Each month, "Curriculum Review" offers teachers mutual support, the sharing of ideas, and words of encouragement to help them face challenges in the classroom. The January 2005 issue of "Curriculum Review" contains the following articles: (1) "We Hear from Readers" (Havelock Nelson); (2) "What They're Saying"; (3) "Technology Update"; (4) "Surf…

The EFA Global Monitoring Report of 2002 contains two interesting paragraphs. In this article the author aims to explore what lies between those two paragraphs, in order to put forward some ideas about the role and future of literacy and its relation to human rights. The author hopes to show the continuing importance of adult literacy work and the…

The article focuses on enriching music and language arts experiences of students. Music can enrich literature and language arts, poetry, theater arts, transitions, science, and math, as well as help meet special learner needs. A well-understood example of enrichment is the alphabet song. A music or classroom teacher using the alphabet song helps…

In this article, the author relates how she uses an art lesson that integrates art, language arts, and science in an enjoyable, creative project about dinosaurs in her kindergarten class. She relates how the children enjoy being illustrators and becoming familiar with well-known children's illustrators. She also relates that she starts her classes…

Seventy 8th-grade students (including talented writers, those with average ability, and students in need of special education services) participated in an integrated social studies and language arts unit designed to promote historical understandings and argumentative writing skills. The historical reasoning instruction lasted 12 days, and the…

This study examines the effects over time of implementing the William and Mary language arts and science curriculum for gifted learners designed around the Integrated Curriculum Model (ICM) in one suburban school district. It also analyzes stakeholders' perceptions of the effectiveness of the curriculum. Findings suggest that gifted student…

Describes how an instructional assistant organized a gallery project that featured artwork from the school's staff. Discusses how the gallery was organized, why it was created, and what happened when the students visited it. States that the students selected an artwork as inspiration for a story. (CMK)

Advanced 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students at the Gifted Resource Center (GRC) in a suburban Chicago public school district are regularly engaged in various types of activities. The GRC uses language arts units for high ability students created and developed as a base curriculum at the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary.…

The art of spoken word has captured youthful spirits all over the country, especially in heterogeneous urban centers. In this essay, the author opens up for re-consideration a central issue in language arts education, one suggested by the very writing of spoken word: how educators think about the relationship between oral and written language and…

In traveling about contemporary academia, especially the haunts of philosophy and English, one is likely to stumble upon the lair of a new monster, one that bears considerable resemblance to Hawthorne's dreamy vision. The name of this huge miscreant is Critical Thinking--a name uttered by professors and students with more awe than understanding.…

This study examines the cognitive experiences of children as they engage in creative projects in both dance and poetry. The data includes interviews with fifth graders from an elementary School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, about their lived experience of writing poetry and creating dances. Students interviewed for this study participated in a…

One interesting aspect of teaching students to use PowerPoint and similar graphics packages effectively is that graduate students who are already in the workforce often have bad presentation habits that they need to break. In this article, the author discusses ways of breaking these bad habits. Using storyboards is one way to keep students from…

"A Study of Heroes: Making a Difference Using Your Heart, Intellect, and Talents" is a program originally developed in diverse school communities. Students learn to distinguish between the concepts of hero and celebrity and to discover the real heroes in their own families, schools, communities, and most importantly--within themselves. This…

This study examined the impact of NISL's [National Institute for School Leadership's] Executive Development Program for principals on student achievement in Pennsylvania schools between 2006-2009. Roughly half of the NISL-trained principals started the program during the 2007 school year and completed it in the 2008 school year, whereas the other…

This is a research brief of a longer report, also published as "Bilingual Education and English as a Second Language Summary Report, 2009-2010". Twenty-nine percent of students enrolled in Austin Independent School District were English language learners in 2009-2010. The majority of them (62%) continued to make progress in English…