More than 60 outdoor activities and 50 follow-up activities for children in grades two, three, and four are collected in this teacher's guide. They focus on the interdependence of life; the relationship of man, animals, and plants to each other and to the environment. Most are designed as field trips, utilizing a discovery and questioning approach…

THE EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN OF THIS PROJECT WAS DEVELOPED TO TEST THE INFLUENCE OF INCENTIVE VALUES IN TWO-CHOICE, SIMULTANEOUS DISCRIMINATION LEARNING WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF AN ATTENTION THEORY (ZEAMAN AND HOUSE, 1963). FOLLOWING A 40-TRIAL TRAINING PROCEDURE IN WHICH HIGH AND LOW INCENTIVE VALUES WERE USED TO INFLUENCE STIMULUS DIMENSION…

Reports on a study of word recognition in second grade, fourth grade, sixth grade, and college students, which investigated characteristics of word processing (holistic versus component) at various stages of reading development. (AM)

When kindergarten, second grade, fourth grade, and college students listened to stories and were asked to predict and explain the story character's behavioral or emotional reaction to a new event, the use of personality attributions to predict and explain future reactions increased with age. (RH)

Examines the nature of children's sense of theme in narratives as it develops over three age levels--kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade--and investigates the role of literature in that development. Concludes that thematic identification is an early developmental strategy. (MM)

Reports the results of a study of 7- to 11-year-old boys (n=100) designed to explore the use of visual and auditory information in learning to spell. Results showed that only with 10- and 11-year-olds did visual information produce better results than auditory presentation alone. (JDH)

The University of British Columbia (Canada) dental school has implemented a clinical experience program in which children in grades 2-4 are bused to the university for dental treatment. The program has helped maintain undergraduate pediatric dental experiences, benefited the children's dental health, and cost parents less than traditional dental…

This paper looks at several dimensions of the grade failure issue in Honduras using a unique data set compiled by the UMCE evaluation project in 1998 and 1999. The analytical framework incorporates econometric analysis of standardized tests and teacher pass/fail decisions for roughly 13,000 second and fourth grade students. The results show that…

In this article, the authors seek to re-conceptualize the perspective regarding students' difficulties with algebra. While acknowledging that students "do" have difficulties when learning algebra, they also argue that the generally espoused criteria for algebra as the ability to work with the syntactical rules for solving equations is…

An attempt was made to develop self-directedness in students through teaching them how to write questions in multiple-choice format, and by making students aware that phrasing things in multiple-choice format is a way of asking questions that is conducive to developing thinking, writing, and test-taking skills. The study, a form of reflective…

A study investigated the role of phonemic information in young readers' silent reading comprehension. Subjects, 56 children in grades 2 and 4, from Seattle parochial schools, were blocked into groups based on their grade and skill level (skilled and less skilled). Each subject saw 48 sentences presented in a random order on an Apple II…

This study explores a learning model which suggests that a concept is acquired first through manipulation of concrete objects followed by transformation of the concrete objects into semi-concrete representations, followed by internalization of the concept through abstract representations. Microcomputer simulations of manipulative activities were…

More than 100 individual and group activities, learning center ideas, and bulletin board suggestions are offered in this handbook for developing the writing skills of second, third, and fourth grade students. An analysis chart is provided as a diagnostic tool for determining the writing strengths and weaknesses of students. The activities are…

The effect of passage topic and task demands on elementary school students' monitoring of their own comprehension was examined. Second, fourth, and sixth grade students read a short passage about a well-known event (playing checkers) or one about which they had little existing information (making lye soap). Half of the students in each grade were…

Research was conducted to determine the degree to which sampling vs. comparison processes account for age changes in referential communication. Children at three different grade levels communicated referents within related and unrelated word pairs. The word pairs used were from Cohen and Klein (1968). From their list of 30 related pairs, half were…