The author of "Roots" gives some tips for launching family history projects with elementary students. He also tells why they are important. Included here is a tear-out-and-duplicate family tree chart which students can use in their own efforts. (Editor/RK)

This is the house that first graders built. This is the house that built first-grade skills and first-grade fun. (Editor)

Wanting to provide some large permanent art to brighten a functional, yet sterile, lower school facility, fifth and sixth grade students designed and built a mural using some long-stored pieces of mosaic tile of various sizes and colors. (Author/RK)

Most schools include in their curriculum some kind of safety program for children. Questions the effectiveness of these programs and if the children's behavior is changed for the good. As part of your next safety unit suggests this simulation game, which involves children in repeated problem-solving situations. (Author/RK)

Investigated how eight teachers untrained in holistic scoring rated elementary school students' compositions about baseball. Teachers varied in knowledge level about baseball and were classified as having either an academic or a cognitive-developmental teaching approach. Findings are discussed in terms of a classroom competence model of writing.…

Provides primary grade level science activities that focus on insects, tracks and trails, water, and flight. For each topic, six major ideas plus related activities and suggestions about resources are given. (RH)

The goal of this document is to provide the information that teachers and other colleagues in the school need to implement an integrated and comprehensive approach to vocabulary instruction. By integrated, it is meant that vocabulary is a core consideration in all grades across the school and in all content areas across the school day. By…

Describes the "Folk Tales through Shadow Theater" reading-enrichment program unit, in which fifth-grade students search for stories, write scripts, and stage and present plays to an audience of their schoolmates. (RH)

Suggests that children typically unsuccessful in planning at global levels might improve their writing by paying attention to the local coherence constraints of sentences. Local coherence is a quality of written language achieved through the use of local connections (such as "also") that relate ideas across several sentences into a coherent…

Development of a learning center designed to aid classroom teachers in meeting the needs of physically disabled children returning to the regular classroom is described. (LH)

Describes the processes involved when a class of fourth graders makes a film. (IRT)

Economics projects, for all levels, that feature in-the-classroom factories and stores, fund raising to save a cat, and the formation of a corporation. The kids even took out a loan to get started. And they're all designed to earn a lot of learning on the bottom line. (Editor)

Our everyday language is full of images drawn from animal life. Looking at such images can provide young people with insights into the creative use of language. (Author/RK)

Students at the Orchard Lane Elementary School, New Berlin, Wisconsin, learn to make their own carousel as part of their celebration of our nation's Bicentennial. (RK)