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Reference

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• Classroom Compass--Cooperative Learning
  This issue of Classroom Compass from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory focuses on cooperative learning with an emphasis on science and mathematics. Resources and a reading list are suggested.
• Hard Work and High Expectations: Motivating Students To Learn
  Excerpts from conference proceedings on student motivation and how students view the relationship between ability and effort. Includes recommendations for classroom practice.
• Inquiry
  An overview of an inquiry cycle following the five steps of engagement, exploration,explanation, elaboration,and evaluation.
• Making America Smarter
  Author Lauren Resnick claims that American schools are trapped in a set of beliefs about the nature of ability and aptitude that makes it hard to evoke academic effort from students and educators. She makes a distinction between "being smart" and "getting smart" and offers a set of principles by which schools could organize for effort-based learning.
• Praise and Rewards
  A concise summary of research on use of praise and rewards at the middle school level.
• Principles of Learning for Effort-Based Education
  This paper explores the relationship between student apttitude and effort. The authors argue that human capability is open-ended and that metacognitive strategies are both learnable and teachable. by Lauren B. Resnick and Megan Williams Hall (February, 2000)
• Strategic Learning Techniques
  See Compare/Contrast signal words, compare/contrast matrix, venn diagram, and focused comparing and contrasting techniques, with examples.
• The Art of Questioning
  Wolf, Dennie Palmer. "The Art of Questioning." Academic Connections; p1-7, Winter 1987. The author encourages and illustrates teacher use of a range of questions during instruction, including inference questions, interpretation questions, transfer questions, questions for hypthesis, and reflective questions.
• The Essential Elements of Cooperative Learning in the Classroom
  ERIC Digest ED370881 (1994) Robert J. Stahl Numerous research studies in K-12 classrooms, in very diverse school settings and across a wide range of content areas, have revealed that students completing cooperative learning group tasks tend to have higher academic test scores, higher self-esteem, greater numbers of positive social skills, fewer stereotypes of individuals of other races or ethnic groups, and greater comprehension of the content and skills they are studying.
• The Instructional Conversation: Teaching and Learning in Social Activity
  The Instructional Conversation: Teaching and Learning in Social Activity (1991) Roland G. Tharp Ronald Gallimore A synthesis of research on the role of conversation in teaching and learning. The authors discuss the use of modeling, providing feedback, contingency management, directing, questioning, explaining, and task structuring in classroom activity settings.
• Whose Classroom Is It? Building Student Responsibility and Self Management in Our Classrooms
  Author: Judith A. Gray, Ph.D. The purpose of this work is to introduce teachers to the theory and practice of sound classroom management through democratic principles and practices.
• You Can't Get There from Here: The Need for a New Logic in Education Reform
  Author Jeff Howard challenges the logic of the present system that defines intelligence as a fixed entity and offers a view of interlligence as a capacity that can be acquired by buildiong the operational anmd analytical cababilities of learbners. Howard takes the position that intelligence is the gradual accretion of skills, knowledge, and beliefs about learning which can be taught through a committed, focused, and strategic approach. In short, he says that effective effort can lead to intellectual development.