The authors discuss the "thematic literacy bags" project they created to help them integrate language arts across the curriculum, promoting differentiated instruction while taking into account various learning styles and multiple intelligences. This idea became a reality when they were awarded a local grant to develop innovative educational…

Exemplary teaching is directed to the essences of a lesson theme and provides possibilities for successfully implementing the essential conditions for educative and formative tasks. A particular example is not chosen to serve as a first learning step but because the essence of a greater whole is reflected in it. This gives teaching a depth where…

Math Journey, a creative, mathematical trip centered around a theme, can be integrated into a school's existing science and social studies curriculum. A teacher would only need a copy of their school's curriculum to design his or her Math Journey. In this article, the author discusses several strategies on how to integrate Math Journey into…

This study sought to explore the teaching practices of lecturers within one department of a university-level institute of education in Hong Kong. A sample of 19 teachers were interviewed in the study. Short interview schedules were designed to elicit teachers' descriptions of how they taught and the thinking behind their pedagogical practices. A…

A practicum addressed second graders' negative attitudes and habits toward recreational reading. Students were not reading for pleasure at school or at home. A recreational reading program, which used a variety of thematic units, was implemented. Subjects were 20 second graders (mostly Hispanics) in an inner city school. Several innovative…

This book, which uses nursery rhymes as its literature base, represents a non-threatening approach to beginning reading for children in kindergarten through grade 3. The book uses a variety of cross-curricular activities which are built around four familiar nursery rhymes. The book's introduction describes how each rhyme may be used over a 5-day…

Written for teachers who are interested in learning how to use literature to enhance emergent literacy growth, this handbook, in two volumes, focuses on how to implement integrated, literature-based, thematic units that stress the development of effective strategies required of independent, self-directed competent readers and writers. The first…

Suggesting that teachers who encourage students to use many kinds of trade books across the curriculum are likely to be rewarded with students who are excited about learning, this fastback focuses on using children's literature across the curriculum. The fastback discusses reader response theory, connecting the curriculum through literature,…

This book is a captivating whole-language thematic unit about the study of insects, relating it to our understanding of the past and our hopes for using our knowledge in the present to balance the ecosystem in the future. It contains a wide variety of lesson ideas and reproducible pages designed for use with intermediate students. At its core,…

This resource book is one in a series containing lesson plans for grades 1-3 designed to support children's literature books sharing familiar social studies themes. "Around the World" presents eight different children's books related to the theme. For each book social studies concepts are presented, followed by four activities called "windows."…

In this instructional guide, architect Frank Lloyd Wright becomes the focus of interdisciplinary lessons intended for use with elementary level students. The text is organized in 2 sections. Section 1 provides an 8 chapter biography and study of Wright. The second section gives 21 lesson activities in foods, natural science, geometry, patterns,…

This practicum paper presents a thematic K-12 social studies curriculum to meet an expressed need of social studies teachers of a school corporation to upgrade the teaching of social studies. The teachers wanted the subject to be more relevant to students' lives and to incorporate a more holistic approach. Content overview of the K-12 currriculum…

This report discusses some of the characteristics and benefits of an interdisciplinary curriculum, as well as practical considerations involving the introduction of such a curriculum in elementary and secondary schools. To successfully introduce an interdisciplinary curriculum, teachers and administrators need to: (1) integrate the curriculum; (2)…

This paper presents information on using the Internet (electronic mail, listservs, world wide web sites, and gopher servers) to teach English in a transdisciplinary context by linking subjects thematically. The paper discusses how the Internet allows students to compose for a real reason and for a real audience. It also discusses listservs and…

These guidelines are designed to help teachers and school districts answer questions related to the national history standards as they develop their own local curriculum. The work is built upon the original guidelines from the Bradley Commission on History in the Schools. This booklet is divided into two parts: (1) "Introduction"; and…