As testing becomes more prevalent as a policy tool in the Anglo-Saxon world, debates continue as to whether it supports central reforms of instruction or leads to a kind of 'teaching to the test' that invalidates results and undermines more challenging instruction. This paper reports on a three-year study of mathematics testing of nine-year-olds…

Recent increased interest in content-based language instruction is due to new developments in second language acquisition theory, and to the need to provide equal educational opportunities to the growing number of immigrant children. Facets of second language learning that need to be developed in content-based instruction include specialized…

This study focused on the way mathematics was taught in selected primary school classrooms. The study involved the observation of 21 fourth-grade classes in eight schools over a two-week period. Results indicated a hiatus between what was taught and what should be taught and between how mathematics is taught and how it should be taught.…

This study introduces a novel methodology for examining affective experiences in the classroom. The general procedure is to make auditory and visual recordings of a particular child during a normal classroom period. That child is then immediately taken from the class and placed in a private room where the recordings are replayed. The student is…

Explores relationships among student performance prior to instruction, problems students are assigned and performance after instruction in fourth-grade mathematics. Results indicate that assigning challenging materials may lead to notable gains on test of fourth-grade mathematics. Discusses implication of results for possible modification of…

This book follows students' natural progression from measuring with informal or nonstandard units to using standard units to measure such attributes as length, weight, angle, and temperature. Activities extend students' learning to the measurement of two- and three-dimensional objects. Students work in a variety of lively real-world contexts,…

Japanese lesson study, in various adapted forms, is becoming increasingly significant in professional development of mathematics teachers in the USA. Our goal in the research reported in this paper was to investigate, in a three-tiered teaching experiment, the cycles of learning of two researchers, six teachers, and the students in three grade 4…

This document consists of a sample curriculum model for grade 4 mathematics based on the 1998 Arkansas State Mathematics Framework. The document is divided into five sections: (1) Number Sense, Properties, and Operations; (2) Geometry and Spatial Sense; (3) Measurement; (4) Data Analysis, Statistics, and Probability; and (5) Patterns, Algebra, and…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the nation's only ongoing representative sample survey of student achievement in core subject areas. In 2000, NAEP conducted a national mathematics assessment of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students. State-level results were also collected at the fourth and eighth grades within…

This study examined how urban fourth graders interpreted curriculum events, especially those involving mathematics, investigating everyday representations of mathematical concepts, subject matter learning, knowledge production processes, and event structured knowledge. Students' writings about school and math events indicated that curriculum was…

Presents two seasonally related investigations involving arithmetic series to develop critical thinking: (1) the number of candles needed for the eight nights of Hanukkah, and (2) the number of presents given during "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Students also calculated the amount of money needed to buy all the presents. (MDH)

Describes a wide range of activities based on a grade-number theme of "two" in second grade, "three" in third grade, and "four" in fourth grade. (MKR/SW)

Two fourth-grade classes served in a study that employed computers for promoting autonomous learning processes through solving challenging problems adapted to students' aptitudes using the number line as an intuitive model. Findings showed that students have preinstructional intuitions and informal knowledge of negative numbers. (24 references)…

Presents 2 mathematical projects involving (n=25) fourth-grade and (n=26) sixth-grade students' concept mapping (on fractions and on geometry) that allowed monitoring of students' individual understanding over time and provided information about students' conceptual understanding. (37 references) (Author/MKR)

Presents a study that analyzed errors made by randomly chosen fourth grade students (25 of 57) while using the division algorithm and investigated the effect of remediation on identified systematic errors. Results affirm that error pattern diagnosis and directed remediation lead to new learning and long-term retention. (MDH)