A study examined the role of talk in the writing act. The study utilized participant observational techniques in an attempt to discover how talk was implicated in all stages of writing. Subjects were three fourth, fifth, and/or sixth grade informants, with one student emerging as the key informant in the study. Results indicated that talk appeared…

In this study, children's selective attention to, and comprehension of, variably-paced television programs were examined as a function of sound effects. Sixty-four children, equally distributed by sex and by preschool and fourth grades, were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions which crossed two levels of sound effects (presence…

Students' descriptions of characteristics of high and low achievers and their treatment by peers and teachers were examined through semi-structured interviews with 133 fourth-graders. Coded interviews were anlayzed for differences in descriptions of the characteristics and peer and teacher treatment of high and low achievers; and whether these…

A two-year study was conducted with fourth-grade children in the context of extensive teaching experiments concerned with the learning of rational number concepts. Representational difficulties in using the number line model were investigated. While instruction in the second year attempted to resolve observed learning difficulties, the results of…

To assess whether gains in vocabulary and comprehension would result from the use of the cloze procedure as a teaching technique, 222 students in 12 fourth-grade classrooms were randomly assigned to one of four groups: a control group and groups that were taught with cloze deletion patterns involving deletion of every tenth word, deletion of…

This study attempted to determine whether the findings of psycholinguists to syntax and reading comprehension could be generalized to children of other English-speaking cultures. Specifically, the influence of material written at different levels of syntactic maturity (according to the T-unit analysis) upon the reading comprehension of selected…

The purpose of this experiment was to replicate and extend previous work which showed substantial differences between good readers (GR) and poor readers (PR) in the time taken to encode single words. The technique used was based on the memory-scanning and visual-scanning procedure first used by Sternberg. The subjects for the study consisted of 30…

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how collaborative problem solving affects individual mathematical problem-solving ability. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations were conducted, focusing on four students in the same fourth grade mathematics class in Taipei, Taiwan, as they participated in two steps of individual problem-solving…

Leslie Herrenkohl's work in science (1998) has demonstrated that introducing "problem-solving steps" and "audience roles" to an elementary classroom can have a dramatic impact on rates of student engagement as measured through classroom talk. It is not known to what extent the success of the intervention was due to its…

This paper grew out of the collaborative relationship that emerged from in-class modeling of student-centered writing approaches as participating teachers and a consultant/researcher began to explore ways to increase the length of fourth-grade writing. The paper reports on a small study in fourth-grade writing aimed at increasing the length of…

This study explores the variables included on Kentucky's School Report Card used to report information about individual schools to parents, legislators, educators, community leaders, and educational researchers. Data used for this exploratory, descriptive study were obtained through the Kentucky Department of Education Web site. The study focused…

This research presents a preliminary overview of the teaching practices of fourth grade teachers throughout the state of New Jersey. These teachers were all involved in professional development experiences designed to help them revise their approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics. In this aspect of the study, we observed at least…

A sample of 26 at-risk fourth graders was randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group was taught geometry concepts using drama, while the control group received more traditional instruction. Fifty minute lessons per day were given for one week. Then, a multiple choice test to assess academic achievement was…

The purpose of this study is to investigate elementary students' explanations of how physical features of the land influence the location of humanly defined structures including trade routes, such as the silk routes. The silk routes were a series of caravan trade routes that extended from Turkey to China and were located as far south as India and…

This study analyzed graphical solutions of 344 students in grades 4 through college who were administered a 40-item assessment of basic fraction concepts. Of particular interest were six problems that required students to complete the whole given a fractional part presented in area contexts and set contexts. Results indicated that fourth graders…