This research study investigated the effectiveness of the application of child-centered play therapy procedures and skills by trained fifth grade students in play sessions with kindergarten children who had adjustment difficulties. Specifically, this research determined if play sessions with trained fifth grade students facilitated change in kindergarten children's self concept, internalizing behavior, and externalizing behavior and their parents' stress level.

The nutritional status of children is declining as evidenced by the steady rise in childhood obesity rates over the last three decades. Consuming five servings of fruit and vegetables (FV) daily has shown to help with weight maintenance, but children are consuming far less than the recommended servings. This study was designed to test the efficacy of a sensory-focused multi-component school-based program at increasing vegetable intake among fifth-graders. Classroom, family, and community components allowed children to explore thirteen target vegetables with their senses including taste. Vegetable consumption was measured by digitalized observations of lunchtime vegetable selection and consumption. Vegetable acceptance was evaluated using a selfadministered survey assessing attitude and behaviors related to vegetable consumption. Measures were assessed at multiple time points and compared between the intervention school and a comparison school matched for demographic similarities. Parental consent was obtained for 136 fifth-graders to participate in the multicomponent study and 114 were included in the plate waste study. Data were collected over six days of plate waste observations including two phases: the control phase (CP) and the target vegetable phase (TVP) where target vegetables were served in addition to the regular lunch vegetables. Differences in mean vegetables taken and consumed during each phase of the plate waste study were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and paired sample t-tests. When fried potatoes were included as a vegetable in the analysis, the comparison school took (P < 0.001) and consumed (P < 0.001) significantly more vegetables than the intervention school. There were no significant differences in vegetables taken (P < 0.258) and consumed (P < 0.217) when fried potatoes were excluded. Self-administered surveys were analyzed using the Fisher’s exact test and ANOVA. Significantly more children at the intervention school compared to the comparison school reported ever eating bell peppers, butternut squash, and cucumbers. The findings of this study do not show significant differences in vegetable consumption when the intervention school is compared to the comparison school, but do show a small trend toward increased acceptance of target vegetables. Future studies should evaluate a larger sample size with increased frequency of taste testing opportunities.

The implementation of collaboration and the use of graphic organizers in the teaching of programming and writing in the elementary grades have proven to be effective instructional strategies. There is evidence that shows the students who are motivated to program and perform well in this content area are not necessarily representative of the students who are motivated to write. Since the organizational skills required in the two content areas are similar, there may be an opportunity to motivate students who engage in computer programming to become more motivated in writing. As a result, the purpose of this study was to investigate the change in the dimensions of motivation which are: challenge, choice, enjoyment, and interest of fifth-grade students to engage in an expository writing activity after being taught to develop computer programs with the same teaching strategies used in the writing activity. The results of this study suggest that the teaching of computer programming was not effective with the intention of motivating the masses of fifth-grade students to write. However, there appears to be supporting evidence that teaching computer programming to fifth-grade students may help some individual students who are not initially motivated to write.

Symbolic interactionism has scarcely been used as a framework in the field of music education. The purpose of this case study was to understand the verbal and nonverbal interactions of four fifth-grade general music students while they collaborated with peers to compose original songs. Through the lens of symbolic interactionism, data from video and audio recordings, student artifacts, and researcher memos were examined to answer the following research questions: 1) How do fifth-grade general music students interact with their peers during composition activities in a constructivist learning environment? 2) How do fifth-grade general music students self-indicate and create shared meanings through verbal and nonverbal symbolic interactions? A within and cross-case analysis revealed that students interacted with their peers through communicative acts, forming friendships, nonverbal gestures, and forming social roles. The participants self-indicated and created shared meanings as a result of shared responsibilities, musical dialogue, improvisation, and symbolic exclusion. Findings suggested that fifth-grade students develop social roles and engage in follower and leader behaviors in situations where teacher scaffolding is purposefully suspended. The results of the research contribute to an existing body of literature regarding fifth-grade general music students’ abilities to self-direct their own learning during collaborative activities.

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The effects of participation of fifth grade students in the Mathematical Olympiad for Elementary Schools were investigated. Fifth grade subjects at one school who participated in the Mathematical Olympiad for Elementary Schools were compared with non-participants in routine and non-routine mathematics problem-solving achievement, non-routine problem-solving process levels, and attitudes towards mathematics. Results indicated that participation positively affected the participants’ non-routine problem-solving process levels but no uniform results were found on the other factors. The importance of appropriate non-routine mathematics problem-solving tests was indicated as a future source of study. A description of the investigation, instruments and results is included. / Master of Arts

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is the effect of work-study method instruction upon the achievement of students in fifth grade social studies. The purpose of this investigation is to determine the effects of the SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) Study Method instruction upon the achievement of students in fifth grade social studies. The subjects ranged in age from ten years two months to thirteen years three months. Th I.Q. for the subjects ranged from 70 to 135. Of the 102 subjects involved in the study, 42 were male and 60 were female. The I.Q. score from the California Test of Mental Maturity, S Form was used to structure the subjects into three intelligence levels. Fifty-four subjects served as the experimental group, and forty-eight served as the control group. The instrument used to obtain pretest and posttest scores on the variable relating to achievement was the SRA Assessment Survey, Blue Level. Form E was used for the pretest, and Form F was used for the posttest. The subjects were assigned to four classes which were near equal. Two classes were selected by the principal to serve as the experimental group. The other two classes served as the control group. The investigator spent equal time with the control and the experimental group. The four classroom teachers rotated between experimental and control groups on an equal basis. Students in the experimental group met nineteen times during the study for a thirty-minute period. During these sessions, the experimental subjects used the SQ3R Study Method to do social studies assignments. The control group met for the same number of sessions and for an equal amount of time. They worked with the same content but without using the SQ3R Study Method. The analysis of covariance was employed with pretest scores as the covariant.

The problem of this study is concerned with the change in social distance to foreigners after the inclusion of Spanish language instruction in a four-week, fifth-grade social studies unit on Latin America.