This paper demonstrates that an informal field trip can have a lasting impact upon aspects of learning in a primary school context. Specifically, we consider the longer term impact of an informal trip to a rocky shore upon scores achieved in literacy assessments taking place five months after a relevant five months after a fieldwork. Pupils…

Early childhood (EC) educators are expected to cater for all types of families from diverse backgrounds. Research involving EC educators and the spaces they create indicate the dominance of heteronormative practices. This silences programmes, policies, experiences and interactions that could reflect and support children with parents who identify…

This book captures the diversity and richness of writing as it relates to different forms of abilities, skills, competencies, and expertise. Psychologists, educators, researchers, and practitioners in neighboring areas are interested in exploring how writing develops and in what manner this development can be fostered, but they lack a handy,…

This report is a descriptive analysis of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), intended to determine which content is eligible for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium's end-of-year summative assessment for English language arts (ELA) and mathematics in grades 3-8 and high school. The high school standards analyzed were those in grades…

Before science can be completely understood, one of the fundamental skills that must be developed is observation. Improving descriptive writing and investigating students' observational skills in the classroom is the purpose of this study. The study was designed to determine if such skills, practiced through modeling activities, serve as a…

The essential function of critical thinking in education is obvious by many studies done in this field. The main purpose of this article is to find the relationship between critical thinking levels of Iranian EFL learners and their performance on different modes of writing. The sample of the study selected among those who studying English at the…

This article illustrates using carbon emissions data in an introductory statistics assignment. The carbon emissions data has desirable characteristics including: choice of measure; skewness; and outliers. These complexities allow research and public policy debate to be introduced. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)

In his epic poem "A Season in Hell," the surly French poet Arthur Rimbaud proposes that the Devil likes writing that lacks "descriptive" qualities. Rimbaud then makes a stand in favor of descriptive writing by offering "these hideous pages from [his] notes of the damned." The author would not go so far as to say that nondescriptive writing is evil…

Scholars and teachers within the field of composition have long heralded the merits of reflective writing. Whether written intermittently throughout a course or near the end (typically in the genre of portfolio cover letter), reflective writing assignments are thought to promote cognitive development by helping students become more aware of their…

Discourse analysts are concerned with how language both reflects and constructs the social world. As a field of study, there are scores of books, journals, and conferences devoted to the theoretical and methodological issues among the varieties of discourse analysis. Less discussed in the field of discourse studies is how one learns to become a…

The National Writing Project's (NWP) "30 Ideas for Teaching Writing" discusses making grammar lessons dynamic, using casual student conversation as a source for writing, home language as an assisting tool to attain standard English and other topics by presenting strategies contributed by experienced writing project teachers. NWP does not promote a…

This paper analyzes the ethically important moments that helped build, then break, and then negotiate the relationship between researchers and schools during an ethnographic-type study conducted by the team of researchers from a prominent private university. I posit that the researchers' unskilled approach culminated in producing written…

As an amateur photographer, the author seeks surprises amid the mundane. For example, instead of simply photographing a spider's web, she waits until just after it rains and to find the spider's web filled with glistening droplets of water that serve as tiny prisms of light. The mundane suddenly is transformed into something truly amazing. Moments…

This descriptive study examined whether the coverage of African Americans in the feature articles in Sports Illustrated during the 1990s was representative of their participation levels. Nearly half of the articles featured European Americans; about one-third featured African Americans. More African Americans were featured in basketball, boxing,…

In this article, the author describes an art project in which students create their own outdoor environments using a tri-wall frame--a triple-layered cardboard, which is very lightweight and strong. Then the students compose a few sentences describing the scene or place.