A volunteer program coordinator developed and implemented an 8-month practicum study that provided opportunities for interaction between 20 elderly adult tutors--residents of 2 senior citizen facilities--and 37 fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students at five elementary schools in low- and middle-class metropolitan black communities. The tutoring…

A practicum study was planned and implemented by a working mother for the purpose of developing a child care resource and referral agency in an eastern metropolitan area. The objective of the practicum was to increase the number of child care referrals available to working families by 10 percent over a 10-week period. Of the 110 surveys mailed to…

A licensed counselor working in a privately owned mental health facility implemented a practicum study designed to improve the parenting skills and quality of family communication in families with children between 3 and 14 years of age. Practicum goals were to: (1) give parents information that would improve their parenting skills; and (2)…

A preschool director designed and implemented a classroom safety curriculum plan to increase the safety knowledge of preschool children. Implemented for 10 weeks, the plan consisted of classroom lessons, hands on practice, and activities for music, art, and language development. Parent education articles were sent home to reinforce what the…

A program was conducted to improve the quality of food service through the training of 44 food and nutrition service employees in a 200-bed hospital. A 12-week quality control program was implemented to address four key areas: food temperatures, food accuracy, food quality, and dietary personnel. Learning strategies, emphasizing critical thinking…

A project developed a plan to improve oral reading in 12 mentally handicapped adults by stressing observation of punctuation marks, reading in phrases, using proper volume, and increasing confidence levels. Identifying the parts of a book and identifying new words were also included. The 12 students were reading below their potential, as shown by…

This practicum report presents a plan to reduce referrals for psychological evaluations in the schools in Dade County, Florida. Three goals of the plan are identified: (1) to reduce the backlog of referrals in three elementary schools; (2) to improve the placement rate of those students who are referred; and (3) to help teachers identify children…

This practicum was designed to enhance the academic achievement of high school students in English in a suburban community in southeastern New England. Through a 12-week program of study skills introduced in the English 9 collaborative classroom, the practicum aimed to enable students to recognize their best learning strategies. A pre- and…

Over a l0-week period, an elementary school teacher designed and implemented a practicum study intended to help a target group of 24 kindergartners develop crucial mathematical problem-solving skills and to prepare them for taking the Stanford Achievement Test. The objective was addressed through implementation of direct instruction, modeling,…

This study examines courses in the marketing program at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College to compare the academic performance of students in traditional and learning community classroom settings. Two sections of students, a traditional 17-week course and a block scheduled 5-week course, served as the sample in the study. The block scheduling…

A research project addressed the high unemployment rate of Workers' Compensation claimants by the formation of a job-seeking club. Unemployment statistics for this population were compiled. Five percent of the workers were skilled, 14 percent semiskilled, and 60 percent unskilled; 84 percent were male, 91 percent were white, and almost half lacked…

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…

The purpose of this practicum was to develop an on-site training program for latchkey family day care home providers. Practicum objectives were to (1) develop a pilot project involving three family day care homes in Pinellas County, Florida; (2) assist caregivers in meeting the annual training requirements; (3) design and implement, on-site, a…

A kindergarten teacher designed and implemented a practicum for increasing the oral language competence of 20 kindergartners in an inner-city public school. Goals were to improve children's receptive and expressive language abilities, social skills, and mastery of kindergarten curriculum objectives, and to increase parent involvement. A whole…

The significant number of firefighter trainees experiencing performance evaluation anxiety during fire training school was addressed by the implementation of anxiety reduction and performance enhancement strategies. Audiotape recordings were chosen as the primary intervention medium to facilitate program effectiveness within an established fire…