Law-related education works best when teachers abandon manuals and prepackaged teaching modules for teaching strategies that tap each student's prior knowledge and relevant life experiences. Ten themes are suggested, along with six teaching components (knowledge competencies, motivating and learning activities, curriculum correlation, relation to…

Presents an extended sequence of reading and writing assignments using John Hersey's "Hiroshima" to introduce composition students to the nature of interpretation, understanding, and composing. Stresses learning through enactment. (RAE)

Gardendale (Florida) Elementary Magnet School is a single-track, year-round elementary school with a four-theme magnet program, actually four magnet schools under one roof. There are schools of performing arts, math and science, arts and cultures, and microsociety. Success hinges on team leadership, strategic planning, and an active governance…

Uses the medium of descriptions of TV movies to describe how thematic teaching can be achieved in the different academic disciplines. Presents specific theme ideas. Discusses how an actual activity of TV movie summary descriptions emphasizes vocabulary development and reading comprehension. Describes specific reading skills promoted by this…

Describes an English teacher's successful "guided independent reading" program for reluctant adolescent readers. She teaches her classes around large themes, chooses mirroring student interests, allows in-class reading periods, and monitors student progress. Students then work in groups to present their book to the rest of the class.…

Describes the Viva Kids! Program, in an inner-city elementary school in Florida, in which students create and produce their own opera, engendering great enthusiasm and giving students a new sense of responsibility. (SR)

Profiles curriculum reform efforts at a Spanish Harlem school participating in a diverse, 150-member Basic School Network inspired by Ernest L. Boyer's work. Curriculum is constructed around eight commonalities: the life cycle, use of symbols, group membership, sense of time and space, aesthetic responsiveness, connections to nature, production…

Explores two mathematics teachers' ways of employing theme-based resources in their lessons. Provides a detailed look at how teachers of diverse pedagogic orientations use thematic contexts in their teaching of mathematics. (Contains 39 references.) (Author/ASK)

Concept webbing allows teachers to introduce simple concepts, building upon them to introduce more complex concepts, allowing for the natural integration of expanding intellectual functions. Concept webbing can be a vehicle for recording curriculum, assures that both teacher and students see relationships, incorporates the advantages of thematic…

Describes the evaluation of the Introductory University Physics Project (IUPP). This project tested four model curricula of calculus-based introductory physics at nine sites. A brief project description and details of the project evaluation plan, implementation, and analysis are included. Contains 31 references. (DDR)

Presents the results of the evaluation of the Introductory University Physics Project (IUPP). Evaluation data from four model curricula indicate that students perceive demonstrations as beneficial to learning and that students respond to a coherent theme approach to instruction by exhibiting increased levels of interest. (DDR)

When required to interpret works of art, students arrive at a broad-based, well-grounded understanding of the nature, value, and meaning of art in their lives. Teachers should offer art works, like those of Amalia Mesa-Bains, Joseph Stella, and Beverly Buchanan, whose narratives are complex and challenging, but not conceptually dense or…

When art, music, and poetry are integrated into the art room, children can confront difficult themes in works of art and process information in highly personal ways (Jewitt & Kress, 2003). An arts classroom gives children the time and place to confront images of war and violence and decode the multiple levels of meaning (Arnold, 1997) found within…

This article clarifies early childhood curriculum organizer terminology. Three main words used to describe curriculum: units, projects and themes are featured. A historical evolution and defining characteristics of each term are included to elucidate definitions so professionals can use common jargon.

This article focuses on two key themes in the four featured reviews on evidence-based assessment. The first theme is the essential role of theory in psychological assessment. An overview of this complex, multilayered role is presented. The second theme is the need for a common metric with which to gauge the utility of specific psychological tests…