Using interviews and 10 weeks of consecutive lesson plans with supporting documentation, the author analyzes four first-year teachers' assigned in-class and out-of-class reading assignments and their choices and uses of reading strategies they learned in their preservice program. (Contains 2 tables.)

GeoJourney is an interdisciplinary field trip in geology, Native American studies, and environmental studies designed for introductory-level undergraduates. The program travels 23,345 kilometers by van to national parks, industrial sites, museums, and Indian reservations in 24 of the United States. During the day, students carry out hands-on…

History teachers are frequently frustrated in their efforts to promote class discussion. Class discussion is useful to deliver or reinforce content and to explore or share ideas. Yet teachers learn quickly that they cannot expect good discussion, especially good whole-class discussion, to take place when they want it to. One approach to the…

This study is aimed at investigating students' annotation behaviors and their effects on learning achievement with pre-reading (reading before class) exercises and Web-based sharing mechanisms. An 8-week quasi-experiment was conducted with 125 sixth-grade elementary school students. The study shows the following results. First, a significant…

Educators are often frustrated when students appear not to have completed reading assignments carefully or attentively and seem unwilling or unable to give a fair and balanced critique of what they have read. This essay suggests that incorporating the practice of reading aloud may help both to point out where students are stumbling and to create…

This study explores two approaches to directly measuring the quality of instruction: teachers' assignments with student work and focused lesson observations. The technical quality and potential feasibility of these approaches for measuring instruction in large numbers of classrooms are compared within two different content areas (reading…

Literacy is a basic element of the discipline of history and of traditional secondary history instruction. However neither the growing body of research on learning with texts nor modern learning theories support the traditional literacy practices that are taking place in many secondary history classrooms. Nor are classroom literacy practices a…

An intact second-grade class of 13 African-American students had completed few chapter-book reading assignments. A consultant worked with their teacher to develop an intervention that consisted of paired readings and two interdependent group contingencies. Following the implementation of the program, all students began reading chapter-books and…

The present study examined the relationship between reading ability (i.e., reading comprehension and reading vocabulary) and academic procrastination among 120 African American graduate students. A canonical correlation analysis revealed statistically significant and practically significant multivariate relationships between these two reading…

Two major pieces of legislation, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (2001) mandate that students with disabilities be placed in the Least Restrictive Environment and have access to the general education curriculum. To provide access to the general education curriculum, inclusion in general…

We describe an MBA course focusing on creativity and innovation in organizations. Drawing on the creativity literature and experiential learning theory, the theoretical foundations of the course are discussed. Core aspects of the course include reading articles from academic journals and business periodicals, engaging a wide variety of…

This is the fourth in a series of articles on using children's literature to foster the principles of the Circle of Courage. In this issue, the author provides selections that foster generosity and altruism. (Author)

This paper reports on the students' experiments of using blogs to encourage themselves to do pre-class reading assignment and reflections after class. The sample in the study included five ESL (English as a Second Language) graduate students in a course of teaching methods, and 90 software engineering students in an undergraduate information…

Standardized tests are increasingly used to determine students' growth in reading comprehension. In some U.S. school districts, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has led to a focus on multiple-choice questions to better prepare students for these types of tests. Even though such questions can provide some important information, they do not…

The term "literature circle" refers to a classroom instructional strategy that connects all aspects of literacy for students with varied interests and levels of reading achievement. Although general education teachers commonly use literature circles, special education teachers have used this strategy much less frequently. Literature circles lend…