By embedding narrative theory within the practice of storied forms, there can be pedagogical movement from difficulty to insight. This piece explores scholarly personal narrative as a creative and critical method for attaining academic understanding. The ideas of three narrative scholars (Nash, Fowler, and Luce-Kapler) surface within two writing…

We, as community college English teachers, have the opportunity to empower students who have been subjected to years of top-down, teacher-directed education. We have the obligation to make them critical thinkers, improving their chances of being thoughtful and successful adults. It all begins with the way we teach writing and the respect we have…

Resisting a deep-seated technical perspective of education, I attend to the notion of attunement as a key concept with which to imagine curriculum as a complicated conversation. As fully appreciating the meaning and potential of attunement requires an embodied sense of the word that is deployed by working from within our bodily, social, and…

In this paper we discuss why a senior capstone course is the perfect setting to reward graduating seniors with some of the more fun and interesting aspects of advanced mathematics. We provide a beginner's list of topics to consider as well as a method of implementing these tidbits outside of the classroom if time is an issue.

Asking children to use a dictionary without discussion to expand their vocabularies is uninteresting, unnatural and unwarranted. This type of assignment requests that the student teach him or herself. Directing students with words without showing them what to do is quite difficult. Asking them to do it independently without observing a model is…

An expressive encounter is the opposite of a behavioral objective. The instructional goals of the expressive encounter are emergent and generally aimed at skills and attitudes related to creativity and problem solving. A developmental lesson sequence is an integrated, sequential group of lessons that move toward a general goal. (Author/IRT)

From wind-stirred ripples to "large waves in a harbor," this paper describes science projects that can help students learn about and create their own ocean motion.

This article focuses on how young children build math skills in everyday play and activities. Children focus on six categories of mathematical content including classifying, exploring magnitude, enumerating, investigating dynamics, studying patterns, and exploring spatial relations. The article gives advice to both teachers and parents on how they…

This article addresses the issue on school policy concerning holidays and outlines some steps schools can take to keep the children and their enrichment as the focus. In the United States, there are many kinds of holidays: religious, cultural, national, and sentimental. School calendars usually honor some of the most prominent of these. If the…

In this article, the author describes an interdisciplinary and interactive lesson --"Meet the Artist"--that not only is a great way to introduce elementary school students to art history, but also encompasses writing, research, computer skills and the creation of art.

Imaginative writing is a great vehicle for creative thinking and risk taking as children structure a reality in a story. However, the author believes that American children are untrained for this sort of work and progress. They need connected experiences. This insight intensifies the author's resolution to seek collaboration with artists in other…

This article discusses the benefits as well as the important considerations that should be taken into account in integrating popular films in health education classes. Use of popular films in the classroom, termed "cinema education," is becoming increasingly popular in teaching health education. As a matter of convenience, popular films are easy…

In this article, the author reflects back to when he was in fifth grade, when his teacher taught the class to bake bread in school. It was November, and baking bread tied into the lesson. His teacher and some open-minded parents and students knew that to bake, sew, paint, sing, play an instrument, or dance as part of a lesson for a math class,…

A college professor who invites his students to consider how creativity is at the heart of teaching offers thoughts on creativity. Everyone can learn creatively; creative approaches are essential to learning; there are many ways to learn; in school there is too much fragmentation; the creative teacher does not always know what will happen; and to…

In this paper, the author describes reading strategies she used to inspire her students. Teacher modeling followed by student practice became the focus of the guided reading lessons, which included a menagerie of new "reading buddies."