Over the years, a composition instructor has watched the metaphor of the writing center as a spider web unfold on three different college campuses, all of which have a culturally diverse student body. As a junior college peer tutor, a graduate student tutor, and a faculty member trying to get out of doing some committee work, the instructor has…

This book contains a set of activities designed to help elementary school students learn the skills of tutoring, leading, and cooperating. The training activities presented in this book are intended to help students with their interpersonal relationships, as well as prepare them for a variety of helping roles. An introductory section defines the…

The SMILES (Senior Motivators in Learning and Educational Services) program was initiated in 1977 by Salt Lake City School Volunteers, Inc., a nonprofit organization working with the Salt Lake City School District, as an addition to an established, successful school volunteer program. The purpose of the SMILES program is to recruit and train older…

Used in conjunction with other books in the series, this book is designed to help adults tutor other adults to help them overcome reading and spelling problems. The book begins with a list of suggested materials for a tutor's library, information about the author, advice on setting up a tutoring schedule, and a questionnaire to be completed before…

Intended for volunteers in community literacy programs, one-on-one tutors, or parents who want to support classroom learning, this book presents tutoring ideas, teaching activities, and evaluation suggestions. The book guides tutors as they teach students to become independent learners and shows tutors how to provide support but not "do"…

The Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) Summer Associates program enabled 708 people to work full time in low-income areas with 33 existing VISTA sponsors throughout the country for 8-10 weeks in direct service roles performing counseling, tutoring, community outreach, office work, surveys, and home construction. Associates served an average…

This handbook documents the Prison Literacy Project (PLP) in order to provide a model for other community groups to follow in developing their own literacy projects. The PLP worked to have prison residents learn to read or significantly raise their reading levels through an ongoing literacy tutoring program. All project participants were involved…

Issues in the implementation of peer coaching, a collaborative process for teacher improvement, are examined in this booklet. Included are a definition of peer coaching; a discussion of a variety of peer coaching activities; an outline of specific observation, data collection, and conferencing strategies; guidelines for designing a site-based peer…

Designed to describe and assess the activities engaged in between a writing tutor and a student in a one-to-one writing conference, this survey contains two forms. The first records the student's major, native language, source of the writing task with which he or she needs help, and the student's perception of the problem. The second form, filled…

Describes modifications included in an examination procedure allowing students to take an exam on a given unit twice, and the use of nonobjective exams. The grading of exams by the professor in consultation with the student was viewed as the most productive aspect of the course. (GS)

This document begins with a paper titled "Accommodating for Greater Student Variance in Local Schools" by Jacqueline Thousand and Richard Villa, which identifies the fundamental characteristics of successful heterogeneous public schools and describes specific examples of educational and organizational practices that enable schools to accommodate…

The paper describes three strategies featuring a microcomputer to promote the integration and acceptance of students with disabilities among their nondisabled peers. The first strategy is a cross-age tutoring program in which disabled, learning disabled, emotionally disabled, or mildly retarded students demonstrate computer use to nondisabled…

Four techniques are suggested for tutoring students of English as a second language in writing: taking a "writing history" of the student's experiences, failures, and successes at writing by asking open-ended questions in a non-judgmental way during an informal interview; brainstorming about a given writing topic, with the tutor taking close notes…

A case study examined the student-teacher relationship in writing conferences to determine how both teachers and students can better negotiate teaching-learning situations. Students enrolled in a six-week tutorial writing course at the University of Michigan were used as subjects. Tape-recorded conversations in the weekly half-hour conferences…

This technical report describes a generic architecture for building intelligent tutoring systems which is developed around objects that represent the knowledge elements to be taught by the tutor. Each of these knowledge elements, called "bites," inherits both a knowledge organization describing the kind of knowledge represented and…