This guide to the best books for children published in Australia in 2001 represents the choice of the judges of the Children's Book Council of Australia. The guide presents a shortlist of books in all award categories except that of Older Readers. It provides discussion points for exploring each book, enabling teachers and learners to focus on…

How can schoolyard bullies be stopped? How can sensitive children become more resilient? How can teachers and parents help youngsters deal with teasing and taunting? This guide--for teachers and parents of children in grades K-12--helps to answers these questions and others like them. It uses the "frames-and-scripts" approach, a method based on…

Many mothers and fathers are parenting differently since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This booklet describes how parents are discovering new ways to strengthen and build upon their relationships with their children and provides advice to parents on how to help their children grow closer to them, to become caring and sharing people,…

This paper describes an elective course at Taiwan's Wen Tzao Ursuline College of Modern Languages, "Concise English Poetry Appreciation and Recitation." The course is based on the reader response approach and targets third year students, leading them into the world of poetry through various stages (traditional nursery rhymes and simple,…

This study compared 96 high efficacy and 93 low efficacy elementary teachers regarding a variety of cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors associated with classroom management and discipline of at-risk students. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected in relation to: teachers causal attributions for student misbehavior, expectancy…

This book sheds prescriptive teaching for listening to children. It is the work of an experienced, practicing teacher with a sound interpretation of first-grade children, giving insight and examples of children and a teacher learning together. This second edition incorporates stories from the author/educator and learning from her new experiences…

This volume of an annual collection presents nine essays relating to instruction in the basic communication course. The essays are: "Three Metaphors for the Competencies Acquired in the Public Speaking Class" (Michael Osborn); "Perceptions of Basic Communication Texts: Factors in Student Learning and Textbook Adoption…

To add to previous research on gender differences in mathematics ability and achievement, this study was designed to investigate gender differences in problem-solving strategies for two extended constructed-response mathematics questions in grade 3. It is a followup to a study of gender differences on constructed-response and multiple-choice items…

This observational study investigated children's temperaments and their relation to behavior and emotion across different contexts. Temperament, or individual behavioral style, was conceptualized as the manifestation of affect displays and social behaviors in context, with emotions acting as signals for interactions. Ratings of child temperament…

This teacher's guide for public television's 3-part adaptation of Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" provides information that will help enrich students' viewing of the series, whether or not they read the novel. The guide includes a wide range of discussion and activity ideas; there is also a series Web site and a list of Web resources.…

Over the past decade, developers of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have changed substantially the mix of item types on the NAEP assessments by decreasing the numbers of multiple-choice questions and increasing the numbers of questions requiring short- or extended-constructed responses. These changes have been motivated…

The article discusses the development of an "alternative school" in an urban school system for students having trouble in the regular secondary setting. The program was based upon "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" and is described in detail. The initial assessment of the program produced very positive results.

This study explored possible configurations of the new SAT® critical reading section without analogy items. The item pool contained items from SAT verbal (SAT-V) sections of 14 previously administered SAT tests, calibrated using the three-parameter logistic IRT model. Multiple versions of several prototypes that do not contain analogy items were…

Developed a motivational distortion scale for the High School Personality Questionnaire. Data from high school students (N=607) showed males and females differed in how they distorted their responses, resulting in the need for two motivational distortion scales. They also differed in characteristics considered to create a favorable impression.…

Drawing from ethnographic study of two kindergartens in a magnet school, suggests that teachers have different perceptions and expectations of Black and White children who misbehave. Holds that the referral of "problem" Black children to counseling and special classes often occurs as a response to administrative and community tensions over…