Presents a variety of materials that can be used to supplement the textbook and to meet some sudden need or instructional purpose. Focuses especially on materials to be used in the classroom to build communicative competence and student interaction. Practice activities illustrate the use of strip stories, logic puzzles, and others. (MES)

Argues that putting children in the questioning role in a discussion leads them to higher levels of thinking. Describes several methods designed to stimulate question creation. (FL)

Writing conferences enable student writers to get feedback and make improvements as they write. Both teachers and students see writing as an evolving process rather than as a unalterable product to be corrected. Tips on how to manage conferences and examples of their use with students are given. (PP)

Techniques for initiating good discussion in class include: examining goals and values, noting concrete images in text, generating questions among students, finding illustrative quotations, small group discussion, generating truth statements, forced debates, role playing, non-structured scene-setting, and eliciting opinoins of the text. (MSE)

Presents abbreviated abstracts of selected documents from the 1979-81 issues of "Resources in Education." Covers the following categories: research studies; analysis systems for the classroom; nonverbal communication in the library; nonverbal deception studies; and teaching nonverbal communication. (PD)

Two high school English teachers disagree on the efficacy of making jokes about racial and cultural stereotypes. (RL)

Transcriptions of 156 recordings of teacher/child interactions were analyzed and teacher verbal moves were described as pedagogical, asides, or providing feedback. The pedagogical moves were subdivided into areas concerned with welfare, directions, providing words, word recognition, phonics, and comprehension. (MKM)

Suggests six verbal techniques, other than direct questions, by which a teacher may promote classroom discussion: declarative statements, declarative re-statements, indirect questions, imperatives, student questions, and deliberate silence. (SJL)

The author states that the lecture is a valuable and necessary teaching method when used to help students synthesize information and understand relationships between concepts and to prepare them for discussion and practice. She offers ten suggestions for improving the effectiveness of the lecture. (MF)

Using the Flanders model, compares verbal interaction patterns in 16 New York City classrooms to determine if these patterns vary according to the social class and racial composition of the student populations. (BE)

Intended as a crash course for teachers of non-English-speaking children, this article provides suggestions for choosing instructional materials, activities that will ease the children into English, and ideas for dealing with the emotional needs of the non-English-speaking child. (Author/SJL)

The two-phase study was designed to (1) create a means whereby preservice teachers could lengthen the time they allow for a student to respond after posing a question; and (2) to study the relationship of want-time as an independent variable and dialogue measure, as a dependent variable. (RE)

Vocal cues which were inconsistent with verbal messages and their effects on teacher credibility were examined. Results suggested that teacher credibility was at least partially dependent upon the degree of verbal vocal consistency in teachers' messages. (Author/MH)

Studies the effects of student-structured (SSLS) and teacher-structured (TSLS) teaching strategies. SSLS students consistently exhibited lower frequencies of teacher dependency behaviors than TSLS students. Need affiliation results varied with the grade level of students. (MA)

Excerpted from "On Teaching," Schocken Books, Inc., New York, 1976. Deals with losing control, being out of control, fatigue and private spaces, as problems related to teacher productivity. (PR)