Describes a technique that permits special education students to express their feelings through writing. Discusses the teacher's role in this process and outlines its benefits. (FL)

An Idea Sharing Day is cosponsored by Emporia State University and the local school district of Emporia, Kansas. This cosponsorship fosters positive relations between the university and the schools, supporting efforts to provide more effective education for the elementary child. The Idea Sharing Day has created a wealth of fresh ideas for physical…

Describes, in "Videotapes Can Provide a Bridge to Language Development and Literacy," how quality videotapes can help develop students' language skills in elementary classrooms. Describes, in "Contracting for Success," how a written contract can help students work together in group projects. Gives a sample contract. (PA)

Interactions of groups of students working with a variety of educational software are analyzed to develop an account of the structure of collaborative educational activities supported by directive software. Argues that the structure of educational activities around directive software can allow for the possibility of embedding exploratory…

Elementary teachers can use graphing to introduce students to one another. An eye color graphing activity helps students learn more about each other while experimenting with different ways of organizing and displaying information. For follow up, students can apply their graphing knowledge by collecting and displaying data from their families. (SM)

Discusses teacher and principal attitudes toward implementation of the Foxfire approach on a school-wide basis at Rabun Gap Community School (Rabun, Georgia). Presents some of the student-generated experiential projects, including (1) developing and participating in Indian Day activities; (2) making and selling earrings; and (3) writing advice…

Describes how an elementary teacher encouraged her students to read novels using cooperative group activities based on popular television shows. Students divided into groups, took different roles, read a novel, and made a presentation to the class. When they finished the novel, they selected a new activity. (SM)

Average-ability students often do not take full advantage of learning in mixed-ability groups because they hardly engage in the group interaction. This study examined whether structuring collaboration by group roles and ground rules for helping behavior might help overcome this participatory inequality. In a plant biology course, heterogeneously…

The subject of the 1995 Texas Reading Club is the planet Earth, planets in the heavens, worlds to explore in the mind, and the many worlds in literature. The goals of this manual are: (1) to provide a reading club that explores a variety of book-based media in order to help children and their caretakers learn the importance of reading and to gain…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: Have you ever had trouble getting children to write stories? One technique that works well is group writing. (1) Divide the class into groups of five or six. (2) Give each child in a group a mimeographed copy of a story starter--just a sentence or an opening paragraph. (3) Have the children read the…

This paper describes two activities that the authors have developed and found useful. These experiences attempt to include creative materials in the process of communication. They were constructed with the idea that the personal experience of living is often more freely expressed through creative activity. (Author)

Reports a study and its replication which examined the effects of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning environments on the subsequent spontaneous self- and other-enhancement of 234 children between the ages of 8 and 10 years. (JMB)

Presents activities, techniques, and processes developed by classroom teachers to evaluate student learning. The authors included those evaluative techniques which assisted student growth along informational, cognitive, social and affective dimensions. (Author/DB)

Two activities designed for use in elementary school group work are described. In Activity I, Pass It On,'' a succession of children repeat a story showing how communication can be distorted when people don't listen. Activity II is designed to demonstrate the similarity of feelings among peers: children complete short stories begun by the leader…

The effect of cooperative and individualistic learning experiences within which majority students worked with lower-achieving minority peers were compared. The results support the position that cooperative experiences result in liking regardless of the ethnic membership or achievement level of collaborators. (Author/PN)