Before ever entering a formal educational setting, children use writing to make themselves known. Yet by the time students reach the fourth grade, only a small minority of students demonstrate writing skills considered competent by national standards. By this time in their school career, many have begun to internalize that they are poor writers…

This collaborative inquiry between an academic (James Russo) and two school-based practitioners (Jessie McCosh and Travis Hewish) explores student attitudes towards learning mathematics through problem solving in a medium sized primary school in regional Victoria.

Deeper learning is great for exploring a topic in great depth, but it will fail if student motivation isn't taken into account. Researchers Eric Anderman and Adriana Calvit discuss how to align your deeper learning curriculum with motivational strategies for successful lessons.

Since many decisions in politics, economics, and social sciences are based on statistics, statistical literacy is a key component for an active citizen. Statistical skills and statistical reasoning can already be enhanced in primary school. Therefore, not only in Germany, statistics is an element of the primary-school curriculum, which usually…

Dyslexia is a neurologically-based, lifelong condition that affects a person's ability to process language, which in turn can make reading and writing more difficult. Between 10 and 20 percent of all people are dyslexic. Providing appropriate reading instruction and intervention for young children by second grade could reduce the percentage of…

Interactive writing is an instructional practice widely considered effective and most appropriate for emergent writers. This article asserts that it is a valuable method for more fluent writers in grades 2-5. It outlines the basic lesson sequence and proposes four key shifts to adapt interactive writing for older, more fluent writers: 1) The…

The "14 Characteristics of Effective Health Education Curricula" identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Adolescent and School Health promote teaching ideas designed to personalize information and engage students through activities which are both student centered and interactive. Effective health education efforts…

Drawing on more than two decades of experience refining this teaching process, as well as insights from two consecutive research studies of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's education work, this article presents best practice strategies for teaching choreography to elementary students in schools. The article outlines the rationale behind the Prepare,…

State frameworks and national standards are explicit about the mathematics content that students must master at each grade level. Although the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the No Child Left Behind Act mandate that students who are deaf or hard of hearing and communicate in sign language have access to this content, evidence…

Most children talk to their parents about what they learned at school. Parents hear about books read, pictures drawn, stories written and games played. But how often do parents hear of children using ICT to make multimedia stories with a mathematical focus? In this paper the term "multimodality" will be used to describe such activities.…

This practice guide presents five recommendations intended to help educators improve students' understanding of, and problem-solving success with, fractions. Recommendations progress from proposals for how to build rudimentary understanding of fractions in young children; to ideas for helping older children understand the meaning of fractions and…

During what might have in the distant past been called "quiet time" in Arlene Anderson's fourth-grade classroom, many of her students are glued to their netbooks. The intense, enthusiastic focus and the hushed chatter amongst the students are all about high scores and strategy. Students are revising and editing their writing assignments within a…

Fourth grade students at a public elementary school in Houston, Texas, participated in a one-week exercise intended to mimic the process of creating a public good through a democratic process. The exercise involved students in four separate classes designing a class party with different characteristics (theme, music, and food) through a voluntary…

The Question Answer Relationship (QAR) literacy strategy was integrated into science instruction in a fourth grade classroom. Ten students who struggled with reading, including some who were diagnosed with a reading disability, participated in this study. Significant gains were made in reading by the 10 student participants in comprehending…

The goal of this investigation was to explore how a fourth grade teacher could integrate iPads into her literacy instruction to simultaneously teach print-based and digital literacy goals. The teacher used iPads for a three-week period during her literacy instruction and selected apps that provided unique approaches to helping the students meet…