How important is it that every student in a school is excited about learning? Should a student be allowed to use all his/her strengths in learning? Do you know someone who wasn't a particularly good student but has been very successful in life? What these seemingly unrelated questions have in common is an appreciation for the range of talents that…

A curricular anchor is a complex problem that students acknowledge as worth solving and that validates learning a set of relevant skills and concepts. To motivate students, anchors must capture the imagination, be perceived as important by learners, legitimize the disciplinary content they integrate, and accommodate a variety of learning…

Instead of diagnosing students' individual learning styles, a Seattle eighth grade teacher tries to help students become more aware of their own styles and develop strategies for dealing with the diverse demands of school and life in general. Students learn about style through informal debriefing of class activities and through formal instruction…

As one high school teacher found, allowing students to use preferred learning modalities can increase their enthusiasm, raise their achievement levels, and foster growth in other intelligences. This article shows how two students demonstrated their mastery of nuclear and organic chemistry by using kinesthetic and spatial problem-solving…

The Applications in Biology/Chemistry (ABC) curriculum is a real-world approach designed for the middle 50% of secondary students who may not learn in a predominantly abstract way. Stressing contextual and cooperative learning, ABC features 10 laboratory exercises and other hands-on, problem-solving activities involving visits to job sites and…

Research has revealed distinct differences in the problem-solving approaches of high- and low-aptitude students. As a consequence, content area teachers can focus on thinking skills by having students describe their mental processes and giving them feedback on erroneous or incomplete reasoning. (TE)