Ten "do's" and eight "don'ts" for beginning teachers to use to enhance the classroom atmosphere and forge a bond of confidence between teacher and student are outlined. The suggestions, based on experience, are designed to help the teacher avoid pitfalls and use positive strategies from the first day of class. (MSE)

Teachers often have difficulty responding to emotionally upset children in ways that help the students solve their problems. Examples of commonly used "put-downs and put-offs" and suggested techniques that teachers can use to lend emotional support are offered. (DF)

Findings are presented from a study of the interactive effects of sex and race on teacher communications patterns in 67 classrooms. ANOVAs revealed two significant main effects for race, five for sex, and three significant race/sex interactions. Previous research literature is summarized. (Author/MT)

Provides ways for teachers to make ninth-grade general mathematics courses more pleasant and productive. (MD)

Reviews the literature on teacher clarity and communication skills, then describes a study showing that teachers must be trained in ways to reduce vagueness terms, mazes, multiple utterance questions, and overall frequency of questions posed to students. (FL)

Developing a classroom environment where students share their ideas, feelings, and perceptions can be a challenge for the teacher. Language acquisition begins in the home and many teachers are finding ways to incorporate key aspects of the home environment into communication activities in school. Computer software that may expand the communicative…

Content or subject matter, interpersonal relationships, and symbolic means of representing meaning are interacting elements that affect language use. The elements have been described as the field, tenor, and mode of discourse. The influence of these concepts on what children write, why they write, and for whom they write are explored. (DF)

Describes instances in which conversation topics are audibly formulated in a classroom during a one-hour science lesson and how this task may be problematic for both participants and analysts of classroom talk. (HTH)

Some concepts to help teachers adhere to classroom instruction in the target language are presented and discussed. These include ideas related to the teacher's speech (visual cues, speed, and repetition and rephrasing), student speech (teacher-assisted and student-dominated communication), out-of-class assignments, and teacher assessment of…

Experimentally tests for direction of causality in negative correlations previously found between a measure of teacher control of conversation and measures of deaf primary school children's initiative and loquacity. Results show that as teachers change style, their students follow them, exhibiting changes in initiative and mean length of turn. (RH)

Scapegoating in the classroom is a destructive problem that disrupts the social life of the class. Suggestions are offered in the form of a fable to help both the outcast and those who victimize. (DF)

Presents an analysis of good and bad teaching practices through the perceptions of students and teachers in an Australian Catholic boys' school. Investigates ways teachers negotiate order in the classroom. (MD)

Using the example of a teacher preparing a science review, describes the necessary elements of successful classroom writing. Students' interests, controlled vocabulary and sentence structure, and logic and clarity in the prepared material are stressed. (CJM)

This report describes a program that enhanced vocabulary development and communication within the content area of mathematics. The targeted population was a rural K-12 school district located in the Midwest approximately an hour from three major metropolitan cities. Evidence for the existence of the problem included teachers' observation,…

This booklet presents the high school assessment program for algebra by listing Maryland's Core Learning Goals. The match of content indicators and the skills for successful elaborations in thinking, communication, and technology regarding algebra are discussed. (ASK)