Individual or group presentations are common assignments in business communication courses, and many students use PowerPoint slides as audiovisual support. Frequently, curriculum constraints don't allow instructors much time to teach effective design and delivery of presentation graphics in their courses; guidelines in the form of minilectures or…

Standardized tests are increasingly used to determine students' growth in reading comprehension. In some U.S. school districts, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has led to a focus on multiple-choice questions to better prepare students for these types of tests. Even though such questions can provide some important information, they do not…

The 10 editions of the newsletter provide a forum for the sharing of research findings, observations, instructional strategies, and opinions on subjects pertaining to college level teaching and college faculty. Multiple subjects are discussed in each issue and are often based on recent books. Among the topics covered and the issues in which they…

Reading is one avenue of learning in the vital curriculum area of science. Factual as well as fictional content can be read by pupils in ongoing science units of study. Both fiction and non-fiction provide for attainment of science curriculum objectives emphasizing knowledge, skills, and attitudes. This document discusses teaching methods that…

An action research project set out to increase students' writing fluency and investigate whether writing fluency varies as a function of writing prompts and directions given to students. Subjects were 62 students in a first-grade class, a second-grade class, and a fifth/sixth-grade Special Day class (all in this class are learning disabled) in a…

Popcorn story frames from a multicultural perspective are holistic outlines that in the reading/writing process facilitate comprehension for all cultures learning to read and write stories. Popcorn story frames are structured and modeled in a horizontal fashion just like popcorn pops in a horizontal fashion. The frames are designed for learners…

Writing needs to be given adequate emphasis in the area of social studies. Teachers should attempt to be creative and to assign different kinds of writing in their classes. This paper discusses possible activities for students in a unit on the Middle East to illustrate diverse purposes in writing. An initial assignment could be to ask students to…

This document provides a rationale (theory) and some models (application) to help secondary teachers develop their own "guided assignments"--road maps which offer young readers structured assistance in reading literature. The guide's first section provides a theoretical framework and blueprint for guided assignments. It begins by…

In the many different stages of the writing process, teachers of composition need to be sensitive toward cultural differences which may exist between them and their students. Large numbers of foreign students participate in writing courses in American colleges, and research indicates that the minority student population will increase sharply in…

Mathematics faculty around the United States are using writing assignments in a variety of ways. A mathematics teacher at Alma College, Michigan, has students write mathematical autobiographies, keep a reading logbook, and write letters to other students about the course, letters to instructors about the topics, or about what they do not…

A representative selection for studying African American autobiography as a literary discipline is "A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South" by Anna Julia Cooper, published in 1892. As a literary form, the book is a series of eight essays: four essays about women and their relation to other groups or their place in the…

One of the challenges of a communication instructor is how to initiate the discussion of ethics in the university classroom. The classic film, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," has proved a useful tool for initiating discussion of ethical decision-making in leadership. This film presents a young and idealistic leader of boy ranger clubs…

The traditional basic writing model (giving students manageable writing tasks like narratives and descriptions of familiar places) has been criticized by both Mike Rose and David Bartholomae, among others, for not moving the basic writer far enough toward the goal of academic writing competence. Rose's schemata are reassuring and helpful to basic…

Teaching suggestions and questions on which to build a class discussion are presented regarding concrete poetry. An example of a poem about a bird's feather in which the words are arranged in the shape of a feather is included and is intended as a student handout. In addition to suggestions for student assignments, five sources of concrete poetry…

The purpose of this article is to discuss five different approaches to teaching literature. (RC)