By 2013, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had adopted college- and career-ready standards in English language arts and mathematics, placing a greater emphasis on argument writing to prepare students for life after high school. Solving the specific problem of how to help teachers teach to new standards for argument writing as well as the…

Developing and implementing curriculum that is relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory is central to successful middle grades education (Erb, 2005; Jackson & Davis, 2000; National Middle School Association [NMSA], 2003, 2010). However, as one language arts teacher suggests, it can be difficult to create curricula that meet these…

Describes a language-arts assignment for a group of 7th and 8th grade students. Its intent was to impress the inter-relatedness of the separate language-arts skills upon students and to inspire them to produce a colorful and purposeful presentation of their writing ability. (Author/RK)

Prairie-Hills Junior High School, located in a suburban school district 25 miles south of Chicago, has a Chapter 1 replacement language arts model that is remedial focusing on spelling, grammar and writing skills. In the classroom there is lots of interaction, lots of oral reading, discussing, and deciding. Students in the Chapter 1 program follow…

A teacher discovers the Teddy Bear as something common to her first graders' backgrounds and uses it as a motivator for a creative language arts program. (Author/RK)

Presented is the report of the gifted child project, conducted in the Decatur public schools, Alabama, from 1969 to 1970, consisting of an inservice program for 83 teachers and administrators and a pilot project in language arts for students in grades 9 and 10 in one high school. It is reported that the three teachers from the pilot project will…

Children respond eagerly to opportunities for interaction with television. Discusses the use of television in employing student interest to build language skills and to emphasize that oral and written expression are vital elements of a medium often considered only visual. (Author/RK)

Describes the "Learning to Read Through the Arts Program" offered in New York and New Jersey public schools in cooperation with the Guggenheim Museum. Elementary and secondary students participate in artist-led, multisensory workshops on art and language. Students keep journals, write stories and poems, and work with photography and…

This booklet presents descriptions of 31 successful basic skills language arts/writing programs for prekindergarten through grade 12, collected from school districts nationwide by the National Diffusion Network. Information provided for each program includes: (1) program name and brief description; (2) audience focus (noting grade and ability…

The described inservice teacher education materials are designed for the first-year teacher at the elementary grade level with the specific area of concentration on the teaching of reading. The objectives for new teachers are outlined as well as the contents of the booklets that comprise the learning module. Activities and resources involved in…

This is the final report of the Cardston School Division Project for Improvement in the Language Arts, a three-year project in Alberta, Canada, using Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI) strategies and materials and having as its objectives the improvement of language arts teaching, student achievement in language arts, students'…

This is a summary of the final report of the Cardston School Division Project for Improvement in the Language Arts, a three-year project in Alberta, Canada, using Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI) strategies and materials and having as its objectives the improvement of language arts teaching, student achievement in language arts,…

To enable junior high school students to relate the processes of reading, writing, and thinking through deliberate instruction and extensive classroom practice, a skills extension project was devised to develop original materials linked to the content areas of English and social studies. Another phase of the project provided for inservice training…

Discusses activities of emergent preschool writers and editors involved in the Writing Table Project at the Child and Family Center of the University of Nevada at Reno. (BB)

Elementary teachers should focus attention on language activities that involve naturally the reciprocal relationships among listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Teachers need to value, use, and make useful the background and language of all students, through a Language Experience Approach (LEA) in which students dictate and write about…