A practicum focused on improving listening skills in four- to five-year-old children. The practicum targeted the following specific listening skills for improvement: (1) discriminating English phonemes; (2) recognizing words heard in a story; (3) repeating a short story; and (4) following verbal instructions. Teaching strategies which the…

The lack of parent involvement in an elementary school's parent drug education programs and related activities was addressed by the implementation of numerous strategies. Objectives included an increase in parent attendance at such programs and in completed and returned parent drug education homework assignments. Assisting in the implementation of…

The goal of this practicum was to continue parent classroom participation from Head Start to kindergarten. Questionnaire data indicated that, while 27 percent of parents volunteer regularly in Head Start, only 8 percent volunteer regularly in kindergarten. To increase parent participation in kindergarten, Head Start parents and kindergarten…

Upon request from parents, students were released from a rural Rocky Mountains high school to take a class in religious education where they were encouraged to read at least one chapter of scripture each day. In addition to daily reading, students were encouraged to ponder what they read and apply it to their daily lives. According to the…

A practicum was designed to increase the number of elementary pupils who would be able to identify legal and illegal substances and to make informed decisions in their daily lives. Secondary goals of the practicum were to increase the number of pupils who attained good school attendance and who exhibited good self-esteem, and to increase the…

This practicum project defined the roles and responsibilities of parent cooperative preschool team members to help parents identify who was responsible for different functions in the co-op preschool. A 10-week intervention strategy was implemented to provide information and support to parents during the first 2 months of the school year.…

Student scores on the Woodcock-Johnson Achievement Test showed four years of declining scores. Data collected from a teacher pre-questionnaire indicated problems in the areas: elementary mathematics curriculum, the curriculum adoption process, training of teachers in using purchased texts and manipulatives, confidence of teachers in utilizing…

Designed to increase literacy by improving parent school relationships in an inner city elementary school in the southeastern United States, a practicum provided workshops for 45 teachers as well as parents of approximately 900 students. These teacher workshops were designed to encourage teachers to keep an open line of communication with the…

A course of study to enhance the effectiveness of the traditional third grade reader and workpack as instructional tools was designed for this practicum. The goal was to create a familiarity with the purpose and function of varied print media available within the community, thereby creating a foundation upon which the students (30 third graders)…

This practicum report describes a reading program that was designed and implemented to help improve reading attitudes among fifth grade children. A target group of 17 fifth-graders were unmotivated and uninterested in reading, and TV occupied a great deal of their out-of-class time. Solution strategies involved encouraging parents, teachers, and…

This study addressed the need to encourage more parental involvement in children's educational, social, and emotional needs. Sixty parents of elementary school children responded to a survey regarding their interest in attending a systematically designed program entitled, "Parent Effectiveness Training". Findings indicated a parental…

To increase parent involvement and meet the need for adult help in classrooms, a preschool director implemented a practicum in a church-owned, nondenominational preschool serving 250 children from an upper-middle-class community in the Northeast. The intervention offered a wide range of parent involvement activities, including the formation of a…

A packet for parents of middle school children with specific learning disabilities (SLD) was developed and field tested with 54 parents and teachers. The packet consisted of two booklets in question and answer form explaining SLD, reviewing spcific terms used to describe the condition, and discussing parent rights (including in the development of…

A practicum was designed to increase participation of families in home-school literacy activities. The school was located in a suburban village in the northeastern United States. Data indicated that many families of first- and second-grade minority students who were bused to the school for integration purposes were not participating in home-school…

This practicum was designed to teach appropriate social skills to mainstreamed elementary students with disabilities. It was determined that mainstream classroom teachers did not have adequate knowledge of social skills to promote interaction and develop friendships between disabled students and their nondisabled peers. A social skills inservice…