Describes how two fifth-grade boys developed and sustained a love of fantasy books. Describes how these two discriminating readers have developed taste and a social context for their reading experience. Shows how their experience demonstrates important principles about reading and about reading curriculum. (SR)

Examines "Theater-in-Education," (TIE) a unique British-inspired teaching-and-learning methodology which combines young people's theater with creative drama, currently taught at a handful of universities in the United States. Finds that, as a result of the program's tour to 10 fifth-grade classrooms in five schools, area teachers were unanimous in…

Defines a two-stage process by which a holistic rubric is applied to the assessment of open-ended items, such as writing samples. Indicates that the use of rating augmentation can improve the inter-rater reliability of holistic assessments, as indicated by generalizability phi coefficients, correlation coefficients, and percent agreement indices.…

Explores the role of literacy and curriculum in identity construction among fifth graders. Suggests: (1) there was a coherence of perspectives about six of the students while there was less agreement for the other six students; (2) literacy was a more important feature of some students' identities than others; and (3) the literacy curriculum…

Investigates the manner in which one particular ethnic group, African American, is represented in five elementary school social studies textbooks published in 1991. Locates sections of text, identifies case relationships, and determines noun ethnicity. Finds that there were many more noun-verb relationships related to African Americans compared to…

Explores the effectiveness of using television and video to motivate student writing. Describes how, following a series of motivational and brainstorming sessions using television, video, and popular literature, 23 fifth-grade students wrote and videotaped dramatizations of short "teaser" scripts in cooperative groups. Notes that these…

This article describes an exercise program for children. "Shapes for Kids," takes the same 30-minute approach at the Curves workout for women. The program is set up using 20 stations, which rotate upper-body work, abdominal exercises, lower-body work, and cardiovascular exercises. Some stations combine more than one component. Children change…

A study explored 97 less proficient fifth graders' use of imagery when given oral prompts to image or general memory directions (control) and when reading explicit or implicit texts. The effects of imagery on story comprehensions and affective responses were measured by immediate and delayed story recalls, cued recall questions, and an open-ended…

The notion of a linguistic "register" is useful in posing questions about how the ways language is used differ from one kind of human activity to another. This paper analyzes a videotaped segment of male grade 4/5 students (n=3) who are talking as they work to build a tower from plastic drinking straws and pins. Discussion of the…

A study investigated the extent to which children consider writing strategies in relation to types of writing. Data were evolved by interviewing 48 fifth-grade children on their processes of evaluating other children's papers. Each child was asked to read paired texts, judge their comparative quality, and explain the basis of their judgments. They…

This report describes and evaluates two programs which deal with chronic status offenders: the Grimes Alternative School Program, a delinquency prevention project which targets intermediate school (grades 4 and 5) students with chronic discipline and/or truant behaviors, and the Home Remedies Program, a short-term crisis intervention and…

This practicum report describes a reading program that was designed and implemented to help improve reading attitudes among fifth grade children. A target group of 17 fifth-graders were unmotivated and uninterested in reading, and TV occupied a great deal of their out-of-class time. Solution strategies involved encouraging parents, teachers, and…

Underachievement in the classroom is a problem which confronts educators and national initiatives such as America 2000. Little field research exists to evaluate the effectiveness of classroom interventions on improving academic performance of the underachiever. A field study was designed and implemented by school psychologists which focused on…

A study investigated the correlation between students' learning styles and their academic achievement on report cards and standardized tests. Subjects were 58 fifth-grade students in a suburban middle school. The "Learning Style Inventory" by Brown and Cooper was administered to this population, and students' academic averages and…

A study investigated whether reading instruction that emphasizes critical thinking would benefit "learning-disabled" fifth-grade students. Seven students were assigned to an instructional group that participated in a program of 10 dialogical-thinking reading lessons and 7 were assigned to a comparison group that remained with the…