This paper describes one teacher's use of a videotaped mystery series to stimulate students' entries in dialogue journals. Students are shown an episode of the mystery in class and are then asked to write a personal response to it. The aim of the journals is to enhance student confidence and writing skills. Results of an analysis of the journal…

A study investigated the features of discourse in the written student-teacher interaction in dialogue journals. It was assumed that such an activity would encourage the negotiation of meaning and roles, and that the data would provide evidence of that negotiation. Data were drawn from 32 journals written by 16-to-18-year-old students in an Italian…

The purpose of this research with teacher education students was to explore the value of writing reflective journals. Data came from interviews, surveys, and informal conversations with students in an educational psychology course. The students were first asked if writing the journals helped them to reflect on their established beliefs, then…

A study examined the use of dialectic (Learning) journals in a grade 3 social studies class during the 1993-94 school year. The topic was "Communities Need Each Other," and categories used for the journals were: (1) What I Learned; (2) What It Means; (3) What It Means To Me and My Family; and (4) What It Means To The World. The eight subjects…

Olfactics and an individual's perceptions of different scents play an important role in interpersonal communication. People first notice the feeling or emotion they get from a particular odor before thinking of it cognitively, first recognizing whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. The determination of whether a scent is pleasant or unpleasant is…

A practicum was developed to help preservice teachers practice reading theories learned in the college classroom during the three-week field experience portion of the class. Preservice teachers at a Christian college in a small, rural, midwestern town had few opportunities to implement theories learned during field experience. A literature review…

A preliminary study examined the experiences and perceptions of experienced teachers about writing and gathered feedback about teaching practices involving direct instruction in process writing. Subjects, 30 experienced elementary teachers enrolled in a graduate-level course on theories of teaching reading and writing, completed a survey about…

This study examined several aspects of elementary science students' achievement, attitudes, and journal writing in conjunction with an Alabama Hands-on Activity Science Program (HASP) grant utilizing the Full Option Science System (FOSS) kit. The sample of 56 fourth grade students in two classes was administered a 15-item pretest and post-test.…

The 18 brief articles contained in this booklet reflect an attempt by science and math teachers in Nevada to explore ways to rekindle the exhileration of discovery for themselves and their students that began with the knolwedge explosion that followed the launching of Sputnik in 1957 but that was eventually washed away in a flood of…

A study examined how teacher educators' goals, objectives, and class procedures were affected by using portfolios to promote critical thinking about teaching and learning, and how these instructional decisions were mediated and negotiated by the socio-professional context. Six teacher educators implementing a pilot portfolio program recorded their…

Designed to tap the rich collection of instructional techniques in the ERIC database, this compilation of lesson plans focuses on reading and writing activities for use in the high school science and math classroom. The 43 lesson plans in this book cover writing about science, reading about science, the vocabulary of science, short scientific…

The authors of this essay regularly require students to engage in informal writing as a means to promote learning. One form of informal writing is the summary/reaction journal. In summary/reaction journals, students read a chapter or article, write a summary of that reading, and then react by offering their own insights and responses to the…

Based on the premise that reading and writing are social acts in which teachers and children together share the books and authors they enjoy and their own composing in the various genres, this book (one of a series) focuses on using nonfiction to develop a literate classroom. The book highlights a series of "action experiments" designed for…

Reader-response journals were successfully employed in a "Reading Shakespeare" course for non-majors, making literary tradition accessible to students untrained in classical rhetoric. Students were encouraged to employ any combination of four approaches. First, students were invited to ask questions about the language, sequence of…

Elements from literary, composition, and reader-response theory can be successfully combined in teaching an African-American literature class to college students of the dominant culture. Helping students to decode texts is of primary importance, best done by introducing students to the cultural codes used by minority writers to shape their themes.…