The sociological literature on teaching and learning includes a number of discussions devoted to the importance of multicultural education. Much of this literature encourages educators to revise the curriculum and shows how the experience of multicultural education can stimulate student's sociological imaginations. To this end, some scholars have…

Ms. Carlisi teaches middle school mathematics for students who were retained at least 1 year and who were identified as at risk of failure in mathematics. About half of her class of 14 students has identified learning disabilities and/or emotional and behavioral difficulties. Ms. Carlisi worries constantly that she is not going to be able to help…

A great reading conference only takes five minutes, but its impact can last a lifetime. That is because conferences are the critical, one-to-one teaching that forms the backbone of reading instruction. This book shows teachers how to confer well and demonstrates why a few moments with students every week can put them on the path to becoming…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of action research by ten preservice teachers earning their associate's degree in early childhood education from a small university in the West. Their goal was to assess the impact of their teaching on student learning with children birth to 8 years of age. This study represents the use of…

"Slacker Astronomy" is a weekly podcast that covers a recent astronomical news event or discovery. The show has a unique style consisting of irreverent, over-the-top humor combined with a healthy dose of hard science. According to our demographic analysis, the combination of this style and the unique podcasting distribution mechanism allows the…

Minnesota Adult Basic Education (ABE) providers are mandated to use CASAS (Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System) Reading or Math or TABE (Tests for Adult Basic Education) Reading or Math. This issue of "NetNews" introduces the Test Bank: a variety of informal reading, spelling, and writing assessments available for Minnesota ABE…

This study explores teachers' informal formative assessment practices in three middle school science classrooms. We present a model for examining these practices based on three components of formative assessment (eliciting, recognizing, and using information) and the three domains linked to scientific inquiry (epistemic frameworks, conceptual…

Parodies an area of controversy--informal classroom reading assessment. (FL)

Informal assessment can make a valuable contribution to the assessment process in special education. Informal procedures are characterized by their ability to be tailored to the needs of specific assessment situations and are especially useful in student evaluation for this reason. (Author)

The study reported differences in agreement among four experienced listeners who analyzed the articulation skills of 97 four- and five-year-old children. Place and manner of articulation revealed differences of agreement, whereas voicing and syllabic function contributed little to agreement or disagreement. (Author)

Proposes that decisions about the type, frequency, and content of assessment are of key importance in long-range planning, short-range planning, and daily classroom instruction. (MKR)

The paper describes a data collection system to record children's progress and to encourage parents of young handicapped children. The system consists of a calendar with blank spaces in which parents place stickers listing developmental behaviors and record comments about their child. The approach has four main objectives: to supplement…

Six practical and readily accessible informal assessment strategies for evaluating adult readers are described. These include (1) observation, (2) simplified reading inventories, (3) cloze procedures, (4) group reading inventories, (5) criterion-referenced tests, and (6) informal reading inventories. (CH)

Thirty children from two age levels (4 to 5 and 6 to 7 years) with diagnosed language problems were tested with four informal methods of language evaluation: spontaneous language sampling, elicited imitation, sentence completion, and grammatical judgment. Overall comparisons between tasks revealed significant correlations between spontaneous…

A research study was conducted with campers at two public campgrounds regarding the campers' willingness to pay for public recreation. Both formal and informal interviewing techniques were applied. Results showed that major differences in willingness to pay were found between the interview types. (JN)