Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Education Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Education

Water Play, Jane E. Cline, Brandy A. Smith Dec 2016

Water Play, Jane E. Cline, Brandy A. Smith

Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions

The inclusion of activities to develop sensory awareness, spatial thinking, and physical dexterity, operationalized through hands-on science lessons such as water play, have long been part of early childhood education. This practical article addresses Next Generation Science Standards K-2 ETS1-3 and K-2 ETS1-2 by having four-year-old prekindergarten students direct the path of water on a vertical pegboard water table with strategically-placed, attached plastic cups with holes drilled into them that leak streams of water into each other. Students enhanced their retelling of the story of the Billy Goats Gruff by placing student-made watercolor artwork along the path of the water, …


Poetry Is Powerful: High School Students And Pre-Service Teachers Develop Literacy Relationships Through Poetry, Susanne L. Nobles, Amy Price Azano Nov 2016

Poetry Is Powerful: High School Students And Pre-Service Teachers Develop Literacy Relationships Through Poetry, Susanne L. Nobles, Amy Price Azano

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Teaching poetry can serve as a roadblock for many English teachers who lack confidence with the genre. Likewise, high school students struggle reading poetry and creating their own poetic works. In an effort to provide an authentic learning experience for our students, we created a semester-long, collaborative poetry project between our high school and college students. This manuscript provides details about the goals, processes, and takeaways for both groups of participants. The high school students were two classes of freshman-level English students who practiced developing critical literacy skills while reading, reciting, and writing poetry. The college students were pre-service English …


The Common Core And Democratic Education: Examining Potential Costs And Benefits To Public And Private Autonomy, Benjamin J. Bindewald, Rory P. Tannebaum, Patrick Womac Nov 2016

The Common Core And Democratic Education: Examining Potential Costs And Benefits To Public And Private Autonomy, Benjamin J. Bindewald, Rory P. Tannebaum, Patrick Womac

Democracy and Education

This conceptual paper assesses prevalent critiques of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and analyzes content from the CCSS in language arts and literacy to determine whether the standards are likely to support or undermine key democratic aims of education. The authors conclude that critiques of the CCSS have some merit but are generally overstated and misdirected, and the standards give inadequate attention to the development of public autonomy but an ideal amount of attention to development of private autonomy.


Reinventing The High School Government Course: Rigor, Simulations, And Learning From Text, Walter C. Parker, Jane C. Lo May 2016

Reinventing The High School Government Course: Rigor, Simulations, And Learning From Text, Walter C. Parker, Jane C. Lo

Democracy and Education

The high school government course is arguably the main site of formal civic education in the country today. This article presents the curriculum that resulted from a multiyear study aimed at improving the course. The pedagogic model, called Knowledge in Action, centers on a rigorous form of project-based learning where the projects are weeks-long simulations. The first section introduces the course and the study, the second describes the methodology and design principles, the third describes the political simulations that are the spine of the course, and the fourth examines implementation and design issues that emerged across the years. The …


Motivated To Engage: Learning From The Literacy Stories Of Pre-Service Teachers, Deborah Macphee, Sherry Sanden Mar 2016

Motivated To Engage: Learning From The Literacy Stories Of Pre-Service Teachers, Deborah Macphee, Sherry Sanden

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The influence of motivation on readers' behaviors has received wide attention in literacy scholarship. The importance of readers’ motivations for reading becomes critical when considered in relation to readers’ engagement with reading activities and their perceptions of themselves a competent. This article presents a qualitative study of pre-service teachers’ literacy history stories and reflections on their identities as literate individuals. The stories represented pre-service teachers’ perceptions of home and school literacy experiences that either motivated or discouraged them from engaging in literacy activities. Their reflections were an account of how their experiences may have influenced their current self-perceptions and engagement …