Describes the use of drama to give meaning and understanding to a unit on Native Americans. Students worked in small groups or "tribes" to research cultural attributes, and then acted out tribal rituals and created costumes and artifacts. The group work and the active roleplaying helped students to develop a new understanding of…

Discusses what middle-grade students need, and what language arts can provide. Describes language arts activities that connect with real-world issues and audiences, with big ideas and big events, with home and family, and with students' interests and talents. (SR)

A Catholic-school teacher of grades five and six reflects on her first year of teaching and describes how Foxfire training led her to introduce group decision making and planning into her classroom. Resulting class projects including a newspaper, a play, and a booklet of ghost stories are described. (SV)

A fifth grade teacher in a rural Kentucky school discusses three years of classroom experiences applying the Foxfire approach, focuses on the democratic decision-making process and the importance of student self-esteem, describes student-project problems and successes, and lists student accomplishments. (SV)

Presents a classroom lesson based on the walls of old Jerusalem. Maintains that cooperative-learning techniques used to build a model of the wall helped students understand the meaning of the original wall and the division of modern-day Jerusalem. (CFR)

One Israeli elementary school uses creative writing to make English writing real for upper elementary students. After selecting meaningful topics, students brainstorm ideas to write about, narrow their selection to a specific aspect of the topic, choose a writing style from a list, produce a first draft, edit, and rewrite as necessary. Finished…

Examines how the role of questions in literacy instruction has always been strong, whether requiring answers involving rote memory or the activation of higher level critical thinking processes. Presents a six-step strategy for questioning followed by a field-tested group of fifth graders' responses to each step. (SC)

Suggests a classroom newspaper provides an excellent vehicle for teaching writing to students of various ability levels, allows students to direct their writing to a specific audience, and increases motivation (because recognition through publication is very reinforcing). All students, including students with disabilities, can benefit from the…

This 32-page teaching guide accompanies a 55-minute documentary film, structured to be viewed in 1 or 2 classroom sessions. The film relates the story of the 1842 mutiny and hangings aboard the "U.S. Brig Somers." The guide recommends the film for grades 5-8, high school, college, and general audience. It suggests that the film material…

An activity has been used successfully for several years in a middle-school computer class to integrate writing instruction with computer science. Taking approximately five class periods, the activity consists of three phases: (1) the 6th-grade students use paper and pencil to write a story in any literary format; (2) 11th- and 12th-grade…

A practicum addressed fifth and sixth graders' deficiencies in writing and comprehension skills with the implementation of diagnostic-prescriptive teaching techniques. The Multi Level Academic Skills Inventory and interest inventories aided in defining students' specific strengths and weaknesses in the areas of reading and language arts. Among the…

This individualized inservice packet on the sequence of the reading lesson enables teachers to utilize a sequential procedure in content reading which will provide students the necessary skills to read the material, react to the printed word through independent thinking, and acquire the process and meaning of the discipline. It is one of a…

With the aim of relating reading with wider social action, this paper discusses the macro-cloze procedure for reading a novel, which promotes social interaction while reading and helps develop students' ability to predict, ask questions, and summarize. The paper includes a brief rationale for the procedure (in which each small group of students…

This curriculum guide is designed to help classroom teachers implement the Alabama Course of Study for the social studies and to be inclusive of the objectives tested by the Stanford Achievement Test. Divided into three sections, section 1 begins with a table of contents that lists what students should learn (student outcomes) in grade six. After…

A study examined students' metacognitive response to ambiguous literacy tasks to determine the relationship between that response and academic achievement. Subjects were 11 students chosen from a fifth-grade classroom in a small, urban school serving a predominantly black, middle class neighborhood. Two literacy tasks were identified as ambiguous:…