Planning effective, engaging lessons and units are challenging tasks for a teacher, but the process can also be meaningful and rewarding. Using a "big understanding"--a guiding statement describing essential content you want students to learn throughout the unit--teachers can successfully plan and create lessons around substantive science content…

This article focuses on learning environments that support students' mathematical understanding and enhance their adaptive motivation. Drawing on the authors' experiences as teachers and teacher educators, they first describe adaptive motivation. They then introduce TARGETTS, a lesson planning and analysis tool, and describe ways in which teachers…

This article concerns the use of an historical event to teach interdisciplinary design and reading strategies to content area preservice teachers at a Connecticut state university. The course, a requirement for state certification, seeks to give secondary content area teachers strategies to help struggling readers. Teachers from all subject areas…

This article reports on an action research project conducted in a public school in Bogotá, Colombia, with tenth grade students. We decided to develop it because of the students' needs as well as the em phasis of the PEI (Proyecto Educativo Institucional = School Institutional Project), which is based on the requisite of improving reading…

In this dissertation, I present my attempts at designing an elementary mathematics methods course to support prospective teachers in developing an understanding of how to teach all students in learning powerful mathematics. To do this, I introduced them to teaching mathematics for equity and social justice by discussing ways to support students'…

For middle and high school teachers of mathematics and science, this book is filled with examples of instructional strategies that address students' readiness levels, interests, and learning preferences. It shows teachers how to formatively assess their students by addressing differentiated learning targets. Included are detailed examples of…

Many instructors in subjects such as economics are frequently concerned with how to teach technical material to undergraduate students with limited mathematical backgrounds. One method that has proven successful for the authors is to connect theoretically sophisticated material with actual data. This enables students to see how the theory relates…

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are being recognized globally for their influential role in realizing the UN Millennium Development Goal of education for all in developing countries. NGOs mostly employ untrained para-educators for grassroots activities. The professional development of these teachers is critical for NGO effectiveness, yet…

This article presents the authors' critique of lessons proposed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21). The authors initiate a discussion about content that they hope will play out in schoolhouses and statehouses across the country. They take on a different task: they present a handful of lesson ideas from P21 that could enhance studies…

In this article, the author lists some websites that will both help teachers teach about the concept of realigning elections and help students learn about the concept and follow the news and primary returns to evaluate it. The list is divided into three groups: (1) one dealing with the election realignment concept; (2) a few sites that will help…

The theme of the 2006 MWERA conference, Teaching and Learning in an Electronic Era, offered an opportunity to reflect on opportunities and challenges created by new technologies. This paper focuses on applied educational research and identifies a set of interrelated research opportunities enabled because of the Internet. While these opportunities…

Teaching children how to use point-of-view in creative writing is described. (DB)

The teacher who seemingly teaches with so little effort and with so much purpose is usually one who has most carefully and methodically planned his lesson beforehand. (Author)

Lesson study is a form of teacher professional development that is intrinsic to the Japanese educational system in first and second level schools and in teacher education. Lesson study has been credited with the success of Japanese pupils in international comparative tests of mathematics achievement (Stigler and Hiebert, 1999). It is gaining…

This article proposes a new role-playing exercise for public law courses: a mock-trial simulation using the European inquisitorial system of trial procedure. By exposing students to an alternative method of conducting a trial, numerous pedagogical benefits can be obtained, including stimulating critical thinking regarding the potential…