A practicum was designed to improve students' manual keyboarding composition skill. A program was developed to integrate the other requisite skills of well-written composition, accurate punctuation and grammar, and fastidious proofreading in a structured, progressive plan. The 25 students in the Typing I Business Fundamentals class, a keyboarding…

This practicum addressed the problem of families having insufficient skills and resources necessary for locating information about the physical, socioemotional, and academic development of their young children in an early intervention program. The practicum's goal was to help parents acquire these necessary skills and resources. A family resource…

This practicum was designed to solve a problem related to the provision of a computer training component for students enrolled in an early childhood education teacher training program. Increasing pressures on graduates of the training program to integrate computers and educational software into programs for young children as well as the students'…

An attempt was made to increase selected aspects of critical thinking skills of children in a school-age child care program through staff planning of specific program activities using typical activities that would normally occur in these programs. Increased staff members' awareness of their role in facilitating the development of children's…

The goals of this practicum were to: (1) create more suitable and stimulating structured environments that would engage severely/profoundly handicapped children in positive play situations in the classroom and in the home, and (2) teach parents and caregivers how to identify age appropriate and developmentally appropriate playthings. Inservice…

A program was developed for six kindergarten students identified as at risk because of developmental delays. The program involved an hour of instruction after the regular school day, 2 days a weeks for a 10-week period, with a curriculum focusing on visual, auditory, and motor development. Specific skill areas included visual motor coordination,…

Objectives of this practicum were to: increase student knowledge of how to use the Internet to carry out research; improve the competency of teachers, thereby enabling them to teach students to use Internet resources; and develop an instructional unit that could be used by students, teachers, and librarians to facilitate use of the Internet to…

Kindergarten teachers are not receiving instruction in computer literacy, and the kindergarten curriculum does not include instruction in use of computers. A practicum project addressed the problem of bilingual (Spanish-English) kindergarten teachers who did not know how to use computer word processing programs. Major goals of the project were to…

A practicum was designed to improve the oral/aural vocabulary which would eventually improve the reading vocabulary of second language learners. The practicum, implemented in a second grade by a media specialist who counted on the cooperation of the classroom teacher, consisted of a read-aloud program in which the students read daily from a…

This practicum sought to combat the problem of decreasing readiness skills and overall general knowledge of entering kindergarten students, by developing and implementing an integrated parent involvement program for regular and special education classes in preschool and kindergarten. The first phase involved parents and children in a home-based…

This qualitative and quantitative study focused on two groups of preschoolers (ages 4-6) enrolled in rural special education classes. The study specifically examined children's planful behaviors and the relationship of planfulness to learning as exhibited through play. Also examined were children's planning levels when planning was explicitly…

This practicum was designed to integrate a module on classroom management into a university student-teaching program. The primary goal was to assist student teachers in increasing the teaching and learning time in their elementary school classrooms through prevention of inappropriate behavior. Through the use of specific skills, the student…

In this practicum, 10 children (ages 6 and 7) with hearing impairments or language delays participated in a 12-week program designed to involve students in the total process of goal setting and achievement, including deciding on necessary materials, designing and following a plan to reach the goal, and producing a product. Parents became involved…

This practicum aimed to provide nonverbal students with a communication program to increase expressive language for daily living skills. Target students were four children (ages 6 to 7) with cerebral palsy. The practicum involved introducing children to pleasurable activities that encouraged communication behaviors, showing the children…

This paper describes a practicum designed to increase the stress management skills of 10 special educators working in a juvenile detention center. Teachers at the juvenile detention center were taking an inordinate amount of sick leave and engaging in behaviors that were counter-productive to their delivery of educational services to detained…