Classroom teachers and administrators often see the writing lab as a simple extension of the classroom experience, rather than as the tutorial practice that it should be with interactive one-to-one teaching. Students should be acting participants, spending at least 50% of lab time talking, questioning, trying out, practicing, and composing. Tutors…

In 1986, New York City's summer Preparation for Raising Education Performance (PREP) program operated for the fifth consecutive year. Summer PREP is designed to ease incoming students' transition into high school and to provide instruction in basic writing skills. The program also provided theme-based instruction, enrichment, and guidance services…

This report examines whether cooperative learning can be used to promote individual achievement, and identifies conditions under which a benefit can be expected. Two experiments were conducted at the Quartermaster School, Fort Lee, Virginia. The first experiment compared test performance of 280 trainees after they had completed practical exercises…

A first-hand account of eighth grade students' experiences in learning to write, this monograph, written by students, provides teachers and students with a model for talking about the writing process. The comments in the monograph reflect the students' belief that people can learn to be good writers by writing frequently, sharing their writing and…

In January 1983, Hamline University received a grant from the Exxon Corporation for a computer literacy faculty development project which involved three main activities: faculty workshops, faculty development projects, and hardware/software/courseware acquisitions. A series of four faculty workshops were offered during the 2-year grant period;…

As part of its peer tutor training program, the writing/reading center at a Massachusetts University conducts a videotape production workshop in which experienced tutors plan, write, and act in a video script used for training new tutors. To proceed with such a program requires no professional skills or special talents, but a television studio…

Contractual revision promotes cooperation between teachers and tutors and, being student initiated, provides a method to increase student control over the revision process and encourage students to communicate their strengths and weaknesses in writing to their teachers or tutors. The contractual revision process requires students to form contracts…

Efforts in higher education to use students as teachers (peer teaching), thus providing them with the benefits traditionally enjoyed by professors are described. Four sections focus on the following: (1) peer teaching and the psychological basis for its benefits (cognitive level, affective level, and peer learning); (2) types of peer teaching used…

Writing instruction reflects a growing appreciation of the value of talk. By implementing peer writing groups, teachers encourage students to give, seek, and react to oral feedback among themselves as they write, in addition to reacting to the teacher's traditional comments on finished papers. Collaboration in writing groups provides writers with…

Following a year-long study, model procedures were developed for eight pairs of peer coaches and inservice elementary school teachers to modify reading instruction practices to improve reading comprehension. Specific teaching behaviors were chosen to determine whether coaches could encourage teacher clients to: (1) incorporate more direct teaching…

This presentation offers a design for developing a long term staff improvement program using the talents available in a small or rural school district with low financial resources, limited personnel time, and difficulty in obtaining outside training. The plan focuses on improving teaching skills through a participatory structure involving peer…

In this action research study, research findings related to developing children's prosocial behavior were discussed at a seminar with parent/teachers in a cooperative nursery school to determine if post-seminar parent/teacher intervention would lead to increased prosocial behaviors in the children. Forty-seven children in the nursery school were…

The role of tutoring services in special programs designed to meet the needs of non-traditional community college students was studied through a review of the literature on history of tutoring programs, the development of special programs to meet the remedial, developmental, and compensatory education needs of underprepared students, special…