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.

District leaders in a large urban school district in central Florida wanted to test the efficacy of a new curriculum designed to enhance the word knowledge of grade 5 students so as to improve reading achievement. The new curriculum, called Word Knowledge Instruction (WKI), consists of 15-minute lessons taught 4 days a week for 20 weeks. The…

The author examines the benefits of journaling in his fifth-grade classroom. Reviewing student journal data from the past 25 years, he shares an effective method for preparing a classroom for daily journaling, one that minimizes teacher-issued prompts and implements procedures for sharing and reflecting. Positive effects include insights into…

A keen personal interest in natural history, involvement in environmental organisations, and experience, first as a secondary biology teacher and later as a field teacher, means that this author has spent many years working outdoors. Any part of the curriculum involving ecological concepts would lead her to open the door and go outside. She…

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…

When teachers are overly focused on the teaching of grammar instead of the teaching of writing, students' quality of work suffers. Teachers should provide examples of writer's craft and author's voice to help students learn how to write their own stories.

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…

This article discusses the use of a reading curriculum designed to incorporate all of the proven practice components of reading as suggested in the United States National Reading Panel report (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). These practices are phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.…

Progress monitoring refers to a system of ongoing data collection on academic skills of interest. Short samples of student performance are collected on a regular basis, and the scores from these short samples of performance are graphed to create a picture of student progress. Teachers can use the graphed student performance as they make…

This Evidence Based Education (EBE) request focused on research-supported vocabulary interventions for middle elementary students. Limited vocabulary is an important factor in underachievement of children in disadvantaged homes. Children with larger vocabularies find reading easier, read more widely, and do better in school (Lubliner & Smetana,…

From her first encounter with stereoscopic 3D technology designed for classroom instruction, Megan Timme, principal at Hamilton Park Pacesetter Magnet School in Dallas, sensed it could be transformative. Last spring, when she began pilot-testing 3D content in her third-, fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms, Timme wasn't disappointed. Students…