The development of a modified semantic differential measure of school-related attitudes of grades 3-6 children is described and its validation involving 99 children is reported. Each of the four scales of this measure, Attitude Toward-School, -Language Arts, -Teachers, and -Arithmetic, was found to be unidimensional. Internal consistency estimates…

A program needs assessment device, the Chapter 1 Instructional Quality Indicators (IQI), was developed for the purpose of guiding staff development by indicating areas of strength and weakness in Chapter 1 classroom practices and procedures. In this handbook, the development and administration of the IQI is discussed in section I. Section II…

Good language users monitor and understand their own involvement in the learning process. They understand how language is used to make and reshape their world. Everyone needs to be allowed to test his or her personal theories of the world against practice and vice versa. Given the nature of society, it is important that conceptions of literacy…

This guide provides classroom assessment models and strategies that can be used by teachers in planning for efficient day-to-day assessment of the English Language Arts Common Curriculum Goals and in tracking individual student progress over time. The guide lists individual grade level expectations from the Common Curriculum Goals with possible…

A two-year study designed to evaluate an elementary language arts program in the Grande Prairie School District (Edmonton, Alberta) through an assessment of student achievement was conducted from 1983 to 1985. A major focus of the study was the area of listening, and the listening tests and teacher's manuals presented in this document are intended…

A study was conducted to determine the appropriateness of a particular whole language program, entitled "Project Victory," designed specifically for a group of high-risk, seventh-grade students in a predominately urban intermediate public school. Subjects were 20 students identified as high-risk by their school district on the basis of…

Three basic beliefs support teaching: (1) learning is social and individual; (2) learning must be personally meaningful; (3) learning rests upon a knowledge base that is constructed, not transmitted. The first step to creating an environment which supports learning in meaningful ways is for the teacher and students to become better inquirers into…

The Connecticut Mastery Test was designed to assess specific skill levels of students by measuring performance on various learning objectives that students can be expected to master. The grade 4 Connecticut Mastery Test, given for the first time in the fall of 1985, provides information which can be used to improve instruction and the basic skills…

The sixth in a series, this report reviews microcomputer courseware authorized by the Alberta Department of Education from April 1986 through December 1986. (Although earlier publications in this series were cumulative, this edition and the fifth edition contain only new or revised reports.) This edition provides detailed evaluations of 39…

It is safe to assume that by the end of the decade the videocassette recorder (VCR) will be the only piece of educational technology available to virtually all students both in and out of school. Given that working out the pedagogical consequences of VCR technology will be the most important media-related task of the next few years, the following…

Intended for teachers and parents, this book focuses on demolishing widely held myths about poor spellers and about the process of spelling. "Dear Professor Henderson" (chapter 1) is a dedication to a favorite college professor who remonstrated with the author about his "lazy" spelling. "Kneeling on Rice" (chapter 2)…

Utah's 1987 minimum course description standards for students in kindergarten through third grade are provided in the required core curriculum areas of arts, information technology, science, language arts, mathematics, social studies, and healthy lifestyles. For each curricular area a rationale is given, followed by a brief course description…

Reviews of 2,554 educational software programs by thirty reviewing sources were examined to compare the tendency of different review sources to give generally positive, negative, or neutral ratings. The reliability of language arts and reading software reviews was studied. Thirty-eight percent of the software programs were reviewed by two or more…

The eight articles in this focused journal issue are concerned with integrating reading, writing, and thinking, with varying attention to other language processes such as listening and speaking. The titles and authors of the articles are (1) "Does What You Read Influence How You Write?" by Dennis Adams; (2) "Dictation: Building…

Designed to reveal some of the strengths and weaknesses of microtechnology in the language arts, this book suggests how and where microcomputers might have applications or implications in the language arts curriculum. The first chapter of the book discusses practical problems facing language arts teachers in developing classroom computer programs,…