Gives an art activity for second-graders where they use two art techniques, tissue gluing and tempera painting, to create brightly colored pictures of landscapes. Expounds that first the students examine a variety of landscapes by different artists, such as Paul Cezanne, and then learn the differences between the foreground and background. (CMK)

Traces growth of the Teaching Community model at Australia's Monash and Swinburne universities; the model uses group meetings to encourage professional development of teaching staff. Elaborates on the model's successes and why it has been powerful in bringing about change in an area known for resistance, and proposes conditions required for this…

Reanalyzes classroom discussion data using a social-enactment theoretical orientation and a substantive framework based on gendered classroom interactions, multiple subjectivities, and power relationships. Analyzes actions and interactions of two highly visible 12th graders in during an academic year in an Advanced Placement English class. Finds…

Describes the development and implementation of a cross-listed undergraduate and graduate-level child psychology course taught over the Internet. Describes course content and instructional goals. Outlines the opportunities and pitfalls of teaching in a virtual classroom. (CMK)

Presents a lesson that centers around the 1847 article "Little Men and Women." Helps students confront myths about the absence of childhood in the past and provides a context about notions related to growing up. Discusses four areas of understanding needed when teaching the history of childhood. (CMK)

Presents a lesson on the origins of adoption, focusing on the work of the Children's Aid Society in New York City (NYCAS) and the Children's Aid Societies (CAS). Asks students to compare modern notions of adoption to the historical attitudes revealed in a document from 1913. Includes document. (CMK)

Provides results from surveys with secondary school teachers conducted in 1982 and 1998 at the same Local Education Authority. Reports on the teachers' attitudes to poetry, specifically the reading, writing, and discussion of poetry. States that the second survey follows considerable change in the teaching of English and poetry. (CMK)

In this essay, the author theorizes and illustrates how engaging students in reflective talk can help them change their minds. The essay specifically addresses how patterns for reflective talk can support both the sustained, nonevaluative exploration of difficult material and the self-scrutiny necessary for acknowledging the implication in…

Classroom music lessons are not usually a forum for addressing philosophical issues, but they can be. Through music and visual media, music teachers can discuss music with middle and high school students in a way that expands how they think about music and their environment. In other words, music teachers can open up space in their music classroom…

Conversation is a basis for critical thinking. It is the thread that ties together cognitive strategies and provides students with the practice that becomes the foundation for reading, writing, and thinking. In recent years, proficient reader research has yielded information about what good readers do as they comprehend text. This article provides…

This article discusses two twentieth-century stock market crashes: the crash of 1929 and the crash of 1987. When this material is presented to students, they see important parallels between the two historical events. But despite remarkable similarities in the severity and many other aspects of the two crashes, the crash of 1929 was followed by the…

Over the past four years, the author has attempted to compare students' participation patterns during electronic threaded discussions and face-to-face classroom discussions. Most recently, he considered the interactions of 40 students in two world history classes at a public high school. These students regularly engaged in classroom discussions…

In the introductory assignment, each randomly assigned group spends about 10 to 15 minutes at each station. The author incorporates as much sensory stimulation in the activity as possible. At the first station, students view a PowerPoint show from a geology class the author participated in at the Grand Canyon. At station two, students look at a…

In this study we investigated the impact of a teacher's interpretive authority on the content and conduct of discussions of poetry in two ninth-grade classes. Three authority conditions were examined: a condition in which the teacher taught a poem he had written, a condition in which the teacher taught a poem he had taught many times previously,…

The examination of race and racism has been largely absent from much of social studies research and theory. Despite the growing racial and ethnic diversity in the nation's schools, many social studies teachers lack a theoretical framework to help students learn about, analyze, and discuss the role that race and racism have played historically in…