In a decade and a half, the charter school movement has gone from a glimmer in the eyes of a few Minnesota reformers to a maturing sector of America's public education system. Now, like all 15-year-olds, chartering must find its own place in the world. First, advocates must answer a fundamental question: What type of relationship should the…

Students learn how to write in English class, but they seem shocked when they are told that they can put those skills to work in science class too, since writing is a huge part of science to communicate ideas, results, conclusions, and opinions to other scientists. The author of this article, a middle school science teacher, describes how he uses…

In order to help students to make connections in science and literacy through writing, the authors present them with an open-ended question (OEQ), which is a divergent assessment in the form of a writing prompt (a situation), and directions for writing at the beginning of each major unit. Students complete this assessment by the end of the unit.…

This guide for college teachers, written from a British perspective, focuses on economic and efficient practices for assessing students. The guide groups various practices under 10 major strategies: (1) decide whose interests assessment is serving; (2) avoid over-sampling the course; (3) avoid over-questioning; (4) avoid over-reading student work;…

Describes how a college professor incorporates "commonplace books" into his courses, with reading and writing the focal practices in curriculum studies classrooms. He defines commonplace books as collecting places for various writings related to the courses. The books represent fragments of a variety of experiences in a variety of…

Summarizes the debate that has taken place about publication or non-publication of writing by college students that is produced in conjunction with a journalism course assignment. (RB)

A data based method for mainstreaming involving 120 elementary students (grades 1 through 5) enrolled in a resource room was utilized. Ss were monitored to find the percent of assignments they were completing in their regular classroom, and to determine the feasibility of using this data base to identify students who were not achieving, and to…

The assignment described in this paper is an attempt to provide speech communication students with some training and experience in interviewing. Following discussion of the objective and rationale for conducting an interview and reporting information from an interview, guidelines are offered to help students with selecting subjects or content…

Compares J. Agee's film reviews for "Time" and "The Nation," concluding he assumed a more knowledgeable, sophisticated audience in readers of "The Nation." Analyzes content, style, and structure of reviews, showing loose structure, deductive reasoning, and rambling style in "Nation" reviews, and coherent,…

Suggests, on a humorous note, a game-plan for assignment justification and elaboration that utilizes, in a constructive and professional manner, the best of what is known about assignment-making. (EL)

Describes what students' think a failing paper reveals about their writing ability. (DD)

The data from this study did not exhibit any biases with respect to how students were assigned to the curriculum tracks that exist in the high school under study. (RC)

Substantially updated for today's world, this second edition offers chapters on 12 different categories of writing, each of which is briefly introduced with a definition, notes on appropriate writing strategies, and suggestions for using the book to locate topics. Types of writing covered include description, comparison/contrast, process,…