Describes a former superintendent's disconcerting swim in the teacher candidate pool while trying to find a teaching position without "pulling strings." After landing a job teaching 36 fifth graders, he soon realized that espousing methodologies is very different from actually doing them. Allowing students more responsibility for their learning…

This article describes the structure and operation of three literature seminars offered in the English curriculum at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities. The seminar approach puts the responsibility on the student and fosters creativity, thinking skills, and problem solving. The seminars include:…

An integrated topic approach (on Theseus and the Minotaur) was used to develop creative writing skills of children (ages 12 and 13) with health- and stress-related disorders at a special school in England. Three elements of the topic (presentation, action, and interaction) were developed through which individual assessment, collaboration, and…

Learning activities to develop skills in various curriculum areas including language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science are presented, focusing on the theme of education in centuries past. Sample activities include contrasting the Spartan and Athenian educational systems and using Pestalozzi's charts for math functions. (DB)

Although the Great Flood of 1993 has dramatically reminded us never to take rivers for granted, it has also underlined the need to learn more about rivers and the environment in general. Rivers Project, an interdisciplinary high school curriculum, allows science, social studies, and English teachers to integrate curriculum in a way that encourages…

This article demonstrates how teachers can use integrated curricular experiences incorporating art, literature, and drama to help middle school students with learning disabilities acquire content area concepts and reading skills. The instructional model is explained and illustrated with a study unit on the desert. (DB)

Discusses a theme-based project (third in a four-part series from the California Academy of Mathematics and Science) provoking critical thinking concerning meeting human needs through technology. Notes that students were "transported" back into the Middle Ages and had to raise money for their travel back to the future using science, mathematics,…

Suggests ways in which teachers, supervisors, and administrators can cooperatively support literature-based practices across the curriculum. Discusses a positive professional attitude, workshop structure, improving student attitudes, thematic units, team teaching, and assessing success. (SR)

Focuses on three approaches to integrated instruction: (1) literature-based; (2) theme-based; and (3) project-based. Each approach is explained and illustrated through descriptions of successful classroom examples. Literature-based integration utilizes a story to build a unit, thematic units are built around a topic, and project-based integration…

Evaluates the effects of the scaffold explanation-based approach to collaborative discussion on students' understanding of photosynthesis. Forty-eight fourth- and fifth-grade students were divided into groups of high, average control (AC), and average intervention (AI). Students worked collaboratively and individually on two reasoning tasks.…

Describes a theme-based language course for science students at a South African university. Suggests that acquisition of language for science and technology should be regarded as acquisition of a range of literacies of science rather than acquisition of skills or grammatical features. (Author/VWL)

At a Quito elementary school, the biggest challenge facing teachers was developing a curriculum that supports child-centered learning, a new concept for Ecuador's traditional society. To strengthen their own teaching and involve parents, a bilingual group of teachers began by collaborating among themselves. The result was a thematically oriented…

Offers guidelines for enhancing science instruction for students with disabilities by adapting, implementing, and assessing an activities-based approach. This approach features a structured learning cycle, emphasis on the relationship of science to students' lives, experiential learning, interdisciplinary themes, cooperative learning groups,…

An inner-city Omaha high school created an untracked, wholly desegregated 2-year thematic science curriculum for all 9th and 10th graders. Under the outdoor community study theme, students participate in a simulated archaeological dig of an Omaha Indian earth lodge, study the school grounds' ecological status, and design areas along a proposed…

Describes a lesson on the Gilded Age that focuses on eight themes (urbanization, the rise of Jim Crow, populism, politics, immigration, Westward expansion, industrialization, and imperialism) and also incorporates Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences model in order to provide students with various types of learning activities. Gives a list of…