This paper is a basic study for the purpose of developing botanical teaching materials concerned with familiar wild plants for elementary school science. The authors have already shown that forty two kinds of wild plants are growing on almost of elementary school yards in Hyogo Prefecture. This time, the author has researched into familiar wild plants growing on the yards of elementary schools in Niigata Prefecture. The researches were put in practice on the same way as that in Hyogo. Then, the author divided the Niigata Prefecture into twenty areas and selected one school per each area. The author carried out a survey concerned with wild plants four times between 1983 and 1984 there. The findings of this study are as following: (1) It was found that eighteen kinds of wild plants are growing on all of twenty selected elementary schools in Niigata and twenty six kinds of them are also growing on eighty five percent of these school yards (seventeen schools of them). Under this view, it is guessed that these forty four kinds of wild plants also grow up on the other elementary schools in Niigata. It is thought that many elementary schools in Niigata are possible to use these kinds of familiar wild plants for developing botanical teaching materials. (2) As compared with the study in Hyogo, it became evident that twenty three kinds of wild plants are growing on more than eighty five percent of elementary school yards both in Niigata and in Hyogo.

There are experiments on longitudinal vibrations of plucked metal or rubber string, in some textbooks for fifth-grade pupils. These experiments are concerned in learning about the relation between intensity of sound and amplitude of vibration. This thesis will be discussed about shapes and motions of a vibrating rubber string that is stretched between two fixed points on a horizontal line at first, picked up the center or any point on it by fingers, and then released from the fingers on no velocity. Before the studies were started, we asked students who wish to become teachers, and elementaly school teachers how the shape of the rubber string in vibrations that was plucked at the center point of the string was. Most of their answers were, "the shape of the string in vibrations must be a sinusoidal wave". We couldn't say that they made mistakes in these answers, at once. But, does the rubber string, which keeps a ╱╲ shape in an instant released from fingers, vibrate with the sinusoidal wave shape, in short time after the instant? Namely, is it true that the shape of the string changes to a sinusoidal wave shape from the ╱╲ shape, as soon as the string is released? But, does the rubber string, which keeps a shape in an instant released from fingers, vibrate with the sinusoidal wave shape, in short time after the instant? Namely, is it true that the shape of the string changes to a sinusoidal wave shape from the shape, as soon as the string is released? This answer will be given by the solution of a wave equation. But here, we would like to show the real shapes by taking photographs of the rubber string in vibrations. In the taken photographs, we can see the string shapes that are constructed by two vertexes and three segments, in a short time after the string was released from fingers. And, these vertexes moves as follows: (1) These make around the circumference of a rhombus or a paralleogram, two sides of which are two segments of the initial ╱╲ shape. (2) These start from the picked up point at same time One rounds to the clockwise and the other counterclockwise. These go path at the symmetrical point of the picked up point by the straight line that links two fixed ends of the string, and meet again at the starting point. (3) These speeds are equal to the phase velocity of longitudinal waves which travel on the circumference. Thus, the central segment between two vertexes keeps on going up and down with constant speed, and the both side segments keep stopping with the exception of small parts at vertexes.

This report is covered with the discussion about data from the questionaire on the actual condition of chemistry teaching in the school grades previous to universities in JAPAN, 1983. The outline of the results is as follows: 1. Completeness of the chemistry courses in upper secondary schools. Chemistry I ; 99.3% Chemistry II ; 43.1% 2. The instruction form in the chemistry courses in upper secondary schools. Mainly, teacher initiative form. 3. Mastery of fundamental skills for the laboratory works. Simple skills so as heating, usage of even balance, and filtration are highly mastered during compulsory education periods, however the preparation of reagents and glass blowing or plastic works are poorly mastered. 4. 17 items of laboratory works by students delt commonly with over 5 publishers among 7 were examined on the several view points; a. Laboratory works by students mastered over 70% are only 6 items. b. There are 10 items of laboratory works by students, of which 20% each is substituted by teachers. c. Most students point out that the main role of student laboratory works is only the aid for understanding of learning contents. d. Students are delighted with interest in a smooth process of laboratory works or with impression of a success for the results of experiments. e. Students appeal the insufficiency of the time intervals for completion of laboratory works and the difficulty of bringing the experimental results to a satisfactory conclusion. As a whole, it seems that the student laboratory works are served for means of understanding and mastering written scientific knowledge through verifying them only. However, it should be expected to lay stress on much more and properly operated student laboratory works in the field of chemistry teaching, not only in upper secondary schools but also in the teacher training universities. This would be an effective way to modernize the science teaching in all school education levels towards to the science learning as an enquiry. Moreover, it does not mean only the increase of the opportunity on the laboratory works by students, but the reform of the quality of experimenting which means they should be completed by students themselves throughout all round, to the letter, from planning and preparing to the settlement of experiments.

A paramecium is one of the excellent teaching materials which can be utilized for multifarious biology learnings from elementary school to upper secondary school. It is an important roll of science teachers to provide the needed amounts and species of paramecia by culturing them over a long time, when they are demanded in biology learnings. However, there exist a lot of difficult problems to keep them under the optimum conditions. Thus, the authors have examined the various culture methods of paramecia previously reported in order to find out the appropriate ones which could be carried out easily. Results obtained are as follows. (1) The mixed solution containing 0.6g wheat flour and 0.6g soybean meal diluted to 1ℓ with deionized water is found to be suitable for the culture medium of paramecia. (2) The appropriate vessel for culturing paramecia is the test tube which contains approximately 60% medium of its capacity in volume. (3) The breeding ratio sterilized vessel is of paramecia obtained in the case of using approximately twice as large as in the case of using unsterilized vessel. The household steamer is proved to be very useful for sterilization. Since the wheat flour, soybean, test tube and household steamer are the familiar and inexpensive materials, above results imply that they are very practical and useful for the culture of paramecia in biology learnings.

In order to analyze the hypothesis testing ability of the lower secondary school students, the following survey was carried out. The survey asked the following questions: (1) What percentage of the students interprets the hypothesized relations between variables as biconditional? (2) Do four items factor into two distinct factors with noncausal items loading on one factor and causal items loading on a second factor? Method: 171 first year and 164 third year students in lower secondary school made up the sample. Four selection hypothesis testing items were administered to the sample. Both noncausal and causal items consisted of each two problems - Envelope and 4-Card Problems for one, Germination and Lipid Problems for the other. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) .was used to treat the data of each grade. Results: The results of the present survey are summarized as follows: (1) About 56-64% of the students interpret the hypothesized relations between variables as biconditional. (2) 1st grade: There are three factors. Noncausal items load on the first factor, and one of two causal items loads on the second factor and the other, the third factor. 3rd grade: Noncausal i terns load on one factor and causal i terns load on a second factor.

Although textbooks play an important role in school education, educational treatments of subject matter and objective analysis of textbook have not been established yet. Therefore, in this paper, we have discussed according to the following four procedures as concerning the analysis of science textbooks. 1.The contents of the textbook were divided into four parts: 1) sentences, 2) photographs, 3) illustrations and 4) graphs and tables. Then, the ratio of the area of each part to the total area (area-ratios) was calculated. 2.We divided the sentences of the textbook into four parts: 1) sentences letting pupils into consideration, 2) sentences explaining phenomena, 3) sentences demanding pupils' activities and 4) sentences drawing attention of pupils. Then, we calculated the ratio of the number of each part to the total number (number-ratios). 3.The readability of the sentences was estimated by the degree of difficulties and the frequencies of words used in them. 4.The degrees of the peculiarity of the textbooks (peculiarity index) were examined from the dispersion of area-ratios and number-ratios which vary with every publishing companies. We analized the science textbooks for elementary school by means of the above method, and investigated the characteristics of the revision on 1980. The results of the investigation are in accord with the tenor of the revision. These proves that the method is useful for textbook analysis, especially quantitative analysis of contents.