A study investigated the relationship between locus of control and intrinsically motivated reading for children. The entire sixth grade, totalling 53 students, of a parochial school in San Francisco was administered the Children's Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Control Scale. A free-choice paperback reading rack provided the measure for…

Developed through a broad-based national consensus building process, the National History Standards project has involved working toward agreement both on the larger purposes of history in the school curriculum and on the more specific history understandings and thinking processes that all students should have equal opportunity to acquire over 12…

A study determined which approach for vocabulary development, context or definition, would yield the best results on a teacher-made content area vocabulary test. Two random samples (for a total of 45 students) of fourth graders from a central New Jersey elementary school were formed. One sample was taught 50 social studies vocabulary words using…

A study examined the effect of computer-assested instruction on fourth graders' writing skills. Two fourth grade classes from one elementary school in New Jersey participated in the study. One class (the experimental sample) was taught to use the computer as a writing tool, while the other class (the control sample) used only pencil and paper.…

This unit of study introduces high-ability intermediate-grade students to the aspect of grammar which is usually missing from technically oriented studies of grammar, namely, the wonder and pleasure of grammar or grammar appreciation. It presents grammar as a powerful way for one's mind to make ideas out of language, and a way of inspecting one's…

With the Seeing and Thinking Mathematically materials, students learn mathematics by doing mathematics, by using and connecting mathematical ideas, and by actively constructing their own understandings. In this unit students learn to see probability through a mathematical lens by exploring and creating games and simulations and by applying the…

This paper examines the ways in which a small number of school principals in England and Wales are making changes in their management structures and processes to cope with an increasingly turbulent environment. Using evidence on a comparative basis from organizations outside education, this paper looks at the way in which a number of principals…

Reading strategies can be taught at various grade levels using songs as texts. The thought-provoking song "The Greatest Love of All," sung by Whitney Houston, was used with a group of sixth-grade students, using the Reading/Singing strategy. The steps in the reading lesson were: (1) motivate the children so they will eagerly anticipate…

A study compared 55 court-adjudicated physically maltreated children between 8 and 12 years of age with 56 nonmaltreated children of the same ages with respect to their feelings about trust in peers. All maltreated children were residents of group homes and were of primarily lower and middle income economic background, from four ethnic…

This study investigated parents' perceptions of their child's reading abilities. Parents of 92 fourth grade students completed questionnaires to measure the perception parents held of their child's reading ability in relation to the ability of their child based on standardized test scores. Correlations between the Terra Nova Standardized Test and…

This book contains specific, practical strategies that can be used for almost any subject matters to promote active learning. It brings together in one source a comprehensive collection of instructional strategies, with ways to get students to be active from the beginning through activities that build teamwork and get students thinking about the…

This six month study investigated the similarities and differences between 137 fourth graders' understanding of and reasoning about multiplication, division, and proportion tasks. All students were administered a pretest mid-year and a posttest at the end of year. A sample of 18 students was interviewed individually on tasks involving reasoning…

Based on the idea that the study of history should include the perspectives of all the people who lived during a certain time period, this unit offers as many different points of view as possible. Students are introduced to primary source materials and exposed to literature (especially historical fiction), poetry, and drama that reflects the…

This paper describes how two middle-school teachers teamed up to teach a grouping of ten- to eleven-year old students with a focus on innovation. They agreed to emphasize the use of a student-centered curriculum, letting the students select a topic or project that interested them as a group and that would take them out into the community. The…

A study was conducted to determine whether using the schema method for vocabulary instruction would be significantly greater than using the dictionary method for vocabulary instruction. Subjects were 12 sixth grade students who were divided into two sample groups and received different forms of vocabulary instruction for 10 weeks. Each sample was…