Presents a three-step plan for teaching students about polling. Discusses how to introduce the basic concepts: population, sample, and random or probability sampling. Describes a game using marbles to help students understand probabilities. Ends with suggestions for the third step, actual student-generated polls. (DK)

Presents a critical thinking exercise program, modeled on a physical exercise workout, for elementary teachers to use in the classroom. It includes warm-up exercises, a more strenuous workout, and a cool-down period for the brain. (SM)

Examines position, nature, and scope of language awareness work in English language teacher education courses. By means of a sequence of language awareness activities, an attempt is made to identify the essential features of such activities for teachers and trainee teachers to provide an interim framework for materials writing, and illustrating…

Discusses the growing demand for online learning activities; considers the possibilities that the Internet offers for a flexible learning environment; and describes a framework for electronic learning that addresses institutional, pedagogical, technological, interface design, evaluation, management, resource support, and ethical issues. (LRW)

This article explains how to use instructive feedback (presenting extra information during feedback following students' responses to direct instruction) to intentionally and methodically boost students' learning. The process involves identifying information to be supplied, deciding how to present the information, using the method consistently, and…

Graduate students (n=134) used the analytic hierarchy process, which weights expressed preferences, to rate four learning activities: lectures, discussion/reflection, individual projects, and group projects. Their preferences for discussion/reflection and individual projects were independent of auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning styles.…

Discussion of distance education and reflective learning focuses on experiences in United Kingdom's Open University courses that include material about reflection and are designed to emphasize the process of the student's own learning. Links reflective activities with the assessment process, and emphasizes the importance of the role of tutors.…

This article describes how the author has found that very few lesson plans help teach about the presidency or about presidential elections at the primary level and only a few research studies about what elementary students know or teachers teach about the presidency and elections. The author provides directions and a short summary of a series of…

This article presents a series of lessons in which grade 5/6 students use measurement activities to design and construct proportion dolls. This article highlights how measurement can connect learning about percents, decimals, and proportions. (Contains 5 figures.)

This article describes one way of embedding remediation in the context of studying more advanced mathematical concepts. In the process of doing so, ways to foster mathematical argumentation and proof are also introduced.

Science fiction deserves a greater respect, serious and critical reading and a better place in high school literature classes. Some of the science fiction books by Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury and Octavia L. Butler and various activities for incorporating science fiction into the English language arts instruction classroom are…

Seeking to extend curricula in a Psychology of Aging course, an online Internet test that assesses user's implicit attitudes was used as part of a learning activity to enhance students' awareness of age-bias in social perceptions. A pretest-posttest methodology examined the efficacy of this learning activity in three separate investigations.…

Science is creative. Write it big, shout it loud, because the message is not getting through. There is much discussion about creativity in education at the moment, yet how often does one hear the minister for "this" or the expert in "that" discuss creativity and immediately start talking about the arts? If "creativity" in the curriculum is…

One of the major characteristics of mathematics is that one can derive new information from old information with logical certainty. The fancy word for deriving information is inference. The elementary school and secondary school years are the time for the construction of logical operations and the development of tactics and skills which are at…

The author cites research from students' misconceptions of decimal notation that indicates that many students treat decimals as another whole number to the right of the decimal point. This "whole number thinking" leads some students to believe, in the context of comparing decimals, that "longer is larger" (for example, 0.45 is…