This issue of the Center's "Systems Newsletter" will be the last one published under the aegis of Dr. JoyceVanTassel-Baska, the Center's founder and current Executive Director. As of this August Dr. VanTassel-Baska will officially retire from the College of William and Mary and the Center. She will still be an integral part of the Center…

Suggesting that evaluation is an ongoing part of classroom life from day one, this book presents essays by classroom teachers that examine learning and evaluation and the need to bring the two together in more relevant ways. Essays in the book discuss ways to examine the potential of portfolios to reflect different kinds of intelligence; balance…

This study describes and analyzes the use of CD-ROM talking books in a third grade classroom over a 4-month period. One area of interest was in how the teacher used the storybooks in day-to-day efforts to foster learning, especially in the area of language arts. Also examined was the sense children made of these media and the overall impact the…

Noting that since the 1970s cooperative learning has been widely investigated regarding its implementation and efficacy, this booklet is designed to introduce the teaching strategy of cooperative learning to classroom teachers. The booklet first provides an overview and supplies a context for cooperative learning and then defines cooperative…

Explaining that an integrated curriculum is one that makes explicit the ways in which connections between ideas are perceived, this book provides background and offers practical suggestions for implementing and managing an integrated curriculum in the classroom. The book notes that the integrated curriculum approach goes by many names--integrated…

The injustices of tracking or ability grouping according to degrees of learning, first noted in reading classes throughout elementary grades, can have a bad effect on little children, who do not understand these injustices. In the history of the rural school, where individual help and cooperative learning were practiced, no child was labeled a…

The serialized reference work "Biography Today" is initiating a "Subject Series" that in five separate volumes will encompass: authors, artists, scientists, and inventors, sports figures, and world leaders. This is the first volume in the "Author Series." There will be no duplication between the regular series and the special subject volumes. This…

"A Day No Pigs Would Die" by Robert Newton Peck and "The Pigman" by Paul Zindel are 2 short novels that offer treasures in the form of many lessons in life to share in the language arts classroom. These two rich novels can serve as sources for multicultural understanding of rural and urban life, as well as for interpreting the…

This book presents hundreds of lists of facts about social studies, geography, language arts, mathematics, and science for grades 4-8 to be read for enjoyment or as a source of ideas for school reports or projects, as a basic reference book of general information, or as the basis for a classroom "Jeopardy" game. Topics of lists in the book include…

One of a series of educational packages designed for implementation either in a workshop atmosphere or through individual study, this Hot Topic guide presents a variety of materials to assist educators in designing and implementing classroom projects and activities centering on the topic of integrating the language arts. The Hot Topic guide…

Written in conjunction with the "Student Expressions" anthology but useful as a resource on its own, this handbook discusses the writing process and the way one teacher used it in a junior high school classroom. The narrative presented in the handbook is a distillation of the different approaches the teacher tried with different groups.…

Aimed at helping students in grades 5-8 read and enjoy more varieties of literature as well as promoting more writing, this guide offers materials which use a thematic approach to reading, writing, and literature. The guide provides reproducible and hands-on activity ideas plus bibliographies for the genres of realistic fiction, animal tales,…

This self-instructional program, designed to teach 83 basic signs, includes a user's guide, a videotape, and an interactive videodisc. The program is intended to teach common phrases and sentences, but can also be used to illustrate selected grammatical features of English as part of a language arts program for deaf children. The interactive…

This report describes a program to improve reading and language arts skills. The targeted population consisted of students in 2 first grade classrooms (average class size 25) from a midwestern elementary school in a predominantly white, middle to upper-middle class neighborhood. Data documenting the problem was obtained from the previous year's…

This thematic unit involves kindergarten and 1st grade students in the production of a theatrical performance based on the folktale, "The Little Red Hen." The interdisciplinary unit connects knowledge related to theater arts, art, language arts, music, applied mathematics, social studies, and science. Students visit a local theater and…