Skills development in reading should be balanced with reading, listening, and talking activities which focus on content and themes, so that reading comprehension is also developed. (SJL)

Continuing with his suggestion from previous issues that themes of interest to most children can tie together reading, writing and language arts, the author presents classroom activities and reading suggestions based on four more themes: fairness and unfairness; cultural identity; overcoming weaknesses or handicaps; requited and unrequited love.…

The learning center described here, using a city theme, structures movement activities to reinforce basic cognitive skills, including mapping, memorizing, matching, manipulating shapes, categorizing, listening, sequencing, and following directions. (Author/SJL)