Among the old-school resources that the digital age is making obsolete, or at least less consequential, count the chalkboard. For decades, the chalkboard was the focal point of all instruction, the big screen on which teachers wrote out and directed lesson after lesson after lesson. Today, while chalkboards still exist, they are losing their…

One of the greatest challenges to a peace education curriculum is preparing young people to deal with conflicts over issues central to identity. These kinds of conflict can threaten beliefs derived from authority and, accordingly, may be characterized by cognitive rigidity. Various factors central to constructive conflict resolution are…

Statistical methodology for handling omitted variables is presented in a multilevel modeling framework. In many nonexperimental studies, the analyst may not have access to all requisite variables, and this omission may lead to biased estimates of model parameters. By exploiting the hierarchical nature of multilevel data, a battery of statistical…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of point-of-view video modeling in teaching selected toy-play skills to two preschoolers with autism. This type of modeling involved the experimenters carrying or holding the video camera at eye level (from the child's perspective) and without recording models (persons]) to show the environment as a child…

Librarians are conducting instruction sessions outside the traditional classroom setting using online tutorials with increasing frequency. Online tutorials seem like an obvious solution to meet the growing need for instruction to users in a time when resources are shrinking. Can librarians effectively teach library skills using an online tutorial?…

Students' strategies for solving long division problems under a realistic mathematics approach (RME) at Dutch primary schools were categorized in two ways: (a) according to the level of how students created multiples of the divisor (chunking) to be subtracted from the dividend; and (b) according to their use, or nonuse, of schematic notation.…

Recent changes in the history syllabi stress the importance of developing an investigative/enquiry method of learning involving the framing of questions, subsequent research, and the presentation of findings. Scotland has made several attempts to assess not only the end result (the paper) but also the process itself and now uses an extended essay…

This article describes the lessons introduced to middle school children in the Washington, D.C., area on the stock market. Students kept eight weeks of records and learned about decimals and place value. (Contains 5 figures.)

The concepts of ratio and proportion are among the most important topics in school mathematics, especially at the middle school level. However, studies have repeatedly shown that most middle school students have difficulties with these concepts (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics 2000). This article includes ideas and examples used by…

In this article, the author describes the teaching methods he used in an environmental history course. He relates that the ecologist's web of life serves as his guiding principle for teaching in his course. From an imagined center of the web, he relates that he and his class move outward to explore two main areas of environmental history in the…

While Blackface minstrel performances today are considered inappropriate and many Americans find the language and images racially offensive, such performances were the "most popular entertainment" in antebellum America. Songs about idyllic plantation life in the South resonated with Americans adjusting to the new industrial cities of the North.…

This article, which originally appeared in the May 1998 issue of "Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School," explores the runway numbering system. The activity described in this paper furnishes an excellent setting for discussing rounding rules and, in particular, what to do if the digit to the right of the place to be rounded is equal to five. A…

This article describes a mathematical communication game that was used by the author to facilitate middle school students' understanding of algebraic expressions. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

This article from the NCTM's 2003 Yearbook Learning and Teaching Measurement discusses various literary works containing measurement topics. (Contains 1 figure and 26 resources.)

This article describes how a group of fifth-grade mathematics students measured irregularly shaped objects using geometric probability theory. After learning how to apply a ratio procedure to find the areas of familiar shapes, students extended the strategy for use with irregularly shaped objects, in this case, leaves. (Contains 2 tables and 8…