Describes an activity in which students explore how animals hide in nature by using protective coloring and camouflage. Integrates science, math, language arts, art, and physical movement. (SAH)

Discusses a study of oral communication's place in the English language arts curriculum of K-12 schools based on a telephone survey of all 50 states and an examination of curriculum frameworks. Analyzes major conceptual bases and organizational patterns. Finds that over 60% of the frameworks give extensive treatment to oral communication, but…

Offers a peek inside the journals kept by a well-known language-arts educator, which he uses as a repository for his thoughts, drawings, articles of interest, notes from conversations with others on his own work, the work of others, and education in general. Shows how the journal is an "audit trail" of its owner's learning. (SR)

Discusses changes in the field of young adult literature since the 1980s. Examines how the definition of "young adult" has evolved. Offers a brief overview of the history of young adult literature from the 1940s. Considers the rise of awards for merit in young adult publishing, noting three in particular. Concludes this is a golden age of young…

Offers brief descriptions from seven English teachers of how and for what purpose they have used an unusual film in their English classroom. (SR)

Presents the authors' varying perspectives as teacher researchers reflecting on their first-time implementation of a cross-age, primary-grade literacy project. Identifies several themes as important sites of difference among the teacher-researchers. (SR)

According to researchers, ethnographic tools can be used to reflect the details of life in any social arena. Through the experiences of a school teacher and her students, the use of ethnographic tools in the process of conflict management and learning is discussed.

Thomas Kuhn's ideas of paradigm are discussed and their role in the development of science and their application to the issue of disagreements in the field of reading is examined. Disagreements in the field of reading occur and new theories keep on developing, but they should not be abandoned.

Getting students to read is a common problem in many secondary English language arts classrooms. Many teachers continue to assign only classic literature with novels that have been traditionally used in English language arts classrooms because of the belief in timelessness. There is evidence that the use of young adult literature in the secondary…

In "Dialogic Origin," Mikhail Bakhtin -- as teacher-researcher and theorist -- presents readers with a remarkable essay on teaching grammar and style to 7th-year students (roughly equivalent to 10th graders in the U.S. educational system). In doing so, Bakhtin employs some of his most notable concepts (among them dialogism and "hero") as informing…

This analysis of data from the Partnership for Literacy Study investigates the relationship among achievement, effort, and grades. Certainly, grades reward achievement, the mastery of material by students. Research has also suggested that grades are used to reward students for exerting effort to learn material, even if students fall short of…

Physical education is a prime content area for interdisciplinary learning. The movement components of physical education can be used as a medium through which children are provided with opportunities to practice and strengthen language skills. Cone, Werner, Cone, and Woods (1998, p. 4) agree: "interdisciplinary learning is an educational process…

In every content area, standardized tests are strongly focused on reading. Today, not only are reading and writing expected to take place in the English/language arts classroom but also in math, science, and social studies. To prepare students for standardized tests in the middle grades and beyond, the U. S. Department of Education recommends…

This article integrates findings from earlier research (Roessingh & Kover, 2003; Roessingh, Kover, & Watt, 2005) linking distinct patterns of achievement for diverse age-on-arrival (AOA) cohorts of ESL learners on the grade 12 Alberta English language arts (ELA) examination to their vocabulary and reading comprehension scores on a standardized…

Math experts developed Formative Assessment Lessons that teachers can incorporate throughout the year's curriculum. Both tools target the "instructional core." A study by Research for Action (RFA) examining the first year of piloting the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and Math Design Collaborative (MDC) tools (2010-11) found…