In recent years there has been a growth in demand for undergraduate creative writing courses, but it is striking how unprepared students are for such courses. Many undergraduates are simply and naively "into self-expression" as if it required no prerequisites and nothing more than getting it onto the schedule at registration.…

This paper explores the use of a peer coaching model, the Collaborative Learning Process (CLP), to increase the application of content from inservice teacher training. Educators (N=40) of students with moderate to severe disabilities were trained in the use of CLP to encourage application of the newly trained skill of facilitating skill…

The purpose of the documents in this series is to provide educators in Saskatchewan with practical and relevant guides to teaching and learning as a means of expanding or refining teaching repertoires. This booklet highlights peer practice, a strategy that allows students to become actively involved in the strengthening or broadening of their own…

Job Instruction Training (JIT) is a step-by-step, relatively simple technique used to train employees on the job. It is especially suitable for teaching manual skills or procedures; the trainer is usually an employee's supervisor but can be a co-worker. The JIT technique consists of a series of steps that a supervisor or other instructor follows…

This bulletin focuses on cooperative learning with an emphasis on its use in science classrooms. A comprehensive review of the educational literature on cooperative learning is presented. Major sections of this document include the following: (1) why cooperative learning in science? (2) some characteristics of cooperative learning; (3) some…

A study described the amount of usage and structure of cross-age reading tutoring programs. A survey was sent to 68 schools in northwest Ohio to determine percentage and ranges of usage. Results indicated that less than 22% of the 42 elementary schools that responded to the survey used a cross-age tutoring program. Of the programs in place, less…

A study was designed to examine the effectiveness of repeated reading in fluency and comprehension. A cross-age reading program was used to give students a purpose for rereading material. The children in a second-grade classroom in a private school in suburban New Jersey were randomly assigned to two sample groups. The experimental group read to a…

This book offers practical guidelines for implementing cooperative-collaborative learning in the classroom. Included are research reviews, sample lesson plan formats, suggestions for peer coaching, and forms and materials that teachers may duplicate. The book's 17 chapters are divided into three sections on cooperative group learning; partner…

This guide describes a 7-day lesson plan to be used with bilingual 3rd and 4th graders and 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes. The guide shows how mask making can be tied into each class, and then how to pull the classes together for the older students to become peer tutors to the younger ones in the…

Peer tutoring sessions involving two eighth-grade girls were recorded and analyzed through a Vygotskian lens. A "microgenetic analysis" of particular protocol excerpts from the tutoring sessions was conducted. When a lapse of intersubjectivity existed, participants frequently launched into narrative as a mediating device to negotiate a…

This practicum report describes a staff development program that was designed to implement a peer tutoring program in which nonhandicapped students instructed three trainable mentally handicapped peers in a regular high-school setting. The program was implemented to increase the achievement of handicapped students in basic academic skills that…

The interactions of three high school juniors (two females and one male) working together on a series of contextual mathematics problems using a multirepresentational software tool were studied. Focus was on determining how a constructivist model of learning, based on an individual problematic-action-reflection model, can be extended to offer…

This practicum report describes a primary school teacher's use of peer tutoring as a form of individualized instruction for at-risk students in a regular classroom. Targeted students were four 2nd graders and four 3rd graders who did not produce the quantity of work required but scored too high on psychological tests for placement in special…

Peer evaluation of writing, or conferencing, is a helping process in which the teacher or other students receive and respond to the writer's work. It promotes the writer's sense of ownership of the work and thus helps develop writing skills. A writing program that includes peer evaluation, then, is one that provides a setting in which the young…

In 1988, a survey was conducted to determine the characteristics and extent of peer tutoring programs at two- and four-year colleges in New York. Data were also collected on supplemental instruction, a variant of peer tutoring in which the peer tutor works closely with a faculty member to help students in identified high-risk courses. Of the 270…