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…

One set of ideas at the core of the National Science Education Standards (NSES) Science and Technology Standards is that of engaging middle school students in activities that help them develop their understandings of technological design. More precisely, students should be able to identify appropriate problems for technological design, design a…

The curriculum is packed with so much content that teachers resort to telling students what they know and students simply commit facts to memory. The packed curriculum leaves little time for students to acquire a deep understanding of the subject or to develop life-long skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and communication. However,…

This paper examines the classroom practices of three teachers teaching mathematics at the 5th grade level in three Singapore schools. Using a video-coding scheme, a series of lessons was coded into relevant phases comprising problem solving, teaching concepts/skills, going over assigned work, and student activities. It explores the teachers'…

This article describes an approach for introducing the unit concept in a mathematics content course designed for preservice elementary mathematics teachers. Classroom activities presented in the article emphasize the awareness, flexibility, and importance of the unit concept. Dialogue with selected preservice teachers is included and reveals some…

To promote student success, both in school and beyond, teachers must not only address academic skill development but also help their students become self-determined individuals. The importance of self-determination is implicit in special education legislation. Findings from postschool outcome studies also support the inclusion of…

PROJECTTUTOR is an intelligent tutoring system that enhances conventional classroom instruction by teaching problem solving in project planning. The domain knowledge covered by the expert module is divided into three functions. Structural analysis, identifies the activities that make up the project, time analysis, computes the earliest and latest…

This book presents 20 projects for technology education students. The emphasis is on problem solving and hands-on learning through projects dealing with a wide variety of technologies/industries, including the following: robotics, information storage and retrieval, communications, transportation, electronics, manufacturing, construction, materials…

The New Youth Entrepreneur curriculum is a series of 12, youth-oriented educational modules containing instructional materials, learning activities, and checkup exercises designed to teach students key elements of entrepreneurship. This document is the eighth module, and provides students with strategies for solving common problems involved in…

Individualized instruction significantly improves students' pedagogical and motivational outcomes. The study described here sought to characterize tutorial behaviors that could lead to these benefits and to consider why these behaviors should be pedagogically useful. The experiment studied 16 undergraduate and graduate university students learning…

Since teachers are the most familiar with the students they meet and with their own classroom opportunities, they are in the best position to design instruction for specific groups. This manual is a guide for creating activities for gifted and other students to do independently, without prior large group instruction. The activities enable teachers…

This resource book for algebra contains games, tricks, and quick activities for the classroom. Categories of activities include puzzlers, patterns, manipulatives, measurement, graphing, and a section that contains reproducible statement and value cards. Twenty one puzzle problems, four pattern activities, and 11 quick activities that engage…

This teaching guide contains a collection of energy education activities written and organized so that they might be used either as a unit on energy, or as individual activities to complement existing curricula in grades 4-6. The focus in on conservation and renewables. Most of 23 activities are designed as cooperative learning experiences and are…

This paper explores the relationship between the concept of cognitive apprenticeship and situated cognition and the social construction of knowledge. Cognitive apprenticeship is the enculturation of students into authentic practices through authentic activity and social interaction in a way similar to that which is evident--and evidently…

This booklet is the print component of a Title II-funded package designed to enhance elementary school mathematics instruction through a problem solving approach that promotes mathematics learning in an environment of inquiry, risk taking, and classroom dialogue. The other component is a 28-minute videotape in which teachers present each of the…