Discusses the importance of children's literature in kindergarten math instruction, noting it is rich with opportunities for children to think and reason. The article explains how teachers can find math connections in children's books and then select books. It describes two books appropriate for literature-based math lessons. (SM)

Explains how elementary teachers can help students understand onomatopoeia, suggesting that they define onomatopoeia, share examples of it, read poems and have students discuss onomatopoeic words, act out common household sounds, write about sound effects, and create choral readings of onomatopoeic poems. Two appropriate poems are included. (SM)

Physical educators can use picture books with elementary students to introduce skills and concepts, stimulate creative movement, and integrate learning around themes. Books provide students the opportunity to better understand how movement relates to the world. The article looks at specific books, explaining how they can enhance learning. (SM)

Choral speaking is one way to introduce elementary students to poetry and the performing arts, providing a quick and easy way to foster precise diction and voice projection. The article explains how to select poems, direct the activity, get started, and be creative. Includes several poems to help teachers get started. (SM)

Describes how to use "Poetry Poker," a strategy that allows the student to write a poem by playing cards. Discusses how each student/player is dealt five cards on which are written one sentence of poetry per card and how the student/player then must arrange the cards into the order desired to form a complete poem. (PA)

Presents 20 suggestions on how to keep students interested in their classroom learning logs and to make the logs an effective classroom tool. The list notes different approaches students can take when writing about what they have learned. (SM)

Describes how to boost elementary students' confidence and nurture responsibility by making students resident experts at review stations. Students rotate from station to station where the experts are learning at their own pace, spending more time on material they do not understand, and receiving personal attention and immediate feedback. (SM)

Having students create personalized stationery is a good way to promote student writing. Children of all ages can design computer-generated stationery in just a few steps using predrawn or original graphics and a variety of typefaces. The article describes three programs that enable students to create stationery. (SM)

Responds to comments about, and critiques of, his own article on radical pedagogy. Outlines major points of contention raised by other commentators and responds to them, including matters of definition, power relations in the classroom, and tempering radical theory with pragmatism. (DSK)

One strategy for enhancing cognitive outcomes in physical education (PE) is placing PE learning centers in elementary classrooms. The center should have games (e.g., board games, card games, and puzzles) that were created or modified to focus on PE concepts. The article describes two board games created for use in PE learning centers. (SM)

This article presents hands-on, experiential science activities that use mittens to teach elementary students about classification and insulation. The first involves children sorting mittens. The second has them find out for themselves why mittens keep their hands warm. Across-the-curriculum activities are also described. (SM)

Presents a teaching idea to help elementary students gain a sense of the passage of 2,000 years. This time line lesson has students learn when the millennium began, create a personal time line with strips of adding machine tape (marking the tape with their major life events), create a historical time line, then create a 2,000-inch millennium time…

As the class is learning new names and new faces at the beginning of the school year, it's the perfect time to have fun with names and learn some math concepts at the same time. This document describes examples of different number games that can be played with students.

This article describes the author's experiences as a student participating in a general education program called "Reacting to the Past," in which college students play elaborate games set at pivotal moments in the past, their roles informed by great texts. She found that the experience of reenacting pivotal historical moments produced an intensely…

A group of science coordinators in the London Borough of Newham decided that they wanted to create an exciting, stimulating and creative curriculum for teaching science across key stages 1 and 2 (5-11 year-olds). They were motivated to do this because they were concerned about an overloaded curriculum, dominated by literacy and numeracy, with…