One of a series prepared by the Hawaii Newspaper Agency, this teaching guide offers suggestions on how to teach students to read the newspaper. The booklet presents a rationale for teaching students to read the newspaper, stresses the importance of creating the right classroom environment for teaching students to read the newspaper, defines what…

The availability of 72 inexpensive (50 cents each) still cameras and 200 rolls of film (19 cents per roll) to 70 English teachers in Frederick County, Maryland, has provided the means of stimulating students to expand their understanding of the environment and to sharpen their communicative talents. Projects undertaken include the students' use of…

Describes a five-week project in which elementary students chose a favorite letter as the main character of a 25- to 30-page book for practice in language skills. The book each child made was composed of more than 20 learning activities that stimulated students to review and practice skills, parts of speech, synonyms, antonyms and alliteration as…

An intermediate unit to celebrate National Library Week by broadening students' awareness of the library as a resource is suggested. Activities involve social studies, math, language arts, arts, and science. (MT)

The wealth of language and lore about frogs can be used to enrich learning in language arts, science, social studies, and the arts, as well as to investigate values and develop thinking skills. Activities are suggested and a list of appropriate books is provided. (MT)

Describes a class project involving collaborative partnerships in which fifth graders wrote books for first graders. (HTH)

Describes children's dramatic play behavior as a structured, recognizable phenomenon that is the result of careful nurturing by caregivers and a future tool to make vivid the actualities and potentialities of human experience. (CRH)

For most children, library books capture their interests and motivate reading more than basal texts do. Choosing library books is highly informal, whereas textbook reading involves more formal, structured plans of teaching. There are a plethora of choices to make in types of literature available to children. These include folk tales, fairy tales,…

"Viewing and Representing in the Middle Years" was a 2-year project to investigate the development of visual literacy in the classrooms of 3 Canadian middle school teachers. These teachers tried a large variety of approaches and were generally optimistic about the increased use of visual materials to make classrooms more inclusive. They…

In this lesson plan, students learn the rules and conventions of haiku, study examples by Japanese masters, and create haiku of their own. Its 4 lessons seek to help students be able to: (1) describe the traditional rules and conventions of haiku; (2) interpret examples of haiku; (3) characterize the image-evoking power of haiku; (4) develop a…

This teacher guide contains teaching and learning activities to accompany "Room for Five," a video series developed by Alberta Learning. The teacher guide is designed to give teachers ideas for using and connecting the videos from the series to the outcomes of the new Alberta curricular programs. It features student activities for the…

The 1999 version of the "North Carolina English Language Arts Standard Course of Study" (SCoS) specifies grade-by-grade standards for students in grades K-12. As a complement to SCoS, "In the Right Direction" is intended to help teachers take the next steps. While not comprehensive or prescriptive, this document should help…

Based on novels and books about the Mississippi River, this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that the Mississippi River has made its mark on America's geography, commerce, and literature; and that booktalks provide a summary, explains what kind of reader the book will appeal to, and may also contain a oral…

Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment," this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that: a close study of the characters of a literary classic will yield important clues to an understanding of the work as a whole; an effective analysis of stylistic devices depends upon selection and interpretation…

Based on George Orwell's novel "1984," this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that the historical context of the novel is based on the mood and political climate of 1949 Europe; the society Orwell created and modern society in the United States have similarities and differences; and modern privacy issues and the…