Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine undergraduate elementary education teacher candidates' abilities to successfully integrate social justice teaching into their interdisciplinary ELA and social studies thematic units. The projects were analyzed to determine the extent to which, if any, social justice education has been addressed.…

Methods for facilitating students' standards-based consumer literacy are addressed via the use of problem solving with food and product labels. Fifth graders will be able to: (1) provide detailed analysis of food and product labels; (2) understand large themes, including production, distribution, and consumption; and (3) explore consumer…

The Common Core Standards have defined literacy and outlined the mission for English Language Arts in a way that provides a natural fit with the National Standards for Language Learning. Taking advantage of this connection, language teachers can showcase the importance of learning languages by demonstrating how literacy is learned, practiced, and…

Emily was then in kindergarten age when a nationally recognized, local center for gifted children confirmed she was gifted, and her comprehension and technical skills were those of a 3rd grader. Emily's parents, who were concerned because nobody at school cared about her needs, called the author, the school's headmaster, to inform him about their…

Traditional folktales constitute a social institution that reflects the value, customs, and lifestyles of the culture and are a natural way for students to explore the historical past, the belief systems of varied societies, and diverse factual information. A carefully selected folktale can be a powerful tool to bring culture to the foreign…

Describes a program using thematic language arts learning contracts. (DD)

The advantages of using themes as the foundation of a language arts program for hearing-impaired students are outlined. Methods for developing new themes, recycling old themes, having children choose their study materials, and structuring classroom activities are presented. Examples from an insect theme illustrate the approach. (JDD)

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)

Reviews "Favorites, Friendships, Food, and Fantasy: Literature-Based Thematic Units for Early Primary" (A. Lukasevich and F. Pieronek), a two-volume publication that presents four literature-based thematic units for use in the language arts curriculum. The units are designed to be used sequentially in 12- or 15-day segments, and each lesson has 4…

Intended to help teachers integrate the teaching of thinking, reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, this booklet presents five thematic units of study for the language arts. The booklet begins with a rationale for a thematic approach to language arts. The remainder of the paper presents the thematic units, each of which includes a…

For the past several years, the secondary-level literature section of the Hawaii English Project has been working towards an approach to classroom management and materials selection that will allow both structure and individualization. This paper provides guidelines for instituting a system in which the class works in groups of three to five…

Presents a cross-curricular theme unit on colors that includes a pullout poster and a resource list. Social studies activities highlight flags of the world. Science activities teach about colors of animals and the science of color. Language arts activities describe colorful language. Mathematics activities involve sorting and graphing colors. (SM)

A teacher at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind recounts his experience implementing a whole-language approach with an elementary class of students with hearing impairments. The effort, focusing on insects, utilized dialog journals, word banks, shared reading, guided reading and writing, independent reading, and theme activities. A…