Describes the experience of a middle school library which instituted a no-fines policy, and summarizes the benefits of such a policy with regard to book losses and public relations. (FM)

Fourth-grade children were taught 104 words over a five-month period. Following instruction, these subjects performed tasks designed to require semantic processes ranging from single-word semantic decisions to simple sentence verification. Instructed subjects performed at a higher level than control subjects matched on preinstruction vocabulary…

The purpose of a physical fitness unit within the health education curriculum is to help students understand the importance of physical fitness. Four physical activities for fourth to sixth grade students are described. (CJ)

It was concluded that there seems to be a preference among intermediate level gifted/talented students for those instructional methods emphasizing independence, while students of the general population seem to prefer instructional methods with somewhat more structure. (Author)

Clear quantitative and qualitative differences in visual scanning strategies were found between the groups and discussed with respect to differences between perceptually impaired and normal children's rates of encoding information and reliance upon visual memory. (Author)

Presents three simple water activities, for grades 4-6, to teach about molecular attraction as seen in surface tension and cohesion. (Author/SJL)

Presented are activities for students in grades 3-6 which use assorted breads and spreads to represent layers of the earth's crust. It is suggested that in addition to providing good nutrition, this method has helped the children use the processes of science to deduce some basic principles of geology. (KC)

Twenty skills are identified and illustrated by example activities which should help the student receive, organize, and analyze data; manipulate it at a symbolic or model level; and treat it in imaginative ways through purposeful distortion and fantasy. (CL)

The career education staff development effort in the Louisville Middle Schools is examined. Focus areas include: unique needs of the middle school student, training activities, barriers encountered, and factors contributing to the workshops' success. A figure illustrates the staff development plan. (CT)

Presents a teacher's journal entries for poetry classes she conducted for fourth and fifth graders at Anthony Chabot Elementary School in Oakland, California, located in a middle class neighborhood with an ethnic mix of students. Describes two poetry writing ideas: "What Matters" and "100 Words." (PA)

Describes how writing with specifics can transform poetry, helping to create vivid pictures in the reader's mind. Offers three of the author's own poems that illustrate the judicious use of detail. (SR)

Tested the learning effects of a concept-mapping strategy by studying three such approaches (map correction, scaffold fading, and map generation) to determine their effects on students' text comprehension and summarization abilities. Results with 126 fifth graders show that the map correction method enhanced text comprehension and summarization,…

Examines peer affiliations of aggressive children in a sample of 948 students from 4th through 6th grades. The deviant peer group hypothesis was partially supported. Two thirds of aggressive boys and one half of aggressive girls were most likely to be members of nonaggressive groups, whereas popular aggressive boys were most likely to be in…

Examined factorial validity of tasks designed to measure cognitive processing in each of Luria's three functional units. Fourth and fifth graders (N=112) were administered nine experimental tasks chosen or developed according to theoretical components of planning, attention, simultaneous, and successive processes. Obtained general support for…

Patterns of memory dysfunction were determined in 50 middle school learning disabled readers (LD) through a hierarchical cluster analysis. Results were consistent with memory capacity theories of LD and provided external validation for classification of LD readers on psychometric measures according to patterns of memory performance. (Author/DB)