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

Preservice Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Reflections in Using Excelets as a Tool for Modeling

With widespread adoption of technology for all into schools across the U.S., teachers need to be prepared to integrate these tools into classroom instruction. For mathematics, modeling problems with technology provides a key opportunity for students to experience the active nature of such tools in making sense of mathematics concepts. In order to gain insight into incorporating these tools into modeling tasks, preservice teachers need exposure to them as along with reflection on their use. This case study of 12 preservice secondary mathematics teachers enrolled in a mathematics methods course focused on a modeling task that was presented in an Excelet. Participants went through the Excelet and then reflected on the experience they had in interacting with it. Data included a video-recording of participants thinking-aloud while working through the Excelet and a survey consisting of 10 Likert-type and 5 open-ended questions where they reflected on their experience. Findings indicate that by reflecting on the experience related to using this tool, preservice teachers gained insight into challenges in integrating technology within content instruction. Participants fell into categories of strong or weak reflective individuals crossed with strong or weak users of technology. Findings of this study provide more evidence that teacher preparation programs still have work to do in preparing mathematics teachers to integrate technological tools into classroom instruction

A Case Study of a STEM Teacher’s Development of TPACK in a Teacher Preparation Program

This case study involved researching pre-service secondary STEM teachers’ development of TPACK by use of modeling & simulation applications. The main research question focused on how do self-reported TPACK measures align with demonstrated TPACK knowledge and skills. The study design was qualitative and included five secondary STEM pre-service teachers who were completing their program of study and teaching lessons in the field with secondary students. This particular brief paper reports on one of the pre-service STEM teachers in this study. Coding and analysis were carried out to search for characteristics of tasks that support development of TPACK in future teachers. Findings from this one case identified somewhat high marks on the TPACK self-scores but weaker identification of features of modeling and simulation (M&S) applications integrated into instructional use. The challenge for teacher education programs is to search for ways to better measure and support TPACK development in future teachers

Evaluation of a Health Education Intervention for Rural Preschool and Kindergarten Children in the Southeastern United States: A Cluster Randomized Trial

This research employed a matched-pairs randomized field experiment design to evaluate a classroom-based health education intervention for pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten children in a rural region of the southeastern United States. Schools were matched on demographic characteristics, then one school from each pair was randomly assigned to the treatment group and one to the delayed treatment group. The intervention included a field trip experience and an integrated curriculum designed to increase knowledge about nutrition, physical activity, and sleep. Staff conducted individual assessments of changes in knowledge with a random sample of children from each classroom (252 children from treatment classrooms; 251 children from delayed treatment classrooms). We used a multilevel linear regression with maximum likelihood estimation to incorporate the effects of clustering at the classroom and school level while examining the effects of the intervention on individual assessment change scores. During the intervention period, an estimated 3,196 children (treatment: 1,348 students in 68 classrooms in 10 schools; delayed treatment: 1,848 students in 86 classrooms in 10 schools) participated in the intervention. Children in the treatment group had significantly larger assessment change scores than children in the delayed treatment group. Findings suggest significant beneficial effects of the intervention on health knowledge

Meal Patterns and Food Choices of Female Rats Fed a Cafeteria-Style Diet Are Altered by Gastric Bypass Surgery

After Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery (RYGB), rats tend to reduce consumption of high-sugar and/or high-fat foods over time. Here, we sought to investigate the behavioral mechanisms underlying these intake outcomes. Adult female rats were provided a cafeteria diet comprised of five palatable foodstuffs varying in sugar and fat content and intake was monitored continuously. Rats were then assigned to either RYGB, or one of two control (CTL) groups: sham surgery or a nonsurgical control group receiving the same prophylactic iron treatments as RYGB rats. Post-sur-gically, all rats consumed a large first meal of the cafeteria diet. After the first meal, RYGB rats reduced intake primarily by decreasing the meal sizes relative to CTL rats, ate meals more slowly, and displayed altered nycthemeral timing of intake yielding more daytime meals and fewer nighttime meals. Collectively, these meal patterns indicate that despite being motivated to consume a cafeteria diet after RYGB, rats rapidly learn to modify eating behaviors to consume foods more slowly across the entire day. RYGB rats also altered food preferences, but more slowly than the changes in meal patterns, and ate proportionally more energy from complex carbohydrates and protein and proportionally less fat. Overall, the pattern of results suggests that after RYGB rats quickly learn to adjust their size, eating rate, and distribution of meals without altering meal number and to shift their macronutrient intake away from fat; these changes appear to be more related to postingestive events than to a fundamental decline in the palatability of food choices

Electronic transport in films of colloidal CdSe nanocrystals

We present results for electronic transport measurements on large three-dimensional arrays of CdSe nanocrystals. In response to a step in the applied voltage, we observe a power-law decay of the current over five orders of magnitude in time. Furthermore, we observe no steady-state dark current for fields up to 10^6 V/cm and times as long as 2x10^4 seconds. Although the power-law form of the decay is quite general, there are quantitative variations with temperature, applied field, sample history, and the material parameters of the array. Despite evidence that the charge injected into the film during the measurement causes the decay of current, we find field-scaling of the current at all times. The observation of extremely long-lived current transients suggests the importance of long-range Coulomb interactions between charges on different nanocrystals.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Constitutive Expressor of Pathogenesis-Related Genes5 affects cell wall biogenesis and trichome development

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Arabidopsis thaliana <it>CONSTITUTIVE EXPRESSOR OF PATHOGENESIS-RELATED GENES5 </it>(<it>CPR5</it>) gene has been previously implicated in disease resistance, cell proliferation, cell death, and sugar sensing, and encodes a putative membrane protein of unknown biochemical function. Trichome development is also affected in <it>cpr5 </it>plants, which have leaf trichomes that are reduced in size and branch number.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the work presented here, the role of <it>CPR5 </it>in trichome development was examined. Trichomes on <it>cpr5 </it>mutants had reduced birefringence, suggesting a difference in cell wall structure between <it>cpr5 </it>and wild-type trichomes. Consistent with this, leaf cell walls of <it>cpr5 </it>plants contained significantly less paracrystalline cellulose and had an altered wall carbohydrate composition. We also found that the effects of <it>cpr5 </it>on trichome size and endoreplication of trichome nuclear DNA were epistatic to the effects of mutations in <it>triptychon </it>(<it>try</it>) or overexpression of <it>GLABRA3</it>, indicating that these trichome developmental regulators are dependant on <it>CPR5 </it>function for their effects on trichome expansion and endoreplication.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results suggest that <it>CPR5 </it>is unlikely to be a specific regulator of pathogen response pathways or senescence, but rather functions either in cell wall biogenesis or in multiple cell signaling or transcription response pathways.</p