Many standards documents and learning progressions recommend evolution learning in elementary grades. Given young children's interest in dinosaurs and other fossils, fossil investigations can provide a rich entry into evolutionary biology for young learners. Educational psychology literature has addressed children's reasoning about foundational…

Picture books engage young learners across the elementary curriculum and can effectively help teach about a variety of social studies topics. Social studies may be a neglected subject in many elementary schools, but purposefully incorporating it through children's literature provides an effective means of advancing both literacy skills and social…

The Reading Apprenticeship is an intervention that has been shown in previous studies to increase struggling readers, tested reading achievement by 8 to 9 months during a 12 week, in-school program. This article reports on the first study of the Reading Apprenticeship method conducted in the summer using parents, rather than supervised volunteers,…

This research study examined the perceptions of 24 parents of rising 5th-grade students with mathematics learning difficulties as part of a 10-week summer mathematics tutoring experience. During the summer tutoring program, parents observed their children participating in mathematics learning experiences during one-to-one tutoring sessions. At the…

The authors present the experiences of Wyatt, a nine-year-old whose mother described him as a struggling writer, in a summer digital writing camp. The authors consider how Wyatt was positioned as a writer at camp and how this may have differed from his experiences at school. They found that for Wyatt, being able to compose with digital tools along…

Literacy and literacy skill development remain critical concerns in the U.S. "Two of every three students in the U.S. do not have the necessary reading proficiencies to successfully complete grade-level work" (Allington, 2011). Camp Read-a-Rama, a summer day camp in South Carolina for 4- to 11-year-olds, creates innovative programming…

Reform-based science education emphasizes the need for engagement in authentic science, that is, work that resembles real-life scientific practices. However, few studies address the notion of authenticity from the participants' perspectives. As such, this study addresses the following: What events do young participants view as scientific? To what…

When studying informal science programs, researchers often overlook the opportunities enabled and constrained in each program and the practices reinforced for participants. In this case study, I examined the normative scientific practices reinforced in one-week-long "Herpetology" (the study of reptiles and amphibians) program for…

Rapid Phonics is a synthetic phonics intervention intended to improve decoding skills and reading fluency. It teaches the relationship of word sounds to their corresponding letter groups in a structured way. In this evaluation, the intervention was delivered across the transition between primary and secondary school to Year 6/7 pupils who had not…

In this study, we explore middle-class parental involvement in summer activities of four elementary students. Many researchers discuss summer programs initiated by institutions, but fail to explain how parents' availability, experiences, and related criteria affect student summer activities. From our interviews, observations, and artifacts, we…

In this article, we examine the discursive construction of knowledge about immigration in two geographic spaces whose "border" many students navigate: a school context meant to support English Language Learners and an out-of-school faith based organization serving immigrant communities. We draw on the concept of "border…

The Wallace Foundation is funding a multiyear demonstration project to determine whether voluntary, district summer learning programs can stem summer learning loss for low-income students. Six districts--Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Duval County (Florida), Pittsburgh, and Rochester, New York--were selected for the demonstration project and…

Educational contexts that support the complexity of in-service teacher learning around the purposeful use of technology are scarce. This qualitative case study describes a Literacy Enrichment Camp offered for traditionally marginalized elementary-aged children. Within camp, 5 teachers and 1 instructor prioritized their own and students'…

The "TextNow" Transition Programme, developed by national charity Unitas, is a reading for pleasure literacy programme with one to one sessions with a volunteer coach occurring 20 minutes a day each weekday. This occurs at two time points: in Year Six, the final year of primary school for five weeks in the second half of the summer term;…

An understanding of children's environmental orientations is of critical importance as opportunities for authentic contact with nature diminish. Current instruments for measuring children's environmental attitudes are complex, and few have been tested across diverse audiences. This study employed a mixed-methods approach that included pilot tests,…