Seventh-grade Classes Research Articles

The Role and Value of Graphic Representation of Knowledge Structures in ESL Student Learning: An Ethnographic Study

This article reports an ethnographic study of two multicultural seventh grade classes. It was designed to explore the role and value of graphic representation of knowledge structures in ESL student learning, based on a specific definition and categorization of knowledge structures (Mohan 1986). Findings revealed that students were exposed to, and interacted with, a quantity of graphics in curriculum and instruction. However, whether, and how, students used graphics to facilitate learning depended to a large extent on the guidance they received. Without teacher guidance, students could not successfully extract information from graphics, or use graphics to represent knowledge, or recognize graphics as an alternative way of communicating knowledge. They perceived the function of graphics to be decorative, and their general attitude towards graphics was negative. With explicit teacher guidance, however, students were more likely to take advantage of graphic representation of knowledge structures to facilitate learning.

Using Data Tables to Represent and Solve Multiplicative Story Problems

This study tested the effectiveness of an experimental instructional strategy for writing arithmetic sentences for simple multiplication and division story problems involving nonintegral factors. The experimental strategy consisted of building an intermediate problem representation to display the problem quantities in the form of a data table and using multiplicative reasoning. This strategy was compared with a traditional strategy of solving an analogous problem with simpler numbers. Five intact seventh-grade classes participated in the study. Significant effects in favor of the experimental group were found on an intermediate test and a posttest.

Sharing Teaching Ideas: The Gymnasium—A Dynamic Classroom For Teaching Slope

During our after-school gymnastics program, a student-gymnast commented that the inclined mat that we use for spotting had a slope. Having discussed slope in prealgebra class that morning, I asked the gymnasts to estimate the slope using a folding mat (fig. 1). We had discussed many times that estimates must be made from the materials at hand. I saw the moment and seized it for a great lesson. The following day I brought the students from my seventh-grade prealgebra class to the gymnasium for alesson whose objective was to help the students estimate and calculate slope. I assigned students to find slopes for the beams, the bars, and the braces on the gymnastics equipment (fig. 2). The students gathered the materials needed to measure and calculate the results: tape measures, calculators, pencils, and papers.

The impact of AIDS education on junior and senior high school students: A pilot study

Prevention, through school-based education campaigns, has been suggested as a response to the AIDS crisis although the impact of such education is unproven. The seventh and tenth grade classes ( n = 313) in one Rhode Island school district were surveyed regarding AIDS knowledge, attitudes, and coping skills before and after a two-session educational program. Following instruction, students reported more knowledge, greater tolerance of AIDS patients, and more hesitancy toward high-risk behaviors, but the changes were modest. Using residual change scores to control for baseline levels, two subgroups (seventh grade boys and tenth grade girls) changed the most in tolerance, and the correlations between variables were the strongest. In the general sample, change in knowledge was independent of change in tolerance, attitudes regarding high-risk behaviors, or coping strategies. These data lend support to the potential usefulness of school-based education programs, especially if behavior and coping skills are emphasized in the education. Evaluation of such programs should include assessment of change in subgroups to determine components of programs that can be tailored for more effective education.

To Change Answers or Not to Change Answers: That is the Question

Are there any questions? asked Ms. Tobias after giving her seventh grade class the directions for taking a science test. Tom asked, you change your mind after answering a multiple-choice question, is it better to change your answer or to let your first one stand? It's usually wiser to go with your first reaction to an objective question than to change your Amy Tobias responded. But there are exceptions, she added thoughtfully. For example, if you found that you had misread an item, then it would be better for you to change your answer. Or if you remembered a key fact you had previously overlooked, it would be sensible for you to use this fact to reconsider the question. But, in general, first impressions are best. During the test, Amy pondered the answer she had given. She realized that she had no hard data on which to base her advice. She was disturbed to realize that her answer had been based on unsubstantiated folklore. And I teach science! she chastised herself. At lunch, Amy shared her concern with several colleagues. Opinions differed. Of the eight other teachers present, three thought that her response should have more strongly discouraged answer changing, four thought that her response had been about right, and one thought that her response should have more strongly encouraged answer changing. The conversation started John McAlpine thinking. I have to come up with a topic for a master's thesis. Wonder if this topic might work? I could hand out indelible pencils to my students for marking their answer sheets, he thought. I'd explain that if they wanted to change an answer, they should cross out the old answer and mark the new one. Then I'd score each answer sheet twice-once for original answers and once for final answers. I'd then compute the average of each set of scores. If the original answers yielded a significantly higher mean score, our majority opinion that students should let their first answers stand would be confirmed. If the final answers produced a significantly higher mean score, then students would be better advised to change their answers when they feel inclined. On Saturday morning, John was off to the university library to see if there was research literature on the topic. There was.

Imagination, Intuition, and Computing in School Algebra

Two incidents involving novice teachers with junior high and senior high school classes form a background for this article. In the first, a seventh-grade class was involved in a variety of problem-solving activities. They had just engaged in a very active exchange of questions involving complex pricing of pizza orders. Then the lesson turned to representing problems and situations with equations.

Teaching Preadolescents during a Nine-Week Sequence: The Negotiator Approach

This participant observation study reveals how one junior high art teacher instructs and struggles to understand her students within a nine-week program. This study focuses on her framework for understanding the aim and content of teaching, student learning, and her teaching style. The study is limited to one seventh grade class. Content and comparative analyses and time sampling are used to determine types of instruction and their frequency. Art instruction consisted of a few manipulative, in-depth, three-dimensional experiences coupled with art appreciation in small doses; however, managerial instruction dominated the class. The importance of the teacher as negotiator is revealed including the practice of negotiation that is extended into the community. The need for cooperative planning with students is suggested. Such an extreme case is used as a comparison with other situations in generating theory.

Task Demands and Accountability in Middle-Grade Science Classes

The types of thinking students engage in and the quality of learning that occurs are largely influenced by the nature of the tasks students complete. This study assessed the level of cognitive demand inherent in and the manner in which students were held accountable for 31 laboratory activities, 45 worksheets, and 31 exams in 11 seventh-grade life science classes during 2 instructional units. In general, tasks presented minimal cognitive demands. All laboratories required students to follow simple, step-by-step procedures and record descriptive data. Most worksheets and exam items required students to reproduce material exactly as it had been presented in the textbook or other instructional resources. The article speculates on the effects of such task experience on students' perceptions and learning of science and concludes with a number of suggestions about how school personnel might analyze and modify curriculum tasks.

A Cooperative Small-Group Methodology in the Language Classroom

The study reported in this article assessed the effects of two small-group cooperative techniques (Discussion Group; Student Teams and Achievement Divisions) and the whole-class method on academic achievement in EFL for 665 pupils in 33 seventhgrade classes. The students were taught by 18 teachers (assigned at random to one of the three methods), who participated in training workshops followed up by in-class coaching. Evaluation of pupils' achievement was conducted by observation and by special achievement tests administered before and after the experiment. Particularly noteworthy are the findings revealing that both group methods registered significantly greater improvement than the whole-class method on the total score of the test and on the listening comprehension scale. These findings support the link between the communicative approach to foreign language instruction and cooperative learning in small groups. The study demonstrates how to forge a link between the content and the process of instruction.

Calculators and Instruction in Problem Solving in Grade 7

For an entire school year 24 seventh-grade classes were taught problem-solving strategies by teachers with special training. In 14 of the classes the instruction was supplemented by calculators. Each problem-solving group performed significantly (p<.05) better than a control group of 18 classes on two of five problem-solving tests. The calculator group scored significantly higher than the control group on attitude toward problem solving and as well as the other two groups on paper-and-pencil computation. Responses to a teacher questionnaire indicated a high degree of satisfaction with the program.

Presentation of Project: Informatics in a computerised Learning Environment (PILE): From the perspective of “The computer in the home, its challenge to education”

The article describes the design and the first year of a research and development project concerning the use of computers in education. The aim of the project is to study aspects of the teaching-learning situation when computers are at hand whenever one wishes. Knowledge development will be the theme of research. Relatively abundant access to computers is provided to two seventh grade classes, the software comprising general application programs, certain programming languages, Prolog and Logo, and various ‘tools’ programs. The project is stipulated to last at least during the eighth and ninth grades. Some informal observations from the first year are reported. The conception of research into the use of computers is discussed.

Comprehension of complex sentences in children at three levels of cognitive development

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between level of cognitive development and the comprehension of complex sentences in children. Twenty males and 20 females at the preoperational and concrete operational levels of cognitive development who were attending regular first-, fourth-, and seventh-grade classes served as subjects. Four examples each of parallel and nonparallel function forms of center-embedded and right-branching sentences served as stimuli within an object-manipulation task. The sentences were also described in terms of those containing a reversed word order clause, a clause with a role change (nonparallel function), neither, or both. Preoperational children could interpret sentences containing neither reversed word order nor role change as well as concrete operational children. Concrete operational children providing identity and reversibility arguments during conservation tasks had a significantly higher accuracy rate on sentences containing either role change or reversed word order than preoperational children. Concrete operational children providing reversibility, identity, and compensation arguments had a significantly higher accuracy rate on sentences containing role change and both role change and reversed word order than any other group of children. Preoperational children were noted to rely heavily on the use of word-order strategy to decode the sentences. Reliance on this strategy decreased as cognitive level advanced.

Efficacy of Popular Music in Learning Music Concepts in Seventh Grade General Music Classes

In each of 12 class periods during a 20-day exploratory experiment in seventh-grade general music classes, examples of popular music were played in an experimental group ( n = 30) while additional serious music examples were played in the control group ( n = 28). The examples were carefully selected to illustrate particular musical concepts. The experimental group scored significantly higher on the Perceptive Listening Skills Test with IQ a significant covariate. Age and sex main effects were not significant but an interaction of age by sex showed that younger males and older females scored higher than older males and younger females.

An experimental evaluation of a drug education course.

This paper describes the third and final evaluation of drug education conducted by the Napa Project. In the present course students were taught decision-making skills, personal goal setting, a motivational model, peer and media influences on behavior, assertiveness training, and information on the consequences of, and alternatives to, alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. The evaluation employed an experimental design in which seventh grade classes in two schools were matched and then randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions. Pre-, post-, and follow-up tests covered drug knowledge; drug attitudes; perceived benefits and costs of substance use; perceived peer attitudes toward, and use of, substances; and intentions to use, current use and lifetime use of various substances. The posttest and follow-up data were analyzed using hierarchical analyses of covariance controlling for corresponding pretest scores. The course was found to have had no significant effect on girls and only a few effects at follow-up for boys.

The Sum of 1 + 2 + … + 99 + 100

What is the sum of the first one hundred counting number? This is the problem that I assigned to my gifted seventh-grade class. This is the problem that was solved by the great mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss when he was eleven years old. lt did not take Gau much time to find the pattern and to present the answer to his teacher.

Changes in Student Participation in Different Instructional Settings

The Junior High School Transition Study investigated student participation in regard to the ways in which students participated in elementary versus junior high school classrooms. Student participation data were taken from individual case descriptions of 24 target students. Student participation was described using six participation patterns identified in previous research. These were: (1) success/multitask, (2) social, (3) dependent, (4) phantom, (5) isolate, and (6) alienate. Findings indicated that a majority of the target students exhibited participation characteristics in grade seven that were similar to those they exhibited in grade six. The students who seemed to show the greatest variation in their participation characteristics in grade seven were those who were rated in grade six as dependent participants. Students who were rated as social participants in grade six continued to show these same patterns of participation in grade seven. However, in grade seven, these students also seemed to be able to complete their work successfully while interacting frequently with other students. As a result, the seventh-grade teachers often described these students as both social and success/multitask participants. The students who seemed to show the least tendency to modify their pattern of participation in grade seven were those who were rated as alienate participants in grade six. Both sixth-and seventh-grade teachers rated very few students as isolate participants. A feature of the seventh-grade classes that seemed to influence students' participation characteristics was whether the teacher established a flexible or rigid rule system. To be successful in these classes with a rigid rule system, students often had to be a phantom participant first and then show other characteristics.

A Truly Independent Study

I didn't realize on the first day of school that Peter was going to be a problem. In fact, I barely noticed him since he was sitting in one of the extra chairs lining the back wall. The new collegetrack literature course had brought twenty-seven kids to a classroom designed for twenty, and it was difficult to keep tabs on everyone. Peter hadn't been a problem in my seventh grade class three years before. He had been fairly quiet, clowning around now and then but doing his work without much fuss. I recall he tossed off

Sex Similarities in Behavior in a Seventh Grade Classroom

Seventy hours were spent observing four sections of a seventh grade class over a period of 13 weeks. The general classroom behavior is decribed, focusing on differences and similarities between males and females. Generally, no set of rules could be found which clearly differentiated males and females. The major difference was that males performed a greater percentage of the total classroom behavior (68%) than females did (32%). When this factor was controlled for the gross activities recorded for females and males results were strikingly similar. There was an indication, however, that subtle differences did sometimes occur between the behavior patterns of males and those of females. This was particularly apparent in the "politeness" of their interactions and in their use of space. In these areas rules existed which were followed more often by one sex than the other, but these rules could be broken, within limits, without causing much disturbance. These findings have major implications for teachers who, based on the subtleness and flexibility of the rules for behaving found in the present research, may be more influential in developing sex-rules among adolescents than generally thought.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Measures: Sources of Self-Esteem in the Classroom

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity of teacher and student ratings of classroom sources of self-esteem in terms of a formulation offered by William James (1893). Fifteen seventh and eighth grade classes were randomly selected from five junior high schools to complete one of three forms of a student questionnaire while the teachers in each class completed independent ratings. The internal-consistency estimates of student ratings ranged from .72 to .87; non-zero convergent validity values (correlations between independent measures of the same trait) ranged from .20 to .31. These non-zero convergent validity values were higher than correlations between independent measures of different traits (heteromethod values) which may provide some evidence of discriminant validity. Elevations of correlations between repeated measures of different traits (monomethod values) were indicative of shared method variance in both teacher and student ratings. Although non-zero convergent validity values in this study were not large, they compared favorably with those in other studies of self-esteem variables based on independent ratings of the same trait (Wylie, 1974) and similar ratings of different traits (Campbell and Fiske, 1959).

Evenness and Oddness Extended

A challenge for the mathematics class often becomes a ch allenge for the teacher. This happened with one of my bright seventh-grade classes.