NCCRESt

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Intermediate Grades

• "I Wish I Could Have Been There Dancing with You": Linking Diverse Communities through Social Studies and Literature
  Profiles the Indiana Exchange Project, an endeavor that uses technology to link fourth-grade teachers and students from three geographically and ethnically diverse communities. The students exchange letters, photographs, response journals, local newspapers, and videotapes of classroom and community activities.
• Anchored in Our Literature: Students Responding to African American Literature
  Tells the story of three African American children's responses to literature by and about African Americans, showing the importance of connecting literature to the lives and interests of children. (SR).
• Are the Culturally Diverse Needs of Children Being Met in Special Education?
  A mail survey was conducted of 149 students (grades 4-8) with special needs in 19 school systems in inner city, suburban, and rural settings to determine their knowledge of cultural diversity and to identify their educational needs in this area.
• Developing Writing Skills To Raise Achievement in Science and English at KS2
  Studied the development of writing skills as a way to raise academic achievement for four year-6 ethnic minority students in an English classroom. Identifies strategies that increased achievement and confidence of students and parent participation in their schooling.
• Having Arrived: Dimensions of Educational Success in a Transitional Newcomer School
  Examines a program for newly arrived, non-English-speaking immigrant children in a California city. Findings from a fourth-grade class demonstrate how a nurturing setting, culturally flexible teaching approach, linguistic and cultural validation, and a valued spatial environment contribute to newcomer students' success.
• How Big is Africa?
  Presents three activities adapted from the "How Big Is Africa?" Curriculum Guide developed by the African Studies Center of Boston University. Includes activities designed to make students aware of the diversity extant in Africa and the vastness of the continent.
• It's about People: A Successful School/University Partnership
  Utah State University and a rural elementary school attended by Navajos cooperated on a science education program for grades 4-6. The program used take-home science kits; field trips; parental input; and Navajo staff, language, and culture to make the program culturally relevant.
• Looking Over the Edge: Preparing Teachers for Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Middle Schools
  The principles and practices of multicultural education became the heart of one middle school teacher education program. The five principles included fostering inter/intragroup harmony through learning communities, targeting social justice and affirmation of diversity, empowering students and teachers, seeing things from multiple perspectives, and preparing teachers explicitly for cultural and linguistic diversity.
• Minneapolis and Brittany: Children Bridge Geographical and Social Differences through Technology
  Presents examples of how computer-mediated communication (CMC) affects language learning, describing a successful CMC project involving a Minnesota middle school and a school in France. Students exchanged electronic mail over two years and eventually produced a student-written, bilingual, multicultural play.
• Multiple Cultures, Multiple Literacies
  Describes the author's work in his fifth-grade class as he helps his students understand the importance that culture plays in their representations of meaning. Shows how opportunities to transcend language by using other sign systems allow multiculturalism to flourish.
• Talking about Racism in the Primary School
  Examines what effects teaching explicitly about racism for one term to a multiethnic, elementary school class has on the students' attitudes, beliefs, and actions regarding racism. Responses from 23 six graders reveal a need for primary schools to provide more effective and explicit education against racism.
• The Dynamic Nature of Response: Children Reading and Responding to "Maniac Magee" and "The Friendship."
  Analyzes the conversations and writings of 2 ethnically diverse populations of fifth-grade children (ages 10 and 11) in response to the powerful and difficult themes contained in two award-winning children's books. Discusses the child's voice; the teacher's role as cultural mediator; responses at the literal level; reading between the lines; responding to moral dilemmas; and personal responses to the books.
• The Inclusion of Multicultural Material in Middle School Science Teachers' Resource Manuals
  Examines and categorizes multicultural teaching information found in middle school science teacher resource manuals to determine how multicultural information relates to guidelines for teaching in multicultural classrooms. A content analysis of 21 teacher editions provided the data.
• Tumacacori National Historical Park: Making History Come Alive. "Encounters" Fourth Grade Teachers' Guide.
  This 9-unit curriculum guide for 4th grade includes activities relating to the cultural and environmental history of southern Arizona, specifically the area known as the Pimeria Alta. The guide was designed by a group of teachers to be thematic and sequential, and to deal with the encounters of various cultures that are the history of the Santa Cruz Valley.