As part of a 3-year longitudinal study, 136 sixth-grade students completed an engineering-based problem on earthquakes involving integrated STEM learning. Students employed engineering design processes and STEM disciplinary knowledge to plan, sketch, then construct a building designed to withstand earthquake damage, taking into account a number of…

In the primary school classrooms, students spend almost three terms (20-25 hours) doing project work in groups of 4-5. In order for any learning task to be conducted effectively, the students need to know how to work collaboratively in their groups, and teachers need to find out how their students perceive one another while working in their…

Relates the experience of sixth-grade students who created a mural of the rain forest on a school wall. Describes the process of choosing a theme, researching the theme, designing the composition, and painting the mural. Uses the team approach to foster cooperation and peer learning during the project. (DSK)

How students perceive each other in the classroom and how they interact with one another have been variables in teaching which have been relatively ignored. Yet, how students interact with each other affects their learning outcomes and their self-images. To provide additional information and evidence on this variable, a study hypothesized that…

Camp Armstrong is a summer program which provides rising sixth grade students with a thorough orientation to their new middle school. Activities develop students' familiarity with the school's physical layout and provide hands-on cooperative learning in academic and recreational subjects. A workshop for parents of rising middle school students is…

Develops a simple tool to measure interactive learning in the context of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Describes the Measure of Interactivity in CMC (MICMC) and examines the reliability and validity of this measure. Subjects were fifth- and sixth-grade students in an inner city elementary school. Data analysis indicates MICMC is a useful…

In this lesson, student teams research one of the species of early humans. Teams will create presentations that include information on physical traits, habitat, era, means of survival, culture, and relationship to modern humans. Students are provided with background information, detailed instructions, on-line resources, and reflection questions.…

A study examined how to increase active participation in a language arts class, based on the belief that such an increase would lead to better test scores and better learning. Subjects included a class of 30 homogeneously grouped accelerated sixth grade students, which meets five days a week for 90-minute periods. During the study, the class was…

Discusses a sixth-grade assignment to conduct an interview with someone to find out as much as possible about that individual's profession as well as ways in which mathematics are used in that profession. Peer teaching, communication, and reasoning were natural consequences of this activity. (AIM)

This project paper described a program for increasing reading comprehension. The targeted population consisted of sixth grade students at River Bend Elementary School in a middle class community located in western Illinois. The problem of a steady decline in reading comprehension was documented by the Illinois Goals Assessment Program, Iowa Tests…

A reading comprehension program was developed and implemented that addressed the needs of sixth-grade students. The program focused on critical thinking skills using a teamwork approach. Each heterogeneous small group used a checklist composed of before, during, and after reading questions and activities. At the conclusion of the 12-week…

Compared the effects of grouping sixth grade students with different levels of persistence on their ability to learn in cooperative learning groups while working at the computer. Reports results that indicated that average persisters interacted more than either high or low persisters and discusses implications for forming effective cooperative…

Student attitudes about learning were assessed in association with usage of MicroWorlds, a multimedia learner-based software program, as a publishing tool. A language arts class of 19 sixth graders was divided into cooperative groups following a small group investigation model. After implementing a two-week unit which incorporated MicroWorlds as…

This paper presents and discusses the results of a project in which seven teams of elementary school students were involved in designing and implementing interactive multimedia resources in science for younger children. During a period of 3 months, students in grades 5 and 6 were divided into teams and met regularly to program the multimedia…

Presents a classroom lesson based on the walls of old Jerusalem. Maintains that cooperative-learning techniques used to build a model of the wall helped students understand the meaning of the original wall and the division of modern-day Jerusalem. (CFR)