Methods are examined for developing an instructional program in social studies for students with mental disabilities. A natural arena for teaching social studies--the community--provides a setting where basic skills can be applied to increase students' knowledge of the social, economic, and political environments in which they will be…

Based on the Carnegie Foundation study of baccalaureate programs, which found that many colleges are confused as to their mission and are fragmenting the disciplines into smaller and smaller pieces, a case is made for revising the higher education curriculum. Coursework is fragmented because of the growth of specialized fields within the…

The rhetoric program at the University of Iowa is an integrated skills program based on four assumptions: (1) writing and speaking are modes of communication, (2) writing and speaking are equally important, (3) writing and speaking can be taught together, and (4) the administration, relevant faculty, and teachers must believe that writing and…

Intended for content area teachers and faculty, this booklet provides a coherent program for building a school-wide composition curriculum. The first section contains an explanation of the program and its background, including sequence and classroom processes. The major portion of the booklet is divided into three groups of assignments. Group one…

For years, reading teachers in the schools have emphasized word identification skills and believed that reading is comprised of a set of subskills that a child must master before he or she can learn to read. To teach a child to read, however, instruction must focus on comprehension. Therefore, word attack skills should be taught in conjunction…

Several models of the reading and writing processes suggest that the two should be taught together as part of the communication process. The first responsibility of a teacher interested in teaching the connection is the selection of a model that seems to fit perceptions about the connection. Next, the teacher must decide the balance and sequence…

One way of giving students a sense of audience in their writing is to combine speech communication and written communication in the classroom. If students can be taught to write as they talk, they can perceive their audience to be real people rather than the amorphous "indefinite other" they typically write for in the traditional writing…

If college freshmen know something about syntax, have practiced combining and breaking down sentences, and have learned to think in terms of deep structures and surface structures, they may be better able to understand and relieve the discomfort caused by a garbled key sentence structure. Grammar instruction in freshman composition provides a…

Noting that the formal split between instruction in written and oral modes of communication is a relatively recent one, this paper presents arguments against that split--at both the secondary school and the college level--and arguments for instruction in communication. The paper offers a historically based definition of communication, positing…

Despite a professional commitment to "teach ethics," speech communication literature and textbooks contain almost no advice or help on how to accomplish this task. An integrated teaching approach, however, can involve students more directly in the ethical issues that may arise in a persuasion course. The first element in increasing student…

CLASSES WERE DIVIDED EXPERIMENTALLY INTO FIVE OR SIX SMALL GROUPS. EACH GROUP WORKED TOGETHER FOR A PERIOD OF 1 MONTH. EACH OF THE EIGHT PARTICIPATING TEACHERS SELECTED ONE TO SIX PUPILS IN HIS CLASS WHO WERE EITHER DISRUPTIVE OR WITHDRAWN. THESE CHILDREN WERE CALLED THE TARGET PUPILS. THREE TIMES EVERY MONTH THE TEACHER RECORDED THE INTERACTION…

This set of five papers suggests that professors in college philosophy, music, government, and history departments, as well as those in English departments, may be able to teach writing in their disciplines, if only they work at the task. The first paper, written by a member of the English department, provides the rationale for the formation of an…

This document is the fourth volume on the subject of integrated science education in the UNESCO series "The Teaching of Basic Sciences" and reviews the area of evaluation of integrated science education programs. Presented is a thorough review of current knowledge and practice in the field and a wide coverage of material and ideas. The…

The processes of learning to read and learning to calculate are significantly similar to justify an interdisciplinary approach to teaching them. In this book a series of parallels are drawn between mathematics and reading in order to exemplify the similarities in diagnostic procedures, terminology, and skill sequences. Topics covered in the book…