Twenty-four children (ages 6-9) with mild mental retardation received individualized instruction with either emphasis on Piagetian concepts or emphasis on verbal and number concepts. Although both groups made significant gains over a year, the children receiving the Piagetian emphasis usually gained more and progressed at almost the rate of…

According to one Canadian principal, two major educational changes are necessary: personalized instruction and constructive feedback. To make education more personal means acknowledging children as important individuals with social, emotional, and intellectual needs. Feedback in high quality nongraded classrooms can be provided through…

Project CHILD is a research and development project for grades K-5, which covers reading, language arts, thinking skills, and mathematics. Project CHILD provides the model, supporting materials, and applications of technology. Three classrooms form a CHILD cluster (K-2 and 3-5); each teacher becomes a subject specialist; and the children work in…

Concerns about the economy, escalating costs of four-year institutions, and caps on state college enrollments have made many high school graduates look to community colleges, where they can complete their freshman and sophomore years at a fraction of the cost at a four-year school. More individualized instruction and counseling also attract…

Seventeen fourth and fifth graders with severe writing disabilities received a weekly one-hour individual tutorial which focused equally on transcription (handwriting and spelling) and composition skills. Students showed reliable improvement in composition and handwriting automaticity but not in spelling. Suggestions for teaching phonological…

This case study explored the efficacy of a prelinguistic intervention focused on ongoing daily activities in a preschool classroom for a 3-year-old boy with severe communication and cognitive delays. Strategies used included environmental arrangement, following the child's lead, imitation, modeling, and prompting. Results indicated the child…

Provides a cognitive reading guide for the first four chapters of the novel, "Where the Red Fern Grows" (Rawls, 1961), that incorporates teacher-directed whole-class instruction with a student reading guide to equalize instruction for various levels of learners. Ideas for whole-class instruction are contained within the lesson plans. (CR)

College mathematics and computer science students in two math courses (conventional lecture-based, and a multimedia variant of the Personalized System of Instruction) completed the Approaches to Studying Inventory. Students in the latter course obtained higher scores on meaning orientation. The effect was significant in computer-science students,…

A junior high school English teacher explains how she managed to teach gifted and talented students in a mixed-ability classroom. She discovered the importance of taking "baby steps" (allowing independent study), varying learning activities, raising the bar for everyone, and discovering her students' passions. (MLH)

In its valiant differentiation and detracking efforts, a Virginia high school hoped to assist all students in mastering state standards and enrich, excite, and challenge high-ability students via learning contracts and advanced material feeding their interests. However, disgruntled parents managed to reinstate the tracking system. (MLH)

Discusses benefits of online distance learning and considers some of the barriers that need to be addressed for successful implementation. Topics include quality compared to traditional face-to-face methods; academic workloads; self-pacing issues; the lecturer's role; lack of standards; security concerns; and the need for strategic planning. (LRW)

Investigates the effects of personalized instruction on achievement and attitudes of Taiwanese elementary students on two-step mathematics and word problems. Students initially completed a survey on which they choice their favorite foods, sports, stores, classmates, and other selections. The most popular items were then used to create personalized…

Examines the role of discussion groups in a case-based environment. College students completed two cases individually or in small discussion groups. Overall, participants in groups liked their method significantly better than those who worked alone, felt they learned more working in a group than they would have working alone, and expressed a…

Differentiated instruction allows each student to learn at the depth, complexity, and pace that is most beneficial to him. Differentiating curriculum and instruction is a rich and effective strategy to use when providing the needs of gifted and talented students--especially when those students spend most of their time in regular classrooms. A…

Learning what interests college-admissions committees drew this Homestead High School junior and 18 other teenagers to a 10-day College Admission Prep Camp run by Education Unlimited (EU) on the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts last July 2005. The program is among many such camps offered across the country this summer, by both…