Most teachers only dream of their students spending the amount of motivation, attention, passion, and critical thinking on their classes that some students do playing videogames. This investigation examines the success, pitfalls, and lessons learned from incorporating videogame-like components into an educational technology class. For example,…

Variety in homework is one way to achieve educational excellence in social studies. The twin social studies goals of teaching basic knowledge and teaching reasoning/critical thinking skills are accomplished by providing variety. In accordance with Lee and Pratt's homework taxonomy, homework can be placed under one of the following: preparation,…

Describes principles which achieve good writing assignments in the social studies: (1) define the content and skills teachers want students to learn, (2) devise assignments in which level of difficulty of task fits the level of the goal, (3) let students speculate on the topic, and (4) present the topic so that students know how and what to do.…

Presents guidelines for social studies teachers and a sample writing assignment to encourage student's developmental writing. Suggests that students emphasize the significance of the writer's ideas and information rather than the information itself. Establishes the relationship between thinking processes and writing and the need to break these…

Outlines a procedure for teaching writing which helps students learn the content and thinking skills necessary for the reasoning and learning tasks required in the social studies. Sample lessons in a secondary American History course involve students in discussing, reading, problem solving, and synthesizing information. (KC)

Stressing that learning to write is learning to think, a series of workshops showed teachers in the content area how to use writing in their classrooms. Following a brief introduction to the program, workshop participants developed eight guidelines for creating effective writing assignments: (1) make all assignments worthwhile, (2) make them…