Strategies for choosing themes for theme teaching include limiting subject areas, integrating skills, balancing teacher- and student-generated themes, avoiding cutsey activities, drawing from various arenas, avoiding overly long themes, avoiding yearlong or schoolwide themes, understanding the themes, repeating themes, and borrowing themes from…

Describes problem-based thematic instruction in an effort to give both students and teachers meaningful experiences. (MG)

Presents an overview of an interdisciplinary animal behavior unit on wolves, including aspects of science, social studies, and language arts. Includes sources of wolf information. (MKR)

Describes a project for fifth-grade students that integrates a computer-based project into the regular curriculum--in this case, using a hypermedia program called "Hyperstudio" with an integrated student research project on constellations. (SR)

This chapter from the book "A New View: Economics and the Zoo" makes use of a zoo setting to teach basic concepts of economics. The chapter presents zoo-related learning activities on the concepts of revenue, community support, and philanthropy. (DB)

Presents and explains a framework that can be used to determine the potential authenticity of teaching practices. Describes the potential for authenticity offered by thematic literacy instruction. (SR)

Examines three questions: (1) What are science teachers' belief-based affects concerning the implementation of thematic instruction in the classroom; (2) Do teachers' belief-based affects influence their intent to implement thematic instruction; and (3) Are there any relationships between demographic variables and model variables? (SAH)

Describes a particularly useful theme that reveals the structure of certain scientific explanations relevant to the study of chemistry and provides an example of a theme for an introduction to chemistry. (Author/YDS)

Discusses the implementation of theme-based exams in a one semester, advanced-level general chemistry course for physical science and engineering majors. Presents an example of a theme-based exam given at the beginning of the semester. (Author/CCM)

This article explores how future educational leaders make meaning of the principalship through metaphor. At the conclusion of a university principal preparation program, principal interns were asked to use figurative language to represent the principalship. The metaphors identified four distinct themes: (a) protection and nurturing; (b) skill,…

In this article, the author takes a different approach in teaching U.S. history to young people. His approach is derived from economics but not economics as a long list of concepts embalmed in huge textbooks written for use in Econ 101 and 102. Instead, he suggests, history teachers can do much to improve their instruction by drawing upon a…

Teaching science by means of inquiry-based projects has the potential to transform the science lab into a place of debate and discovery, but teachers run the risk of either leaving students to work too independently or forcing them to be too dependent on our guidance. To counter these challenges, the author implemented changes in the way topics…

In the paper we attempt to address principal issues of political history as part of the political science curriculum today, ranging from "what to teach" to "how to teach." Assuming the necessity in contemporary information society of selecting information rather than only accessing it, we propose approaches, such as topics networking, to create…

This article examines the impact of the Cross thematic approach on Greek and Greek Cypriot secondary education. The major argument put forward is that the Cross thematic approach (CTA) affects not only pedagogy and educational knowledge but teacher professionalism as well. In justifying this argument, the Cross thematic approach is considered as a…

This study examined how instructional challenges presented by gifted students shaped teachers' instructional strategies. This study is a qualitative research grounded in a social constructivist framework. The participants were three high school science teachers who were teaching identified gifted students in both heterogeneously- and…