The purpose of the study is to investigate if the effects of chewing cinnamon flavored gum can increase mood, feeling and spelling acquisition. 5th grade students (n = 22) at Ilshin elementary school in South Korea served as participants. The same students were required to take 4 spelling tests with 1 given every day over the course of 4 days. For…

Emerging from a human constructivist view of learning and a punctuated model of conceptual change, these studies explored differences in the structural complexity and content validity of knowledge about prehistoric life depicted in concept maps by learners ranging in age from approximately 10 to 20 years. Study 1 (cross-age) explored the…

The purpose of this study was to determine an optimal schedule for the frequency and spacing of drill and practice in the learning of verbal information. Subjects for the first phase were 62 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in a public elementary school. Using a computer-based drill involving the naming of the capitals of the 50 states of the…

Examines how the role of questions in literacy instruction has always been strong, whether requiring answers involving rote memory or the activation of higher level critical thinking processes. Presents a six-step strategy for questioning followed by a field-tested group of fifth graders' responses to each step. (SC)

Primary school learners' first encounters with mathematics in a traditional learning environment often create lifelong "math phobia."(Papert 1980) The situation in a country emerging from an oppressive education system designed to educationally disempower the majority of the population is much worse. The typical scenario in a previously…

This article talks about how a teacher from Rail Road Flat Elementary School, Randall Youngblood, handles his class of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders through discipline. Discipline and the kind of teach-to-the-test learning that has become endemic in the era of No Child Left Behind has kept his students' energy channeled. Such rote learning often gets…