An early childhood education consultant to a Parks and Recreation Department implemented and evaluated a practicum intervention intended to promote active learning by means of a redesigned indoor preschool environment. Additional goals were to improve the behavior and engagement of the children in the environment; increase parental approval of the…

The development of adequate educational programs to provide relevant instruction to train students who will be able to compete for the computer-related jobs of the future requires an understanding not only of the curriculum development process, but also of the capabilities of the computer as an instructional device, the different instructional…

An early childhood educator, serving on the board of a foundation with a nationwide focus on crime prevention among children, implemented a practicum intervention designed to provide crime prevention videotapes for viewing by 6- to 12-year-olds in a high-crime urban area. The general goals of the practicum were to institute a method to develop…

The director of a child care center at a community college in California developed an earthquake preparedness plan for the center which met state and local requirements for earthquake preparedness at schools. The plan consisted of: (1) the identification and reduction of nonstructural hazards in classrooms, office, and staff rooms; (2) storage of…

This practicum addressed the problem of developing and implementing a school-based in-service model that would be facilitated and presented by the elementary school teachers who were to be instructed. A literature review led to the conclusion that successful implementation could be achieved by faculty and staff ownership of the in-service model…

This practicum intervention was designed to increase the academic success of potentially at-risk first graders and train teachers to identify such students. Objectives were to: (1) improve teachers' ability to accurately identify first graders at risk for failing first grade; (2) help parents become knowledgeable about working with at-risk…

An elementary school administrator designed and implemented a 12-week summer program for school-age children that provided educational, recreational, and cultural opportunities. Each week of activities centered on a specific theme. Recreational opportunities included sports activities, outdoor games, organized indoor games, free play, swimming,…

This practicum involved developing and implementing on a pilot basis a clearinghouse for resources on child safety education. The setting was a growing urban county in the Sunbelt. Project goals were to (1) locate local resources for child safety education; (2) establish a computerized database of the resources; (3) develop a system by which…

This practicum paper reports on an effort to address the problem of acting-out, withdrawn, and immature behavior of 15 middle-school special education students during social skills instruction. Classroom behavior-rating checklists, discipline reports, and a student survey provided evidence that these behaviors occurred more during social skills…

A project was undertaken at Jackson State Community College (JSCC), Tennessee, to determine an appropriate plan to develop a disabled student services (DSS) program which would coordinate existing fragmented services and add additional services. A literature review was first conducted to determine legal obligations of the Americans with…

A 10-week practicum intervention was designed to reduce deficiencies in 10 kindergarten children in southwest Florida with poor fine motor skills. The intervention consisted of daily instruction and weekly activity tests. Activities included drawing, tracing, cutting with scissors, pasting, molding with clay, various games, lacing, weaving, and…

This practicum was designed to address the problem of a class of 23 second-graders who were unable to make judgments and support opinions at all levels of Bloom's taxonomy. The goals of the practicum were to design and implement a Critical Thinking Skills (CTS) program that taught students to make judgments and support opinions, and that…

This practicum paper describes the design and implementation of a mentoring program to improve the academic achievement of black male urban high school students. The program utilizes black adult mentors from both the community and the school's faculty. Mentors function as role models, advisers, and resource persons. The program design includes the…

Concern at an elementary school that the level of successful first grade readiness for high risk kindergarten children was 62 percent, while the level of success for non-risk kindergartners was 100 percent, prompted a program for improving the readiness skills of high-risk kindergarten students described in this report. Chapter one describes Stout…

A team of three educators developed and implemented a reading improvement program for first through sixth grade students who displayed discrepancies between their reading achievement and reading abilities. The program involved 283 underachieving students at seven elementary schools. The goal of the program was to provide intervention strategies…