The students in a K-1 class at a Washington elementary school built a mock four-seater airplane with some community assistance. They hired a building contractor (promising him red wriggler worms from the class compost bin) to help design the plane, obtained a Boeing certificate for $500 worth of spare parts, and attended an air show as exhibitors.…

The Card Connection: Business for Children project gives East Harlem elementary school children an understanding of economics. This greeting card business teaches math and communication skills, interview techniques, basic economics concepts, and salesmanship. Requirements include a minimal initial investment for materials and supplies, an…

Thanks to a student teacher's efforts, a fourth-grade class in Montgomery County, Maryland, spent half a day touring Bell Atlantic's facilities. Each student's most treasured memory was lunching with a Bell Atlantic employee "buddy" and visiting his or her work station. Children's thank you letters expressed their gratitude for employees' interest…

Project learning, with community and school staff assistance, helped a fifth-grade class transform the school lunchroom and their own behavior. A $2,500 Alcoa grant spearheaded an Italian restaurant project. Children served on five committees: public relations and advertising, management, art and design, planning and budgeting, and research. The…

Some teachers justify group grading for cooperative projects using specious arguments that invoke real-world comparison, employment skills, motivation, teacher workload, and credit for teamwork. This article argues that group grades are blatantly unfair, invalidate report cards, undermine motivation, convey the wrong message, violate individual…

After conducting 10 interviews with outstanding educators for the "Educational Leadership" portrait series, the author realized his subjects had more in common than extraordinary achievement. They shared patterns constituting a leitmotif in their careers--characteristics such as vision, tenacity, recursiveness, time commitment, and dedication to…

According to SCORE, actively engaged students are energized by four goals (success, curiosity, originality, and relationship) that satisfy certain human needs. Educators can motivate students to produce high-quality work by clearly articulating success criteria, providing constructive feedback, modeling skills, and portraying success as an…

The author of "Punished by Rewards" (1993), claims that rewards and punishments serve to manipulate behavior and destroy the potential for real learning. Praise is especially tricky, since intangible rewards can also foster compliance, not motivation. An engaging curriculum and a caring atmosphere encourage kids to exercise their natural…

No one teaching strategy consistently engages all learners. Motivation is inseparable from culture. What elicits frustration, joy, or determination may differ across cultures, because cultures vary in defining novelty, hazard, opportunity, and gratification. A culturally responsive teaching model requires four motivational conditions: establishing…

Using play learning and real-world problem solving, an alternative Arizona program is cultivating confidence and love of learning in bilingual first-graders. Children learn by using their own language (Spanish), learning styles, and thought processes. Besides problem-solving, the "cube train" teaches estimation, number relationships, patterns, and…

The first axiom of actively involving students is to relate activities to their own experiences, thereby engaging them on an emotional level. The Socratic seminar, a form of structured discourse about ideas and moral dilemmas, accomplishes this goal while balancing two traditional educational purposes: cultivation of common values and celebration…

The female perspective is vital to scientific inquiry and science education. Three National Coalition of Girls' Schools symposia demonstrate educators' need to connect math, science, and technology to the real world; choose metaphors carefully; foster collaboration; encourage girls to be experts and technology controllers; and capitalize on girls'…

When disequilibrium is integrated into the high school chemistry curriculum, students are challenged by phenomena that cause them to question previously held beliefs. They then develop possible explanations and design methods to test their hypotheses. Discovery learning encourages in-depth concept development, independent problem solving, and…

Rawsonville Elementary, an economically disadvantaged neighborhood school near Detroit, used achievement-goal theory to create a learner-centered school that measures success not by relative ability but by individual accomplishment. Peer tutoring, cooperative learning, and interage cooperation characterize the school's learning-focused classrooms.…

Before designing an interdisciplinary portfolio project, educators at a Colorado middle school surveyed seventh- and eighth-grade students about their most memorable work. Students' most memorable work in school included hands-on science, independent research projects, speech making, research on foreign cultures, field trips, and art projects.…