The one-room school house was synonymous with education in Nebraska for over a century. In 1901, most of the state's 6,773 schools were identified as one-room schools. While the national movement away from the one-room school house was also occurring in Nebraska, its 385 one-room schools were the most of any state in 1986 (McKee, 2013). The…

This article describes techniques for organizing curriculum in a one-teacher rural elementary school. Flexibility in grouping and teaching strategies, thematic approaches, and independent learning activities are emphasized. (SJL)

The second article in a series of three written about teaching strategies in primary schools in England and America, this article reviews strategies used in American one-room rural schoolhouses from the late 1800s to the 1940s. Examines historical perspective, curriculum, school life, punishment, special events, and games. (SD)

This booklet contains a pictorial history of one-room schoolhouses in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. Following a brief description of the typical one-room schoolhouse, the history of Hopkinton's one-room schoolhouses is traced from 1768, when a town meeting voted to construct two schoolhouses, to 1936, when the last one-room schoolhouses were closed.…

A former student at a one-room school in rural Monongalia County, West Virginia, in the 1920s describes educational practices, social life, discipline, extracurricular activities, subject matter, teacher responsibilities, and the importance of the school to the community. (TD)

Analyzes interview findings related to the experiences of a teacher in a one-room school in rural Australia during 1937-39. Describes his required three-year appointment to a rural school, the school setting, teacher responsibilities, student characteristics, curriculum, and departmental inspections that involved evaluation of children's academic…

This book is a memoir of one-room school life in 1929. In his day, Cratis D. Williams (1911-85) was America's foremost scholar on the Appalachian experience. This book is the story of his first teaching assignment at age 18 in a one-room K-8 school on Caines Creek in Lawrence County, Kentucky. Williams details his classroom practices and…

A final-year student teacher from the University of Southern Queensland (Australia) describes her student teaching experiences at Gunpowder State School, an isolated one-room school in central Queensland, focusing on techniques for managing the multiage classroom and teacher-community relationships. (SV)

Two-thirds of Montana's school districts are rural, and most students attend schools with enrollments under 300. Such recent trends as peer tutoring, multigrade classrooms, and project-based learning have always been practiced in these small schools. One small community's successful effort to save its school, classroom practices in one-room…

Information technology offers advantages to small rural schools: access to courses not locally available, opportunities for collaborative work with other schools, and access to professional development courses. Federal money can help disadvantaged rural schools afford the technology, but the teacher must integrate good practices with technology to…

The use of "recitation" lessons in a rural Nebraska one-room school was investigated. Conservative in its orientation toward knowledge and student learning, the recitation is a functional response to the context of smallness, implicit parental and community expectations, inevitable student transfer to a large graded school, and threats…

Written in 1953, this book presents the reminiscences of a renowned scientist about his early education in a one-room school at Prairie View, Kansas, during the 1870s and 1880s. The first chapter records early memories of the road to school, and describes the community of Anglo and German farmers served by Prairie View. Other chapters describe…

The characteristics of one-room rural schools in Barbour County, West Virginia, are representative of one-room rural school characteristics in general. These include building design and problems; teacher' lives and duties, certification, salaries, and training; scheduling and curriculum; games; punishments; and hot lunch programs. Since one-room…

During the 1996-97 school year, 63 one-teacher primary schools were identified in Great Britain and 54 of these were surveyed. Three of the schools surveyed were in England, 47 in Scotland, and 4 in Wales. The majority of teachers in these schools were female, married, and 40-49 years old; had over 20 years teaching experience, with 5-15 years in…

As late as 1913, half of U.S. schoolchildren were enrolled in the country's 212,000 one-room schools--the heart of American education. Although only about 428 of these schools remain in use as of 1994, the country school continues to be a powerful cultural symbol. The first section of this book examines country schools' educational and cultural…