Appalled by his junior-high students' low morale and underachievement, a spiritually grounded African-American teacher realized that self-worth and achievement must grow together. He attacked problem attitudes affectively by building students' self-esteem and cognitively by building their linguistic skills. He raised performance expectations and…

Describes the North Central Educational Service District (Washington) Priority Hispanic Certification program for training bilingual teachers. Begun in 1993, the program finds, trains, and certifies bilingual paraprofessionals and foreign-trained teachers to fill the need for bilingual teachers in central Washington schools. Teacher training…

Discusses the possibilities for pleasure, community, and collective meaning making among fifth- and sixth-grade students and various adults (teachers, parents, and school staff) during their prolonged engagement with a single literary work, Lois Lowry's "The Giver," as they read and reread the novel, annotating the text with their…

Immigrant English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students in secondary schools can benefit from contact with ESL college students. Their older peers can become mentors and role models, providing access to information on postsecondary education. The article explains how a pen pal project can bring these two groups together and describes how to create…

A study investigated the ability of educationally disadvantaged and limited-English-proficient University of Cape Town (South Africa) students to write about science research projects. Analysis of students' reports showed a strong relationship between task presentation methods, specific task-completion guidelines, and quality of writing. Poor…

Describes how the author, teaching at a South Florida high school with many children of Mexican-American migrant workers, shaped his English instruction in scenarios that reflected students' lives and cultures. Shows how class discussions and assignments probed the worthiness of the language used and the reason why it was successful. Argues that…

Provides six fully developed library media activities that are designed for use with specific curriculum units in reading, language arts, science, and social studies. Library media skills, curriculum objectives, grade levels, resources, instructional roles, procedures, evaluation, and follow-up are described for each activity. (LRW)

Examines the role of reading in the acquisition of French in context, and shows how, in the area of reading, the computer can be transformed into a highly pedagogical teaching/learning tool because of the text retrieval program TACT. (32 references) (Author/CK)

Using data on the 50 countries with the largest numbers of exchange students, trends in international student exchange from 1970-89 are examined. The United States and some Western-developed nations have remained at the center of the network, Asian and Middle Eastern countries have become more central, and African countries have become more…

This study, undertaken to assess the feasibility of the integration of a multimedia learning provision into a university language curriculum, reports results from a questionnaire of 107 undergraduates' attitudes toward the use of a multimedia program. Implications are that multimedia can play a beneficial role in the curriculum and may facilitate…

Student journals are recommended as a technique for encouraging college students to take a deep approach to learning. Literature on their use is reviewed, and considerations in their classroom use are discussed, including the physical form of the journal, grading, error correction, comments, style, privacy, when to use journals, when to read them,…

Illustrates the astonishing coordination of archaeological and scholarly activities surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls. First discovered by Bedouin nomads in 1947, the Scrolls consist of a few complete manuscripts and over 80,000 fragments. Discusses the early Christian sect that produced the Scrolls, and provides current perspectives on the…

This study examined the practices of exemplary elementary teachers of second-language learners. Observations of and interviews with eight teachers found five common practices (engaging in reflective practice; embedding instruction in a respectful context; using current instructional strategies; activating students' prior knowledge; and maintaining…

Recounts the author's experiences teaching writing for several years in the New York city public schools. Relates his changing thoughts, feelings and assumptions about why creative writing matters (or does not matter) to these students. Concludes that writing can help people struggle against suffering and injustice, and it can also give the…

A study of 293 students from one graded and one nongraded elementary school found that primary and intermediate students in the ungraded school performed better in reading and math, and language and spelling, respectively. A second study of 134 students from two graded and two ungraded elementary schools found higher social skills in the nongraded…