Teachers have allowed the social studies and science areas of instruction to become isolated from vibrant language arts skills, resulting in deficiencies in reading and writing skills within the different content areas. An 8- to 10-week biography unit was developed for a fourth-grade social studies course in an attempt to give students a stronger…

This is a compilation of 18 pathfinders (i.e., a bibliographic instruction aid) on black dance in America, prepared by graduate students in the "Information Resources in the Humanities" and the "Information Resources in the Social Sciences" classes in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of…

A faculty member at the University of Toronto (Ontario) developed an informal survey designed to assess her undergraduate students' views of the writing they did during the course of their university studies. The survey consisted of a 2-page questionnaire that could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes; it was administered to 722 students during the…

Beginning with the premise that writing cannot be separated from the subject written about, composition teachers should address themselves to what their students are learning in the process of writing. Some writing courses introduce students to great books but those books are usually written only by white men. Others open students to multicultural…

As the semester progresses, students in an autobiographical writing class at Slippery Rock University (Pennsylvania) develop a new awareness of themselves and their own places in a larger universe as well as an appreciation of themselves as writers. Language theory supports what the instructor observes in her students' writing development. A…

Family stories, told and retold, become important vehicles in shaping the lives of family members. Knowing and understanding family narratives can aid students in understanding their families' histories, communication patterns, and meanings. The stories are a cohesive element for holding the family together, and may also capture the essence of the…

An assignment that has proven successful in teaching "Communication Theories" (a senior-level capstone course at Northern Kentucky University) is "The Application Folder." The goal of the assignment is for students to apply concepts from the course in their everyday life. Students monitor and analyze what they watch, read, and…

The point of view that teachers use in responding to students' writing affects the kinds of dramatized presences that teacher responses create. Such presences make available a range of reading and writing roles that students may adopt or reject. For a dramatic presence to be felt by a reader, a writer must select and sustain a clear means of…

In choosing to have students use the computer in unstructured writing activities, the instructor may prefer to cover basics during classroom sessions and have students use technological aids to expand on these basics in outside assignments. Out-of-class composition assignments force students to create with these basics on their own. Students use…

This instructor's manual provides numerous suggestions for observational activities, out-of-class assignments and evaluative strategies for undergraduate and graduate students, and follows the organization of the textbook, "Applying Educational Psychology in the Classroom." The book is organized into two sections--the instructor's manual and test…

This handbook provides the secondary language arts teacher with a series of meaningful activity options which use the newspaper as the learning resource. The handbook discusses the purposes of language arts education, the advantages of using the newspaper as a resource, and the relationship between the two. Taken from numerous books, kits, guides,…

Three installments of "Writing Assignment of the Month," a regular feature of the National Council of Teachers of English publication, "Notes Plus," are presented in this compilation. The articles describe writing exercises which have proven to be successful in the classroom. The first article gives suggestions for introducing…

Designed for all incoming international students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, this handbook answers questions and offers information and strategies that can be used to make their transition into the U.S. system easier. It explains the expectations, norms, and procedures of the U.S. educational system. The handbook is divided into…

A study examined students' metacognitive response to ambiguous literacy tasks to determine the relationship between that response and academic achievement. Subjects were 11 students chosen from a fifth-grade classroom in a small, urban school serving a predominantly black, middle class neighborhood. Two literacy tasks were identified as ambiguous:…

Issues relating to the design, selection, and evaluation of learning activities have been relatively neglected in educational research and scholarship. This paper identified some fundamental questions in need of scholarly attention, reviews recent research findings, and then offers a conceptual analysis and a tentative list of principles that…