Little is known about how teachers encourage memory activity and strategy use in children. In order to gain such information, 69 teachers of grades K through 6 were observed in five 30-minute periods. A total of 292 strategy suggestions and 15 instances in which the teacher attempted to suppress spontaneous strategy use were observed. Teachers…

Observations of children's responses to picture books in three first-to-fourth-grade classrooms over a two-year period helped to form a descriptive framework for children's responses to picture books. Field notes, transcripts, and other data revealed that when children talked about picture books, they used the lexicon of the expert. They seemed…

This module (part of a series of 24 modules) is on teachers' use of systematic observation records of social behavior to aid in assessing students' special needs and in evaluating the effects of specific programs. The genesis of these materials is in the 10 "clusters of capabilities," outlined in the paper, "A Common Body of…

A study was conducted to assess the validity and reliability of R. Moss's "Classroom Analysis of Teachers' Theoretical Orientation to Reading" in order to provide an observation system specifically intended for assessing a teacher's reading instruction as a function of theoretical orientation. Five reading experts were chosen to…

The verbal behavior of the teachers of two London Primary School open classrooms was characterized. Four categories of verbal behavior were found and 19 percent of all teacher utterances could be classified as potentially reinforcing to students. (SDH)

A survey of campus laboratory school activity in the last few years reveals a change in roles from one primarily directed at training student teachers to one emphasizing the four functions of research, observation, demonstration, and participation. Present emphasis on field-based preservice and inservice teacher education indicates an increasing…

This report describes variables that differentiate the classrooms of more effective and less effective teachers. Teacher effectiveness is defined as the ability of second- and fifth-grade teachers to teach specially constructed reading and mathematics curriculum units over two weeks. Twenty more effective and twenty less effective teachers were…

Prompting of reading errors is a common pattern of teaching behavior occurring in reading groups. Teachers' tactics in responding to pupil errors during oral reading in public school classrooms were analyzed with the assistance of the technology of the Computer Assisted Teacher Training System (CATTS) to formulate hypotheses about teacher decision…

In this study, elementary school teachers were asked to rate their students on items describing personality traits observable in a classroom setting. The ratings were done in two sessions. Results strongly indicated that teachers were not consistent in rating the personality traits of pupils. (Author)

This research investigates the rules by which three Montessori teachers -- a head teacher and two student teachers -- attribute causes of student and teacher behavior within and outside their classrooms. Availability information is given in SO 504 073. (Author/RM)

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which preschoolers have acquired some of the rules governing politeness when they interrupt conversations. (An interruption was defined as an utterance by a child to two or more people who were already engaged in conversation, and where the topic of the child utterance was unrelated to the…

This study is designed to identify differences in linguistic and communicative performances among preschool-aged autistic children and to learn more about the syndrome of autism by examining patterns of language development, the course of its acquisition, and the context in which it is acquired. Studying the differentiation of skills considered…

This report contains the field plan and implementation procedures which were utilized for the observational/focused ethnographic component of Head Start's Child and Family Mental Health (CFMH) Evaluation Project. The introductory section of the document provides the reader with an overview of the Head Start program, its mental health goals, the…

Kindergarten teachers' directives uttered during the first month of school were compared with those uttered three months later. It was expected that changes associated with different classroom organizational structures, with increasing child sophistication, and with size of group being addressed, would influence the type and clarity of teacher…

Treatment verification methodology was employed in studying the Chicago Child Parent Center (CPC) compensatory education program. Established in disadvantaged areas by the Chicago public schools, CPCs are designed to break the cycle of poverty through educational intervention with children at ages 3 through 8. An element of evaluation studies that…