Suggests ways of bringing poetry into the elementary classroom: matching poems and students; making poetry readings a regular activity; encouraging students to read, recite, or perform poetry; inviting special guests to perform poetry; celebrating holidays, seasons, and special occasions with poems; providing an audience for student poetry; and…

Preschool and elementary school children can participate in pleasurable and worthwhile language experiences through the use of rhythmic group chants. Teachers can select contemporary poems, nursery rhymes, or have children make up their own chants. Provides examples of group chants and sources for chants, rhymes, and poems. (MDM)

Lists and discusses the functions that cooperative quizzes can serve if structured correctly. The quizzes can facilitate a greater understanding of the subject, promote better test-taking skills, and be used as a mechanism to foster cooperative groups. (DDR)

Describes students' enthusiasm for Tuesdays in an American community school in Greece when they get together in small groups to explore, conjecture, analyze, and solve mathematics problems. (ASK)

Provides guidelines for planning and conducting a guided nature walk of short duration (1-3 hours) that provides opportunities for spontaneous teachable moments. Includes pre-hike planning related to public relations, the theme of the walk, and the trail; and tips for matching the presentation of material, discussion, and group activities to…

Explores the effectiveness of using television and video to motivate student writing. Describes how, following a series of motivational and brainstorming sessions using television, video, and popular literature, 23 fifth-grade students wrote and videotaped dramatizations of short "teaser" scripts in cooperative groups. Notes that these…

In this article, the author describes how he created an approach that he terms "Mathematics as a Second Language" (MSL) for teaching ELL students mathematics. The main components of MSL are vocabulary activities, journals, group work, and projects. He used MSL to teach prealgebra to ELL students, as well as to native English speakers, for two…

Energy Smarts Team members are energy conscious students who want to save energy at school and at home. Students in a classroom and their teacher form an Energy Smarts Team. Selected students monitor their building each day at recess, lunch, or after school for lights or other electrical equipment that has been left on. The team members keep a log…

Noting that it is important in communication classes to devise ways to help students to be comfortable with each other, this paper maintains that icebreakers and group builders are strategies that are vital in creating openness and trust in such classes. The paper offers eight icebreakers (activities designed to help students feel comfortable with…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: This exercise replaces the standard, often boring introductory lecture on using the dictionary with a group assignment that encourages the students to observe and analyze the entry for at least one word very carefully. In doing so, the students discover for themselves both the kinds of information…

This manual provides guidelines for dance teachers in secondary schools. A brief statement is made on the purpose and philosophy of dance education, and activities and instructional suggestions are presented for various dance forms: (1) group dance--folk/ethnic, square dance, and social dance; (2) aerobic dance; (3) jazz dance; (4) modern dance;…

This teaching unit is composed of six parts: (1) content outline, (2) unit goals, (3) objectives, (4) activities, (5) evaluation plan, and (6) bibliography. The content of the unit centers on the lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Specifically it investigates what made these men exceptional heroes, and it differentiates between facts…

Daily warm-up exercises are advocated as a means of bridging the gap between previously unrelated activities outside the classroom and immersion into the second language, relaxing the class, and establishing a mood for communication. Variety, careful preparation, assuring that the students understand the activity, feeling free to discontinue an…

The educational value of games includes learning to: (1) follow directions and use social skills; (2) review information and use cognitive skills; (3) make decisions and live with the consequences; and (4) become aware of new information. This paper describes how teachers might use small group games to reinforce what is taught in social studies…

Jigsaw, a form of cooperative learning, was researched by Aronson (1978). Later, Slavin (1981) adapted Jigsaw to Student Team Learning and called it Jigsaw II. Jigsaw currently shows the least achievement gains among the various cooperative methodologies. Nonetheless, it is a viable methodology and is useful for covering and reviewing material.…