Role-play is an oral classroom activity that has been promoted to provide young learners with opportunities to practice English in meaningful contexts. To familiarize elementary students with this group task, to encourage them to pay attention to their peers' performances, and to replace traditional paper-and-pencil modes of evaluating speaking…

"This Book Is Not About Drama" explores issues around storytelling, silent speech, writing and imagination and shows teachers how to use role play and discussion to build language experiences that are meaningful for learners. This authoritative resource is full of simple strategies that begin with the simple and evolve in to more complex…

Learning a FL [foreign language] may be frustrating for some young learners; however, integrating fun in learning would encourage them to develop positive attitudes towards learning a language (Ellis & Brewster, 1991). Stories are an effective and enthusiastic technique in teaching young learners; they inject lots of amusement and help…

Bullying is a prevalent problem for many elementary school students, and it is associated with physical injury and depression. Objectives: Students engaged in this teaching activity will be able to identify bullying behaviors as well as list and demonstrate strategies to effectively deal with bullying situations. Target Audience: Fourth- and…

Community festivals allow students opportunities to meet key contact people and investigate local resources. Further, the excitement of the social festival is infectious; it encourages learning among people of multiple ages in a common area. Festivals serve to define the community, transmit culture, and allow the community to participate in…

This article presents the results of a three-year study of "Gamestar Mechanic" (www.gamestarmechanic.com), a flash-based multiplayer online role-playing game developed for the MacArthur Foundation's digital media learning initiative by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Gamelab in New York. The game's objective is to help children…

Four teacher researchers focused on the lack of students' proper social skills for this action research project report. In the classes of four teacher researchers, the students were coming to school lacking proper social skills. Because of this, teachers were spending time allocated for the curriculum, on discipline and the instruction of social…

A multicultural model for children in Grades K through 5 to foster skills needed for success is presented. The learning, living, and working (LLW) group work model focuses on three skill sets identified by multiple researchers over the past 30 years as necessary for success in school, relationships, and work. These three skill sets--learning…

Universal interventions are designed to systematically teach and reinforce consistent behavioral expectations. The purpose of this study was to provide an example of a group contingency classwide intervention called "Anchor the Boat" that operationally defined behavioral expectations, taught those expectations using teacher-directed…