This practicum was designed to improve communication practices among teachers and between teachers and parents in an elementary school. An emphasis was placed on utilizing the writing skills of students to link teachers and parents through a communication partnership. The partnership was accomplished through the expansion of the student reading…

This report describes a program for improving the completion of homework assignments in a seventh-grade mathematics classroom in a large middle school in Rockford (Illinois). The problem of missing homework was noted by the mathematics teacher and confirmed by the other teachers on the seventh-grade team. Analysis of the probable-cause data…

Intended for parent educators, this facilitator's guide outlines a parent workshop on helping children with homework. The guide first presents a framework for both a 1-hour and 2-hour workshop, based on a companion video. The remainder of the guide corresponds to the video, presenting suggestions for discussion prior to and after viewing the…

While teachers traditionally have been evaluated by school administrators, the call for multiple and variable lines of evidence in teacher evaluation has had many proponents. To evaluate the use of multiple judges, teacher ratings from four judges using a common evaluation instrument were compared for 93 teachers from grades three and above.…

The Electronic Homework assistant system is composed of two components: the Computer Tutor and the Homework Administrator. The Computer Tutor is an intelligent tutoring system that can provide personal assistance like supplying hints, checking errors, providing remediation and prioritizing problems. The Homework Administrator is a teacher's…

The Family Kindergarten program designed and pilot tested by a bilingual kindergarten teacher at Garretson Elementary School in Corona, California, is described. Based on the premise that parents are the most important and influential educators of children, Family Kindergarten was conceived as an evening class that includes parents and children…

This study investigated children's practices and ideas or perceptions about self-regulation for two particular aspects of schoolwork: completing homework and learning for a class test. Subjects were 86 Anglo children (ages 7, 9, and 11) who were interviewed about their practices and ideas concerning homework completion and test preparation.…

The Chapter I Take-Home Computer (THC) program was established in nine elementary and eight middle schools in Atlanta (Georgia) in the 1989-90 school year. One hundred and eighty computers were sent home with 422 students, whose parents were willing to work with the students, for 6-week periods. Log sheets were kept by each child regarding the…

This occasional paper views homework as an opportunity to exploit the potential of outside resources and environments to complement in-school learning opportunities. Out-of-school learning opportunities are considered in the context of principles for planning and implementing learning activities. These principles involve: (1) goal relevance,…

The effectiveness of Upward Bound (UB), a federally funded program to assist high-ability disadvantaged youth in completing programs in higher education, is addressed in this study. The study sought to determine if participation in UB enhances high school performance and participation in postsecondary education, especially in comparison to non-UB…

Project PRIDE (Providing Resources and Information Designed to Educate) is an after school tutorial program for approximately 70 grade 7 to 9 Hispanic junior high school students attending the School District of the City of Saginaw. The project is intended to provide an after school center for help with school work. The instructional goals include…

In the High School and Beyond (HSB) study, data on over 58,000 American tenth and twelfth graders were collected. The current study performed secondary analyses on three special needs groups from the public school data set: 1200 hearing impaired students, 767 speech disabled students, and 1249 learning disabled students. Disabled students were…

This guide to designing an effective second language instructional program in the public schools provides parents, community leaders, and school personnel with practical guidelines for reviewing current foreign language instructional programs and for introducing changes in the curriculum that are in line with the emphasis on communication. An…

A practicum designed to help 10 first-graders successfully complete their homework, and to involve their parents as teachers at home, was implemented by a school social worker who was a member of a multidisciplinary child study team that assisted students with academic, social, and behavioral problems. Many children referred to the child study…

This manual presents a program of instruction, the Basic Skills Instructional System, which coordinates a number of teaching strategies into a single instructional system. Section 1 describes the organizational phase of the system: (1) teacher expectation; (2) resistance from low achieving students; (3) avoiding confrontations; (4) management of…