Elementary students survey buildings in an extracurricular community service project to learn social studies and historic preservation. From these experiences students formed values and dispositions by engaging in a constructivist process of creating knowledge by examining their community. They gathered data, transformed it into information, and…

Students love learning about animals: how animals behave, what animals eat, why some animals are more dangerous than others are, and why animals look the way they do. In this 5E lesson, students investigate why some animals look the way they do--specifically, the advantages of camouflage and mimicry. What are an animal's advantages of being…

Nothing satisfies a teacher more than seeing a smile of delight on students' faces when they turn over their test paper to reveal a successful score. In today's world of standardized testing, some elementary science teachers may struggle to help students move from active engagement in hands-on science experiences to high levels of…

Stacy McKenzie is challenged to find new ways to involve students in their learning. She begins this journey by developing a lesson planning framework based on constructivist principles for learning. The perspectives Stacy applies in her program are shared in this article: First, by examining how she crafts a lesson framework that provides…

Introducing a mystery object is an easy strategy to implement and allows teachers to pre-assess students' knowledge about local natural resources. Misconceptions can be noted as teachers record initial inquiries and wonderings on charts. Using the constructivist approach, students can explore and construct their learning as they continue to use…

As a classroom teacher of art, the author questions the definitive ends that often accompany progressive enterprises in education. He questions the pressure he has experienced to reduce curricular possibilities and learning outcomes to the space of a single document. He argues that planning a learning outcome is "not" an architectural…

This article presents playful activities for fostering students' conceptual understanding of angle--a root concept in mathematics--that revolve around the Mathematical Merry-Go-Round game. The authors focus on activities for two reasons. On one hand, NCTM's Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000) stresses the central role of student…

Within an elaborated social-constructivist perspective, I conducted a teaching experiment with two fourth graders to study how a teacher and students can jointly produce the content-specific reversible fraction conception. Ongoing and retrospective analysis of the data revealed the non-trivial process by which students can abstract multiplicative…

In the spring of 2000, five Springfield, Missouri, elementary schools piloted the first semester of a WorldCom/Campus Compact Grant called "Students as Citizens: Linking Families, Schools, Communities and Universities to Enhance Learning through Technology." The grant title was later changed to "Discovering Springfield's First…