Prairie-Hills Junior High School, located in a suburban school district 25 miles south of Chicago, has a Chapter 1 replacement language arts model that is remedial focusing on spelling, grammar and writing skills. In the classroom there is lots of interaction, lots of oral reading, discussing, and deciding. Students in the Chapter 1 program follow…

One of four reports describing the basic skills programs in writing, reading, English as a second language, and mathematics at the City University of New York (CUNY), this volume describes the writing aspect of the program--including content, structure, methodology, and support services--at nine senior colleges and eight community colleges in the…

Addresses the development of written language in learning-disabled adolescents and describes a specific program implemented with 65 mildly learning handicapped secondary school students in El Paso, Texas. (PRA)

The basic components of the basic writing program at Rutgers University, designed to prepare disadvantaged students for the core course in English, are a combination of reading and writing activities with as much individualized instruction as possible. The components include three courses, a learning center, and an annual workshop in the teaching…

Separate articles describe courses designed to teach basic writing to academically underprepared college students. Six courses are described: a program which teaches students how to reason correctly, on the premise that students cannot write if they cannot think; a course which teaches academically underprepared black students how language…

At Virginia State College, which has an open-admissions policy, entering freshmen who display serious weaknesses in writing are asked to attend a writing laboratory for two hours each week, in addition to attending their regular freshman writing classes. In the laboratory, students write a series of papers dealing with a particular subject.…

One of the most difficult problems facing colleges today is dealing with students whose basic skills are too low to allow them to benefit from college-level studies. While some institutions seem to have given up expectations for underprepared students' achievement, others have instituted massive programs of individualized counseling and tutoring…

A proficiency test became the exit requirement for the noncredit, basic English course at the University of New Orleans because the program was not working well. There were inconsistencies in grading, and students who managed to pass the course later foundered in the credit courses. Obviously, the teachers needed to cooperate to raise the goals of…

The Environmental Education/Communication Skills program was designed to improve junior high school students' reading and writing skills. The key idea of the program was to motivate reading and writing improvement through environmental topic learning. Content focus areas were: orienteering, plant life, animal life, environmental problems, and…

This monograph, consisting of four sections, focuses on developmental education in the higher education setting. The first section, by Johnnie Ruth Clarke, provides an overall perspective on learning through developmental programs. Included are discussions of the developmental approach, developmental students and instructional activities, and…

The need for basic skills instruction at the college level is discussed in light of the history of United States educational standards, changes in college student populations, and indicators of need for basic skills programs. Historically, it appears as if basic skills instruction has always been needed at the college level to aid the…

The 12 essays in this collection address the concerns of basic writing teachers and those who teach basic writing teachers. The first essay discusses the characteristics of the low achieving college students who require basic writing instruction and argues for basic writing courses that are based upon a thorough understanding of students' nature…

The Learning Center at Glendale Community College is described in this four-part report which also evaluates the success of the Center in meeting the needs of new, nontraditional students. Part I reviews the literature dealing with the high dropout rate of nontraditional students admitted via the "open door" and provides definitions for the terms…

An extended-school program for at-risk first graders was designed to accelerate each child's progress in reading and writing over the summer. The instructional framework for the class consisted of independent reading, shared reading, interactive writing, journal writing, a spelling activity, learning centers, guided reading, and reading aloud.…