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…

Performance assessment may be the best vehicle for validating student achievement. Performance assessment, in theory and practice, is compatible with middle-school philosophy, stated mission, organizational structure, and instructional models. The challenge is to reexamine program outcomes and decide what middle-level students should know and be…

Memory and study skill instruction can powerfully affect middle school students' classroom performance. Students should be taught to improve their study skills by increasing their knowledge about memory, their awareness of their own memory processes, and their use of effective memory strategies. At the middle level, concrete demonstrations,…

Examines critical questions concerning classroom management posed by beginning teachers, highlighting strategies for establishing and sustaining an effective classroom climate at the middle level. Teachers establish good management by proactive preplanning, deliberate introduction of rules and procedures, and immediate assertiveness. Order is…

Examines reasons for child abandonment and murder and how it relates to abandonment in traditional literature. Considers new views of child abandonment and murder (focusing not on overcoming their abandonment, but changing and restructuring their entire society) presented in "The Giver" and "Shade's Children." Discusses the…

Conceptualizes and develops the OCDQ-RM, a measure of middle schools' organizational climate. Generates a typology of school climates based on openness and tests the relationship between openness and authenticity in teacher and principal behavior. Finds that openness in the school climate is related to authenticity in both teacher and principal…

This report describes a three-year project aimed at improving mathematics education in grades 6-9 in Birmingham, Alabama. The purpose of the project was to enhance mathematical knowledge and improve the instructional skills of middle school mathematics teachers (n=58) through an innovative teacher enhancement program. Since the middle school years…

In this classroom a child introduced the word "split" when he was asked to describe his mental activity in performing the addition of two numbers; the teacher initiated a spatial representation using a broken line. Subsequently, the children used their own pictorial representations. The paper presents an analysis of the numerical diagrams used by…

The California agenda for middle-grade reform is based on 10 regional networks, each composed of 1 foundation school and approximately 10 partnership schools. An interim evaluation of the reform effort, which occurred from 1988-90, is presented in this executive summary of two annual reports, "Technical Report 1" and "Technical…

The theoretical background and empirical studies concerned with the relationship between language and cognition in bilingual children and in bilingual mildly retarded children are examined. It is suggested that the effects of bilingualism are not necessarily detrimental to mildly handicapped children. Cognitive and interactional factors in the…

As part of a feasibility assessment of the level of education in the Netherlands, oracy skills of 6th-grade students, aged 10 to 12 years, were measured. Oracy tasks were constructed from the answers of teachers, parents, and educational experts to a questionnaire on desirable skills for the age group. The six tasks developed were administered to…

Documentation presented concerns the planning, implementation, and evaluation that took place in the development of a club program in a public intermediate school in New York City. The club program provides activities during the lunchtime period that expand and/or enrich the school curriculum offerings. Club activities offered were a rap group and…

A method for quantifying story retells, called proposition analysis, was used to study the reading comprehension performances of 34 learning disabled and normal fifth and sixth graders. Journal availability: see EC 112 927. (DLS) 927

The effectiveness of a modeling technique on the acquisition of long division was demonstrated with eight middle school learning-disabled students. The intervention included demonstration, imitation, and key guide words. (Author/DB)

The most widely used school-based substance abuse prevention program in the United States is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program, which is funded by a variety of sources, including private, federal, and other public entities. DAREs primary mission is to provide children with the information and skills they need to live drug- and…