This guide is designed to assist teachers of multi-age K-2 classrooms in organizing and implementing their classrooms effectively. Section 1, "Understanding the Multi-Age Classroom," describes characteristics of such classrooms, including relevant classroom models, incorporating kindergarten students, grouping students, and developing…

A discussion of English-as-a-Second-Language teaching techniques and approaches for young children focuses on principles found to contribute to successful program development. First, characteristics of successful language immersion programs are outlined: parental involvement and support; students who are members of a majority group; positive…

Britain's National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) are work qualifications that measure what an employee or potential employee can do as well as how much he or she knows and understands about a particular job. Used as written proof of usable workplace skills that can be put to profitable use by an employer, NVQs range from basic Level 1, for…

This report profiles conditions in the lives of children and women in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), and attempts to identify and analyze trends and issues which are emerging in ESA and which have particular significance for UNICEF activities. During the 1980s, ESA experienced unprecedented economic decline due to falling commodity prices and…

The approach taken by one school district to English-as-a-Second-Language instruction, using the whole language approach and simple children's literature, is described. It was determined that the whole language approach would challenge teachers to rethink how children come to know language and literacy and cause teachers to construct new beliefs…

Project Success is a teacher, administrator, and university faculty designed program, aimed to improve teacher motivation and pedagogical skills, student attitudes and achievement, and parent attitudes in science and mathematics education for kindergarten through grade 3. The project used an education program that was self-pacing and…

This study investigated the impact of parents with different language backgrounds on the language acquisition and language competency of their children in the mother tongue, Chinese, and a second language, English, in Singapore. Parents were surveyed on language usage and language materials provided to their children. Exams on vocabulary,…

This study examined the educational development of 22 children (ages 2 to 10), under the supervision of the Cochlear Implant Team of the Medical College of Virginia, who had received implants as a result of deafness (in most cases prelingual and congenital) from 6 months to 3 years prior to the study. Data included a review of the children's case…

This collection of papers examines instructional environments for students with severe disabilities. It points out that two principles should guide the selection of all instructional environments for all types of learners at all stages of instruction: the environment should be the least restrictive environment possible and it should be the most…

The Threshold Project examined the nature of the language and learning difficulties that black Standard Three (Std 3, or grade 5) children in South Africa experience when they change from their mother tongue to English as a medium of instruction and learning, a policy known as "delayed immersion." This report focuses on the first major…

"Scripts" are ways of describing the knowledge a person must have in order to understand the appropriate response in a given situation. In this document, literature on the ways in which children acquire scripts for social behavior through interaction with others is reviewed, and some departures from script theory are discussed. It is…

This study compared Chinese-American and Caucasian-American children and families in order to better understand which cultural and family characteristics, parent beliefs, and parent practices operate at the early childhood level to produce the more uniform high level of math achievement among Asian-American children. Forty second-generation…

This report describes the background, program implementation, student development evaluation, and recommendations of SuperStart Plus, in New York City. SuperStart Plus, a comprehensive integrated prekindergarten program that serves general education and special education children in the same classroom, is designed to provide a developmentally…

This report presents information on selected activities that preprimary children engage in with family members, based on the 1991 and 1993 National Household Education Surveys. Focusing on parent-child activities found to facilitate the development of literacy skills and the motivation to learn, the report examines (1) the changes between 1991 and…

All 18 Washington State Even Start sites participated in the program's evaluation. Site coordinators administered the assessment and evaluation measures to the adults served by the program and to teachers working with children at both entry and exit from the program. An indepth study was conducted of 134 families for whom there were complete sets…