For over three years, University of Arizona staff have been reviewing middle school curricular materials in various content areas to identify exemplary models. Study disclosed only 1 exemplary mathematics curriculum (18-year-old Real Math series by Open Court) and only 1 superior science curriculum (Canadian Science Plus series). No comprehensive…

Defines analogies, discusses the benefits of teaching students to create analogies, and presents a strategy for analogy instruction with numerous classroom applications. Using professionally prepared materials, teachers can help students engage in analogous thinking by analyzing different kinds of relationships, balancing terms, creating original…

Describes a discussion format called Collaborative Reasoning, part of a literature-based reading program in which students discuss a central question about a story they have read. Discusses the background of Collaborative Reasoning, its discussion framework, and instructional moves that support the development of reasoning. Notes the high rate of…

Two studies investigated upper elementary school students' informal understanding of sampling issues in the context of interpreting and evaluating survey results. The specific focus was on the children's evaluation of sampling methods and means of drawing conclusions from multiple surveys. In Study 1, 17 children were individually interviewed to…

Describes a thematic, interdisciplinary, middle-school curriculum that integrates visual and language arts. Curriculum embodies three principles: (1) visual and verbal responses depend on meaningful interaction among the artist (writer), the art object (text), the viewer (reader), and the environment (context); (2) visual and verbal thinking are…

Howard Gardner and Jerome Bruner have given much to teachers who want to know how the minds of children grow. This story of a girl's construction of higher order, verbal linguistic intelligence is also theirs. Ideas they created have been cloned to fit a big city, public school classroom of African American 4th graders, each with a set of multiple…

The performance-based assessment was developed to assess students' higher order thinking skills in real-life problem-solving situations in Alberta, Canada. These tasks assess aspects of science that cannot be measured easily by regular paper and pencil tests. The purpose of this document is to provide teachers, administrators, students, and…

The study described in this paper is part of an effort to improve understanding of the science assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It involved the coding of all the items in the 1996 NAEP science assessments, which included 45 blocks (15 each for grades 4, 8, and 12) and over 500 items. Each of the approximately…

Four fifth and sixth grade students with learning disabilities were taught a strategy for comprehending word problems and devising appropriate solutions. Following instruction performance on mixed sets of addition and subtraction word problems improved. Although generalization to a different setting occurred, maintenance was mixed. (Author/DB)

Evaluation of a schoolwide enrichment and resource room enrichment program on problem solving/problem finding for gifted children in grades 3-5 found that the gifted students involved made significantly greater gains than did average ability students receiving the special treatment and significantly greater gains than did gifted students receiving…

Describes the results of a classroom trial activity to encourage communication in mathematics. Students were asked to write a short story or a joke or to create a cartoon about an aspect of mathematics, which was in this case isolating the variable or property of negative 1. The activity revealed creativity and allowed the teacher to determine how…

This study assessed the impact on student learning outcomes of the Integrated Center of Public Education (ICPE), an innovative program in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) for at-risk students; and compared school educational programs of the ICPE and a regular public school serving the same low-income community and focusing on critical thinking competence…

A naturalistic case study, involving a 2-year collaboration between 14 classroom teachers and eight university researchers studying 250 middle and high school students, examined the types of principles underlying effective literature instruction that emphasizes the development of students' reasoning abilities in the context of their understanding…

This study evaluated the mathematics and reading/language arts curriculum for grades 6 through 8 in an Illinois private school for gifted students. Emphasis was on determining whether the current curriculum meets the needs of these students and whether students are challenged to develop problem solving and critical thinking skills. Evaluation was…

The Thinking Skills Program of the Saginaw Public Schools was evaluated in a process evaluation. The School District of the City of Saginaw (Michigan) operates a supplemental educational delivery system in reading and mathematics that consists of Chapter-1 funded elementary and secondary compensatory education (CE). Elementary CE is both a push-in…