Critical Thinking in the Upper Elementary Grades: A Program Evaluation of Write from the Beginning and Beyond: Response to Literature

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact the integration of critical thinking through Write from the Beginning and Beyond: Response to Literature had on planning, instruction, and assessment. Based on the school’s end-of-grade reading tests scores, educators determined students struggled in reading and designed an action plan using a logic model. The teachers at the intermediate school in the piedmont of North Carolina were previously trained to use the program and determined the program was being implemented as intended. The logic model guided this study to meet medium-term goals. The impact of the program was measured qualitatively using teacher observations, teacher focus-group interviews, and through document analysis of lesson plans and the program guide. Quantitative data were collected using teacher surveys. The results from this study led the researcher to conclude Write from the Beginning and Beyond: Response to Literature is a support system to assist with the integration of critical thinking in the English language arts classroom as recommended by the P21 Framework and positively impacted teachers’ planning, instruction, and assessment. Professional development implemented as PLCs positively developed the teachers’ continued understanding of using the program. Establishing one definition of critical thinking provided guidance and unified understanding for the teachers. Critical thinking integrated through the program was observable in teachers’ planning, instruction, and assessment using Scriven and Paul’s critical thinking action words: conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating

Temperature and ac Effects on Charge Transport in Metallic Arrays of Dots

We investigate the effects of finite temperature, dc pulse, and ac drives on the charge transport in metallic arrays using numerical simulations. For finite temperatures there is a finite conduction threshold which decreases linearly with temperature. Additionally we find a quadratic scaling of the current-voltage curves which is independent of temperature for finite thresholds. These results are in excellent agreement with recent experiments on 2D metallic dot arrays. We have also investigated the effects of an ac drive as well as a suddenly applied dc drive. With an ac drive the conduction threshold decreases for fixed frequency and increasing amplitude and saturates for fixed amplitude and increasing frequency. For sudden applied dc drives below threshold we observe a long time power law conduction decay.Comment: 6 pages, 7 postscript figure

Scanning probe block copolymer lithography

Integration of individual nanoparticles into desired spatial arrangements over large areas is a prerequisite for exploiting their unique electrical, optical, and chemical properties. However, positioning single sub-10-nm nanoparticles in a specific location individually on a substrate remains challenging. Herein we have developed a unique approach, termed scanning probe block copolymer lithography, which enables one to control the growth and position of individual nanoparticles in situ. This technique relies on either dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) or polymer pen lithography (PPL) to transfer phase-separating block copolymer inks in the form of 100 or more nanometer features on an underlying substrate. Reduction of the metal ions via plasma results in the high-yield formation of single crystal nanoparticles per block copolymer feature. Because the size of each feature controls the number of metal atoms within it, the DPN or PPL step can be used to control precisely the size of each nanocrystal down to 4.8 ± 0.2 nm