Reports on a four-year-old, team-taught secondary interdisciplinary program that combined English, social studies, biology, and geometry. The course was organized into three phases: (1) the "Paper Chase," teaching learning skills; (2) "Welcome to the Monkey House," which addressed fundamental human issues; and (3) "Phase Out," or personal…

Describes techniques for combining language arts and social studies in a classroom analysis of cereal nutrition, packaging, and advertising. (DD)

Describes a course which encouraged writer-photographer teams to pool their talents to produce articles for publication. (KS)

MACOS (Man: A Course of Study) is one of the few commercially produced curriculums used at Pine Hill High School (Ramah Navajo High School). The core of MACOS is the study of similarities and differences in the life cycles of various animals and people of various cultures. This article discusses how MACOS works in the context of Ramah. (NQ)

Describes the main features, rationale, and goals of the Science, Math, and Social Studies Help (SMASSH) project which provides unified, mutually supportive educational experiences for elementary school children. Describes the learning cycle instructional approach, presents a brief background of the science concepts addressed in these lessons, and…

Presents suggestions for helping elementary teachers learn students' names and helping students feel comfortable in the first week of school while studying mathematics skills related to graphing and data. The activities involve graphing students' names and reading a children's book then creating mathematics activities out of the lead character's…

Describes a teaching experience through student-centered activities in a second year algebra class with gifted and talented students. Concludes that students learned more mathematics than the teacher originally planned to teach. (KHR)

Describes an activity for designing, building, and launching rockets that provides students with an intrinsically motivating and real-life application of what could have been classroom-only concepts. Includes rocket design guidelines and a sample grading rubric. (KHR)

Identifies literature that has the potential to introduce students to the meaning of science, inquiry, and scientists. Discusses the importance of using multiple texts to teach science, reading strategies to introduce the concept of inquiry, literature to extend student understanding of the role of inquiry in science, and the use of this cluster…

Features a mathematics lesson or experiment that models probability using attribute sets and is evolved from reading literature to students. (KHR)

Proposes that when teachers structure the classroom around the student, differentiation starts to happen. Outlines the following suggestions in order to do so: make it meaningful; make it authentic; differentiate content; make it interdisciplinary; and practice what you preach. Concludes that if educators are willing to eliminate ineffective…

Suggests using themes of interest to integrate the curriculum and provide literacy activities instead of studying separate lessons on particular skills. (MG)

Urges English teachers in community colleges to be familiar with and participate in core program curricula, and to design assignments tailored to students' professional needs, thus improving students' motivation and learning. (SR)

Presents a series of lessons for a U.S. history class on Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of America. Notes that this approach teaches students to evaluate critically the historical information presented in their textbooks. (MM)

Reports on a course at Princeton University that aims to cross the disciplinary divisions between the sciences and the humanities. Reviews the course history, which suggests that the difficulties in learning and teaching science derive not from intrinsic characteristics of science but from scientific rhetoric and pedagogy. (TB)