This curriculum was completed during phase III of Project SEARCH, a nationally validated project designed to humanize elementary and secondary education by creating, developing and implementing innovative models in the curriculum through an integration of the humanities and the arts. Project SEARCH is an attempt to help students apply both…

A high school teacher tells how student talk became an integral part of her teaching program. She devised oral language activities, including reading aloud, debate, and small group discussions. She also rearranged the classroom to encourage discussion. Encouraging classroom talk led to improved writing skills. (SKC)

Describes several storytelling activities that allow children to develop their speaking, reading, writing, and listening skills. (FL)

The focus of second language education is communication, and oral language is central to the teaching of foreign language at all levels. Oral language in the foreign language classroom is the most problematic of all skills to assess. Teachers' concerns can be divided in the following areas: (1) What to assess: form or content; (2) How to assess:…

Offers a detailed description of a unit designed to explore the effectiveness of communication through the media that emphasizes all modes of communication--listening, speaking, reading, and writing. (AEA)

A teacher/storyteller recommends story creation by students to encourage creativity and pleasure in developing language skills. Suggested exercises include combining random nouns (e.g., "le fer et le bois") and creating a proverb about them, creating a story using names of consumer products, and developing a story using only body-language idioms…

Presents suggestions for composition teachers who have ESL students and no formal training in teaching English as a second language. Provides 25-item bibliography on curriculum design, current papers, cultural aspects of writing, and reading. (RAE)

Asserts that poetry can extend reading comprehension skills and promote basic reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, as well as creative thinking and imagery. Presents activities that provide the basis for teaching comprehension processes and writing conventions. Offers an adaptation of the Directed Reading Activity used in many basal…

This syllabus and curriculum guide were developed for a 12-week course in workplace Spanish for clinical workers at the Claretian Medical Center on the south side of Chicago. The purpose of the class was to provide basic communicative abilities in Spanish to the medical staff---registered nurses, triage nurses, and laboratory technologists--such…

While no one method can possibly solve all the problems in an educational system, the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) addresses many. The PSI method is a self-paced, mastery learning approach based on reinforcement and personal attention. It is typified by five characteristics that help to meet or minimize the adverse aspects of…

Intended for use by both elementary and secondary school teachers, the two papers in this report stress the importance of developing students' oral and written communication skills. The first paper, "Relationship of Oral Communication to Reading," by Phil Backlund and John Johnson, argues that ability in oral communication is a prerequisite to the…

By using exercises to increase classroom community and journal assignments rather than tests, teachers can help empower students in the public speaking classroom. To create a sense of community in public speaking classrooms and to increase opportunities for dialogue on a personal level, an ungraded speaking assignment is used that begins the first…

Over 175 activities are described for helping children with autism in the following areas: auditory development (discrimination and memory); concept development (body concept, body in space/direction, size, time, shapes, same/different, color, numbers); social development; speech and language development; and visual-motor integration. The purpose,…

These guidelines, designed to aid schools in developing their own curriculum and courses, set out objectives for the development of the four language skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing--and for an understanding of culture in the teaching of French in secondary schools. The guidelines assume that language learning is a communicative…

These guidelines, designed to aid schools in developing their own curriculum and to assist teachers in planning courses, set out objectives for the four language skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing--and for an understanding of culture in the teaching of German in secondary schools. The guidelines assume that language learning is a…