The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000) recommends that students at all grade levels be provided with instructional programs that enable them to "create and use representations to organize, record, and communicate mathematical ideas; select, apply, and translate among mathematical representations to solve problems; and use…

There are five important strands in building mathematical proficiency for all students: (1) Conceptual Understanding, (2) Procedural Understanding (3) Strategic Competence, (4) Adaptive Reasoning, and (5) Productive Disposition. (National Research Council, 2001). This article explores effective classroom practices that promote these strands of…

Among the many transitions and passages students face during their school years, the entry into middle school is one of the most difficult. During this period, it is crucial for schools and families to work together in order to establish a constructive framework that can foster positive development. This article discusses the important academic,…

The Poetry Generating Loop is a new kind of generative writing circle that offers concrete, creative ways to get students involved in and excited about poetry. By writing poems in groups, students are able to learn poetic terms and experiment with techniques through their writing--a process that can shed new light on the world of poetry. (Contains…

Teaching and studying the Holocaust is a complex and sensitive undertaking. The dynamics of dealing with a modern, technologically advanced state's attempt to annihilate all members of a given group of people for racial reasons involves tortuous twists and turns that challenge the most sophisticated of thinkers, leading to a situation in which…

Concerned by a report that a number of seven-year-olds in their school were at risk for literacy difficulties, a team of teachers devised a low-budget program to promote reading at school and at home. After researching reading motivation, two of the authors conceived a catch phrase, a mascot, and gimmicks, including all-school activities, to…

This paper explores the complexities of teachers' understanding of their relationship with Aboriginal people. Drawing on her current work with teachers, the author offers a method for initiating a critical pedagogy of remembrance that allows teachers to attend to and learn from the biography of their relationship with Aboriginal people. The author…

This paper is based on a year-long ethnography of a K-1 class. I report on the way gender was a significant implicit feature of interpreting kids' everyday classroom activities, like why boys tended to go to the computer center and girls did not. In addition to explicating the gendered interpretations, the paper also discusses the way teachers…

The aim of this study is to explore student multiple representation skills and creativity in solving mathematical problems when supported by a multimedia whiteboard system. The subjects were 6th grade primary school students that were tested and selected as excellent students in mathematics. Twenty-one numerical and geometry problems were given to…

First-year seminars have increasingly been used as anchor courses in learning communities. This study investigated the impact participation in Freshman Seminar had on the grade earned in a linked learning community course in fall 2004. Grades in the linked course for 1,294 first-year students who were enrolled in 37 different learning communities…

Maryellen G. Paquette reveals the excitement and learning that can occur when high school students are presented with multiple opportunities to play. Activities that employ playful language and the whole body allow students to embody, name, and identify with complicated emotions and situations in Shakespeare's plays. In addition, play can be…

There is a common predicament faced by educational designers, that is, the lack of learning design tools for nontraditional pedagogies of learning. Because of this lack of alternatives, educational designers often use traditional design tools (such as task analysis) in contexts where nontraditional learning activities (such as collaborative…

What invertebrates make the best classroom pets? How should we care for each invertebrate? What type of inquiry activities could invertebrates support? How do elementary students respond to invertebrates? These were the questions investigated in The Critter Project, a three-week project that aimed to help students conquer their "critter jitters"…

Activity participation provides a unique context for adolescents and emerging adults to explore interests, talents, and skills and for identity work to occur. Research has found consistent gender differences in the types of activities in which males and females participate. The current study drew on Eudaimonistic identity theory to examine the…

Active learning enhances engineering education. This paper presents rationale, curriculum supplements, and an approach to active learning that may be seamlessly incorporated into a traditional lecture-based engineering class. A framework of educational theory that structures the active learning experiences and includes consideration of learning…