Describes creative ways for teachers to handle difficult classroom discipline situations, focusing on how to deal with defiant disruptives, noncombatant noncompliers, and incessant interrupters. The article discusses potentially difficult situations and explains how best to handle them in a positive manner. (SM)

A teacher offers six suggestions for giving students opportunities to exercise their commonsense thinking skills. This allows the teacher to ask rather than tell, listen rather than talk, and allows the children to provide for themselves. (MT)

Describes how to handle noncompliant students in the classroom. Suggestions include eliminating excessive expectations, encouraging assertiveness, offering options and choices, giving the students specific responsibilities, taking control of homework, taking steps to avert potentially oppositional behavior, strategically rewarding compliance,…

Teachers need to watch for hidden visual problems which may affect their students' learning. The article discusses vision and learning, visual efficiency problems, and treatment; it describes conditions and symptoms of visual processing and efficiency disorders. (SM)

This column discusses five children's books selected to develop math concepts involving problem solving, reasoning, and communication. The books are "Only One" (Marc Harshman); "The Librarian Who Measured the Earth" (Kathryn Lasky); "Counting Jennie" (Helena C. Pittman); "The Search for Delicious" (Natalie Babbitt); and "The Toothpaste…

The choice theory holds that people can control only their own behavior, and that all people need a sense of belonging, freedom, power, and fun. This article argues that teachers must recognize that these needs motivate student behavior, and describes how a middle school turned its discipline and achievement problems around by using choice theory.…

Use of a checkbook can hook even the most reluctant mathematics students into learning mathematical and problem-solving skills. (CB)

A variety of techniques for incorporating writing--the writing of letters, the keeping of logs, the devising of word problems--into the mathematics curriculum are discussed. The benefits from using an integrated approach are indicated. (DG)

Pullout pages provide suggestions for teaching elementary students at all levels about the wonders of human ingenuity. The suggestions help students see that great ideas come from the need to solve real-life problems and that one great idea leads to another, so current inventions help predict future inventions. (SM)

Presents suggestions to help teachers who must work with difficult principals, offering 10 ideas for how to make meetings with such principals more effective. The paper also notes what to do if the principal is unreachable and describes how four teachers handled their own problems with difficult principals. (SM)

This paper answers several frequently asked questions about constructivism, including how to define it, how to plan the curriculum, how to assess student understanding, what to do with the information, where to begin, how students work in a constructivist classroom, and why constructivism is important. (SM)

Presents strategies to help teachers cope with personal tragedy. The workplace offers a valuable social network for sharing with colleagues, administrators, and students. Teachers may find the constant schoolday demands leave little time for worry. Specific coping strategies include asking for help, temporarily changing the curriculum, and…

Teachers can prepare themselves for angry confrontations with parents by learning how to cope with parent anger and channeling it into positive action. A five-step process, the I.D.E.A.L. system, is outlined and recommended as an effective technique for converting angry parents into collaborators. (IAH)

Discusses six proactive strategies to help teachers improve classroom discipline: (1) move around the room; (2) teach social skills; (3) have a sense of humor; (4) don't personalize unruly behavior; (5) look for causes of discipline problems; and (6) promote student responsibility. (SM)

A first-year elementary teacher explains how she helped a slow learner work up to her potential. Two experts suggest strategies for teaching slow learners: setting up an at-risk program; peer tutoring; adapting teaching to the learner's capabilities; and understanding individual learning styles. (SM)