With a unique focus on grades 4 and 5, this book explains how to design and implement a research-based reading program that helps all students build major literacy skills (word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension). The expert authors present ready-to-use activities, strategies, and lesson plans, along with detailed guidance for…

The expectations for no child to be left behind are leading to increased emphasis on teaching math, science, and social science effectively to students with disabilities. This study utilized information collected from online surveys to examine how current LBS I teachers and individuals graduating from the Illinois State University teacher…

As early as preschool, children who struggle with emergent literacy skills can benefit from effective response to intervention. Don't wait until later grades when they've already fallen behind--improve their literacy skills now with this evidence-based Tier 2 RTI curriculum, ready for any pre-K educator to pick up and use right away. Created by…

An internationalized approach will enable classroom teachers to confidently integrate music within their classroom content and pedagogical approach to teaching within an international framework. There has been no research, however, into an internationalized approach to instruction in the music methods coursework for pre-service elementary…

A teacher's ability to present clear and appropriate movement tasks is strongly related to student learning. The purpose of this study was to describe the ability of preservice teachers to demonstrate task presentation skills following an introductory course in the basics of effective instruction. The task presentations of 15 preservice teachers…

In this paper, we report on work with eight practicing ninth grade social studies teachers to determine how they chose to integrate podcasting to help their students build on their economic literacy, which includes building both economic concepts and skills. The study is rooted in an interpretivist research paradigm, using the Council for Economic…

This article focuses on the ways world language teachers individually and collectively negotiate intercultural encounters and symbolic competence while abroad, at the art museum. In this empirical study, I locate, describe and analyze emerging third places by examining the teachers' discourse, in interaction at the museum. The data consists of a…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the procedures and the analysis of an instrument designed to measure preservice teachers' ability to develop appropriate 5E learning cycle lesson plans. The 5E "inquiry lesson plan" (ILP) rubric is comprised of 12 items with a scoring range of zero to four points per item. Content validity was…

Researchers have identified effective practices that allow schools to "beat the odds" and close the reading achievement gap. Although identifying these practices is important, researchers have paid little attention to the work it takes to implement them. Through interviews with teachers who work at schools identified as beating the odds, this…

Curriculum materials are crucial tools with which teachers engage students in science as inquiry. In order to use curriculum materials effectively, however, teachers must develop a robust capacity for pedagogical design, or the ability to mobilize a variety of personal and curricular resources to promote student learning. The purpose of this study…

This article reports a study of the discourse of shared lesson planning sessions in the early stages of a pre-service TESOL certificate course. The study focuses on "lesson planning conferences" (LPCs), in which a teacher educator and a group of student teachers worked on one student teacher's lesson plan. It describes the discursive practices…

Lesson planning serves as a key means for ensuring the quality of instruction. In an effort to facilitate and improve the literature related to lesson planning, this paper proposes a framework which integrates online lesson planners, databases, case libraries, and Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis to support both pre-service and in-service…

During a two-week summer professional development workshop, teams of intermediate-level school teachers and college methods instructors crafted mathematics learning modules--activities, lesson plans, work sheets, and technology-oriented tasks--with the primary goal of strengthening students' understanding of various geometric concepts. They recast…

Operation Magpie was a citizen science project that involved the community in collecting data about magpies. This article describes one aspect of the project from an education perspective. The study began with a collaboration of teacher educators, environmental scientists and a local radio station. After an initial workshop with 75 teachers, three…

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to determine the pedagogical value of Wiki technology-enhanced instruction for middle grade students. The sample consisted of three Wiki projects representative of work from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade middle school students. The examination of the data collected from the three samples of Wiki…