The University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW) offers many of its courses through distance-education. Because UNCW offers courses through a distance-education format, these courses are eligible for accreditation review by the Southern Association for Colleges and School (SACS). UNCW underwent its most recent SACS review during the 2001-2002…

This project was developed and implemented in a private school in southeastern Florida to assess whether different instructional strategies would improve vocabulary recall, comprehension, and long-range retention in third graders. The program uses three approaches to provide vocabulary development: (1) contextual use of vocabulary; (2) the use of…

This practicum was designed to increase the experiences in the genre of world drama, to further develop student understanding of its evolution and impact on subsequently created drama, and to proffer a diverse collection of drama for senior level students pursuing the Advanced Placement (AP) English literature program. A comprehensive curriculum,…

A study investigated the transfer effect of three different word recognition strategies. Subjects were 90 first- through fourth-grade children randomly drawn from an elementary school population to serve in the experimental group and a like number assigned to a non-instructed control group. Strategies taught to subjects were a graphophonic…

A study determined if the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) method would raise levels of critical thinking in students. Subjects, 20 third-grade students, used the DR-TA for 30 minutes each day for a period of approximately 8 weeks. Subjects were pre- and posttested using the Thinking Skills Assessment and the Reading Attitude Inventory.…

This program was developed and implemented in a third- and fourth-grade classroom setting (with the teacher's support) to develop reading skills in below-grade level students. This was also a Specific Learning Disabled Inclusion Model classroom. The objectives for the program were for 18 of 24 students to increase their oral reading skills by at…

This practicum program was developed and implemented to increase the reading comprehension of second grade students. The objectives of the program were for students to improve the ability to use context clues by 20%, improve reading comprehension by 15%, identify the 4 types of QAR (Question Answer Relationship) questions by 80%, and write…

A practicum was designed to motivate first-grade students in a rural community in the southeastern United States to read independently for pleasure in the classroom and at home. A whole language program was implemented which did not include the use of basal readers or workbooks. Children's literature was the primary source used for reading…

An 8-month practicum addressed the adverse feelings for writing (shown in responses to a writing survey) of 30 intermediate-level students. Ten students from each grade level (third, fourth, and fifth) with the lowest scores completed the practicum activities. Students viewed a film for the first strategy. The students' reactions to the film…

A program of paired, repeated reading was developed to improve the achievement in reading comprehension of 14 targeted third-grade students. The program had three basic objectives: (1) to increase literal comprehension by 25%; (2) to increase inference of main idea by 25%; and (3) to increase inference skills of drawing conclusions by 25%. The…

This practicum study evaluated a non-basal, multidisciplinary, multisensory approach to teaching higher order reading comprehension skills to eight fifth-grade learning-disabled students from low socioeconomic minority group backgrounds. The four comprehension skills were: (1) identifying the main idea; (2) determining cause and effect; (3) making…

A program was developed and implemented to improve fourth graders' writing skills in conjunction with the State Writing Assessment Test. The objectives for the program were for 80% of the students to improve their writing scores by a minimum of 0.5 point using the State Writing rubric as the guideline; to increase students' understanding of the…

A practicum addressed second graders' negative attitudes and habits toward recreational reading. Students were not reading for pleasure at school or at home. A recreational reading program, which used a variety of thematic units, was implemented. Subjects were 20 second graders (mostly Hispanics) in an inner city school. Several innovative…

A practicum was developed to assist prekindergarten teachers present a whole language approach in their already developmentally appropriate classes. Six teachers from three classrooms serving 63 four- and five-year-old children participated in on-site training and weekly consultations. The teachers were all experienced paraprofessionals with Child…

A practicum was executed with the primary purpose of enhancing prekindergarten students' ability to address conflicts in a positive prosocial manner. The location of the practicum was an urban elementary school which houses prekindergarten through grade 6. A literacy program (consisting of storytelling activities using the various forms of…