spelling words…

"The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Collaborating for Student Success (2009)" was conducted by Harris Interactive and is twenty-sixth in a series sponsored by MetLife since 1984 to give voice to those closest to the classroom. This "MetLife Survey" examines the views of teachers, principals and students about respective roles and…

Several authors have suggested that a teacher's ability to encourage a disposition to read may be linked to their personal reading habits and views of literacy. This study examined the relationship between elementary school teachers' reading habits, knowledge of children's literature, and their use of literacy best practices in the classroom. One…

The study examined the efficacy of an intensive form of professional development (PD) for building the knowledge of first-grade teachers in the areas of phonological awareness and phonics. The PD featured frequent in-class support from highly knowledgeable mentors for one school year, in addition to an introductory two-day summer institute and…

The extant studies reveal a considerable mismatch between students' and teachers' perceptions of student stress. The present study compared the judgments of teachers-in-training (N = 109) with the responses of first- and sixth-grade children (n = 56 and 93, respectively). The following questions are addressed: (a) Do teachers' judgments of the…

This study compares the experiences and perceptions of new and experienced teachers in 235 schools in six western states (Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Wyoming) that have adopted the Reading First school reform initiative. Using previously collected data from surveys and interviews, the study considers four areas of the reform…

Four teacher researchers focused on the lack of students' proper social skills for this action research project report. In the classes of four teacher researchers, the students were coming to school lacking proper social skills. Because of this, teachers were spending time allocated for the curriculum, on discipline and the instruction of social…

Children enter kindergarten in the United States with large differences in their background knowledge, vocabulary, and early literacy experiences. There is a strong relationship between language development during the early years and reading ability in the primary grade and teachers must understand the importance of developing vocabulary and its…

A diverse sample of kindergarten and 1st grade students participated in a social-emotional literacy and problem solving program. Students and their teachers participated in seven one-hour training sessions which included concrete activities designed to increase affective vocabulary and social problem-solving. Effective communication strategies…

The Psychological Processing Checklist (PPC) is a teacher-completed rating scale published by Multi-Health Systems in North Tonawanda, New York. The checklist was published in 2003 along with a technical manual (Swerdlik, Swerdlik, & Kahn, 2003). The 35-item PPC purports to measure difficulties with psychological processing among children in…

This project describes a 12-week program developed to improve student spelling of high frequency words for transfer in written work across the curriculum. The targeted population consists of kindergarten, first, and third graders in two public elementary schools in a community located in central Illinois. Following an extensive literature review,…

This study replicates a 2005 study of the status of social studies in the K-5 curriculum in Indiana. The current study reports the results of a comprehensive survey (33 fixed and 2 open-ended) of a stratified (by grade) random sample of K-5 teachers in Indiana (n = 385; response rate = 32%). Results indicated a continued marginalization of social…

Parents make powerful contributions to their children's early literacy learning in school. The purpose of this study was to design, implement, and evaluate the efficacy of the Words-to- Go parent involvement program as part of a larger effort to reach out to parents in early literacy. Quantitative data from surveys and qualitative data from focus…

Background/Context: Technological and economic changes have put a high premium on developing students' information literacy and research skills. Previous attempts to deploy educational technology toward these ends have proved disappointing because K-12 teachers have difficulty integrating shared computers into instruction. In response, numerous…