Offers a brief look at a graduate student's on-line correspondence with three sixth-grade pen pals. Offers advice about adult-student pen pal relationships. (SR)

The role of communication in the maintenance of healthy long-term family relationships is an important one. Communication exists within the family as a dynamic and essential force in the maintenance of relationships, and facilitates the development of the satisfied and healthy family. Families are governed by rules, making interactions patterned…

Explores how dialog writing, in which two participants "converse in writing," incorporates the interactive aspects of oral communication and the self-directed aspects of essay writing. Includes passages written over a year's time by a sixth grade student in a "dialogue journal" showing the development of his writing. (HTH)

In this article, the author talks about Motif Notation, a means of creating, recording, and reflecting on dance experience, and dance making as educational partners in an urban middle school. The author shares partial tales of middle school-aged children engaging in dance making and Motif Notation which illustrate the fact that teens need to…

Recounts the history of WETA-TV's "Cover to Cover" program, initiated in 1965. Relates that the program has been updated to reach a wider audience and now is geared toward fifth and sixth graders, with a change of title to "More Books from Cover to Cover." (NKA)

A personal account of teaching creative writing to elementary school students, with information on what the teacher learned about teaching, what classroom techniques she used, and how the students reacted to creative writing and writing for publication. (RL)

Examines current educational thinking about the development of children's writing, story structure and its functional components, and economy in writing. Strategies that teachers and teacher librarians can use to improve students' work are suggested, and an annotated bibliography of seven childrens' stories is provided. (eight references) (EA)

Describes how a survivor of the Holocaust helped a sixth grade class understand the experiences of the Holocaust and how the class helped the survivor to reach into his own repressed pain. (PRA)

Describes a joint effort in a school/university partnership to develop, implement, and evaluate a literature-based approach to sixth grade social studies. Discusses theory and rationale; designing the unit; addressing prior knowledge; think sheets; head, hand, and heart of citizenship; developing personal responses; and program effectiveness. (SR)

The Fake Book is a square spiral bound Xeroxed book, about 7" by 7", maybe 250 pages long. It's all music--the notes, usually in C or B minor, of hundreds of standard tunes, jazz, pop, and every once in a while, classical. The Fake Book and all of its variants provide an evolving canon of tunes that defines a set of common standards for…

Two aspects of verbal ability are required for performance of verbal tasks: verbal comprehension (given the most attention); and verbal fluency (slighted by researchers). An information processing approach to how words are generated was used in two studies of 104 third and 61 sixth graders to clarify the relationships between verbal fluency and…

A Chicago sixth-grade teacher in a school with a highly transient, diverse student population describes a typical first day in September. When the children make booklets about themselves and their families, problems arise with some who have lost parents, siblings, or grandparents. A handshake exercise discloses a child lacking fingers on one hand.…

Presents results of a study which interviewed sixth graders from three North Carolina schools to determine what they think of their school librarians. Results indicated that children's perceptions are affected by personalities and behavior of individual librarians. Sidebars focus on how the study was conducted and what students noticed most about…

Describes how one teacher worked with a learning-disabled sixth grader, who benefited from the opportunity to write about what he knew and cared about. (SR)

Describes how one sixth-grade language arts class joined a computer network where students could exchange writing about topics they selected for themselves. Shows how students' excitement grew and how their writing skills improved naturally. (SR)