In this participatory action research study, we answered the question, How can we improve attitudes toward science education of the African American girls at an elementary school? Girls in grades 3-6 completed the Modified Attitudes toward Science Inventory. A purposeful sample of 30 girls participated in several focus-group interviews throughout…

The purpose of this study was to better understand how students with learning disabilities, including those who struggle specifically with mathematics, engage with fraction computation. In particular, we examined error patterns, the influence of like and unlike denominators on these patterns, and correct solution methods. Although skill-related…

A descriptive, holistic, multiple-case methodology was applied to examine the nature of participation in discourse of two low- and two high-achieving grade 6 students while solving mathematical tasks in a standards-based classroom. Data collected via classroom observations and student interviews were analyzed through a multiple-cycle coding…

Much has been written recently about the role of talk in content-area learning, including science learning. However, there is still much to be learned about how teachers begin to engage students in the kinds of peer-to-peer conversations that help them make sense of their investigations in science and that advance their conceptual understandings.…

This article reports the findings from a comparative analysis that examined several mathematical content strands, reasoning processes, and emphasis on technology in prior K-8 state mathematics standards and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM). Various methodological tools were utilized to compare and contrast CCSSM with prior…

One dimension of language proficiency considered important for reading and writing academic texts is morphological awareness--the understanding of how complex words are formed from meaningful smaller units (i.e., affixes, roots) that contribute to words' meanings and functions. This quasi-experimental study evaluated the effects of instruction on…

This study examines the ability of a theoretical model of the parental involvement process to predict Latino parents' involvement in their children's schooling. A sample of Latino parents (N = 147) of grade 1 through 6 children in a large urban public school district in the southeastern United States responded to surveys assessing model-based…

This longitudinal study investigated children's performance on several informal reading and spelling tasks. Students (n = 274) in a rural North Carolina county were assessed across grades 2 to 6 on the following measures: isolated word recognition (timed and untimed), oral reading accuracy, reading comprehension, reading rate, and spelling.…

Two experimental studies at one urban middle school investigated the effects of the combination of Tier I and Tier II evidence-based reading instruction compared to Tier I alone on struggling sixth-grade readers (N = 109). All participants received free or reduced-price lunch, and 95% were considered English learners at some point in their school…

A random sample of elementary teachers in grades 4-6 from across the United States were surveyed about their writing practices. Their responses raised concerns about the quality of writing instruction in upper-elementary grades. Almost two-thirds of the teachers reported that the teacher education courses they took in college provided them with…

In this article, we describe and report on the results of a study in Texas that tested 2 models of professional development for classroom teachers as a way of improving their practices and increasing the reading achievement of their students. To meet this goal, 44 participating teachers in grades 2-8 learned to teach their students cognitive…

A sample of 141 Canadian children in grades 3 through 6 wrote to dictation 24 short sentences sampling 90 lexical items representing 10 inflectional morphological categories to study their relation to the written spelling of 40 sight words. The children were encouraged in 3, 30-minute teaching sessions to use multiple strategies of retrieval,…

Observations of instructional practices, teacher interviews, and classroom artifacts were collected in 9 sixth-grade classrooms in 2 middle schools to determine teaching practices associated with student engagement (i.e., being on task, doing thoughtful assignments). The teachers used a variety of instructional practices, with some teachers…

This article describes an approach to developing student reading materials that support middle school learners in a project-based, inquiry curriculum for grades 6 through 8. Reading materials are designed to encourage sense making beyond the classroom, as students read and write about science as it takes place in a classroom and as it occurs in…

Using socioconstructivism as a theoretical framework, this study investigated the ways in which classrooms that used peer learning groups influenced students' goals. Specifically, my goal was to examine collaborative learning as a process that may influence individuals' social and achievement goals. After confirming that 2 sixth-grade math…