The practical handbook is designed to help the beginning early childhood teacher teach effectively in the classroom. Sections of the guide are arranged chronologically, beginning with before-school preparations and the first day of school. Chapters examine children's independence; language arts activities (including storytelling techniques and the…

Designed to measure the ability of children to identify the meanings of structurally ambiguous or unambiguous sentences of English, the test consists of forty lead sentences: ten with surface structure ambiguity, ten with underlying structure ambiguity, and twenty which are unambiguous. For each of the lead sentences three interpretative sentences…

Designed to measure the normal development of several of the elemental skills which children must acquire if they are to become skilled readers, this study involved the design and testing of batteries of tests to measure the various reading subskills identified. The battery consists of the following tests: visual, auditory, audiovisual,…

Designed to enable classroom teachers to screen an entire classroom of children simultaneously for visual processing skills, this test uses a four-page answer booklet and nine 35mm slides, and it includes activities for both near- and far-point visual skills. The test is used only for gross measurement, and a child who makes a low score would be…

Designed to test the effect upon comprehension of repatterning passages from a tenth grade social studies text by approximating the syntactic patterns found in a transformational analysis of the writing of the tenth grade subjects expected to read the text, this instrument was applied to 34 subjects who were asked to write 1,000 words of prose…

To evaluate the quality of written compositions, researchers at Educational Testing Service developed the Composition Evaluation Scales (CES), after factor-analytic studies of the reasons teachers gave for their judgments of compositions. This is a set of eight scales: ideas, organization, wording, flavor, usage, punctuation, spelling, and…

Designed to describe and evaluate classroom discussion of poems, this classroom interaction analysis system consist of categories based on the work of Bellack and categories developed by the author specifically for analysis of poetry discussions. Some of the categories include teacher/pupil talk, analysis of solicitation and reaction moves,…

This test is designed to measure children's reading understanding of similes found in literature books suitable for grades four, five, and six. The simile is presented in context and is questioned in multiple choice format. The possible answer choices are based on the responses in a pilot study which could be divided into nine categories. An…

Designed to describe the writing behaviors of elementary and junior high school children, the Schroeder Composition Scale is an analytic scale. For eleven of the criteria in the scale, the scoring is simply "yes" or "no" indicating whether the writing does or does not have the characteristic. Five other items identify…

Designed to measure recall of specific information, ability to grasp the thought of a passage as a whole, and ability to apply various contextual clues while listening to a passage of aural communication, each of the alternate forms of the cloze listening test consists of an audio tape recording of approximately twenty minutes duration and a…

In a series of articles based upon doctoral studies, this issue examines composition instruction in the elementary schools. The first article provides a historical background for examining current practices in elementary composition programs, the second article discusses the relationship between form and content, and the last three articles look…

This curriculum guide contains speech and journalism course outlines, including suggestions for instructional materials, course objectives, class activities, and communication skills. The contents in speech include "Group Discussion,""Theater Arts,""Public Communication," and "Theater Production." The journalism section consists of "Persuasion…

Developed as a quinmester unit for high schools on performance in argumentation and debate, this guide provides the teacher with teaching strategies for a study in which students refine their understanding of the principles of argumentation and debate through participation in classroom debate. The course includes the structuring of a variety of…

Developed as part of a high school quinmester unit on yearbook editing, this guide provides the teacher with strategies for teaching a course designed to train student editors in developing a plan for the book, emphasizing the importance of the yearbook as a permanent document. Students apply this philosophy in planning a theme and in insuring…

Scholars agree that listening is an active rather than a passive process. The listening which makes people achieve higher scores on current listening tests is "second speaker" listening or active participation in the encoding of the message. Most of the instructional suggestions in listening curriculum guides are based on this concept. In terms of…