Intended for public and school librarians, teachers and other school personnel, and community groups working with children to promote an interest in reading, this book contains planning suggestions and activities for developing a reading program around the theme of Merlin the magician and Arthurian legend. The first portion of the book focuses on…

After much discussion and several false starts, Nassau Community College (New York) has developed a two-course core curriculum designed to cover significant material from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities in practical proportions. The first course in the sequence, "Exploring Nature and Society," deals with Perceptions of the…

This article describes a 10-step process for bookwebbing, a method of using a storybook for instruction in a variety of curriculum areas. The process, which is recommended to be used in cooperation with another teacher, is as follows: (1) choose a book which can apply to many curriculum areas; (2) read the whole book; (3) read it again in two or…

Students are faced with many subjects related to death in their everyday lives--war, euthanasia, disease, teenage suicide. A unit on death that focuses on literary and artistic conceptions of death, as well as historical trends concerning beliefs about death and burial, can help students express their feelings about death coherently and…

This curriculum on aging is designed to help promote positive attitudes toward age and aging among young children. It focuses on developing the concepts of: (1) aging is a natural and lifelong process of growing and developing; (2) old and young are similar in many ways; (3) older people are valuable and contributing members of society; (4) old…

A sensitivity to both a story's content and art form can bring children to the understandings and feelings that are basic to the humane encounter that is education. Two approaches seem to dominate the use of stories in schools today. The first is the placement of literary selections in basal readers. However, the ways in which teachers are…

Intended to help teachers integrate the teaching of thinking, reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, this booklet presents five thematic units of study for the language arts. The booklet begins with a rationale for a thematic approach to language arts. The remainder of the paper presents the thematic units, each of which includes a…

Homosexuals are America's largest single "ethnic group," and their literary tradition should be represented in curricula and textbooks. (JH)

For the past several years, the secondary-level literature section of the Hawaii English Project has been working towards an approach to classroom management and materials selection that will allow both structure and individualization. This paper provides guidelines for instituting a system in which the class works in groups of three to five…

Data taken from four studies of behavioristic and humanistic precollege psychology teachers in Florida and Mississippi are examined with respect to the objectives for offering and reasons for taking the psychology course, the topics and content that are and should be included in the course, and the audiovisual and instructional aids that are…

"Death in Literature," a nine-week elective course for high school juniors and seniors, was added to the English curriculum at a Kansas City high school in 1976. It has proved very popular with students and is being expanded to 18 weeks. The explicit objectives of the course are to help students to explore the theme of death in various types of…

The Center for Alternative Teaching Strategies (CATS) is a teaching center funded under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Title IV-C, for the elementary and secondary staff of the Oak Park, Michigan, school district; preservice education students from local universities frequently participate, as well. The project was developed to help…

A composition teacher at a New York City community college where cooperative education is stressed found that focusing the writing of his multiethnic students on the theme of freedom helped them look at their lives differently, revealing the contradictions involved in their beliefs, ideals, and prejudices. The course began with a discussion of…

A standard list of books of special excellence or of particular value to the student of geography is provided. The primary purpose of this annotated bibliography is to offer guidance to librarians in achieving reasonably adequate coverage of the geographic literature in undergraduate colleges in the United States, as well as to aid instructors and…

This paper argues that film courses are useful because they sensitize students both to the artistic qualities of film expression and to equivalent qualities in other forms of expression. The objectives of a film course at Michigan State University are: to develop the students' knowledge of the film medium and through that knowledge develop a…