Introduces the FLIP (Friendliness, Language, Interest, Prior Knowledge) framework to help middle and secondary students examine their reading assignments and develop appropriate plans of action. Includes a rationale for the framework, a description of it, and suggestions for classroom implementation. (SR)

Describes how a teacher integrated an audio cassette version of a Ray Bradbury story into a computer-supported creative writing project in her seventh-grade literature class. (SR)

Describes a method of teaching professional expository writing skills in which a teacher wrote to real professional people, some famous, and asked them to become "clients" for first-year student researchers by requesting specific information. Argues for the feasibility and success of this project. (HB)

Discusses the value of booktalks in getting high school students excited about reading and books, by having the library media staff go into the classroom with appropriate books for an assignment and discuss them. The relation of booktalks to Big6 skills instruction is explained. (LRW)

Describes how, through oral story telling, writing biographies, autobiographies and creating fictional characters, adults with mental illness were gently directed to focus and explore one significant person or period of their own lives, to develop their sense of self and ego strengths, and to connect to important others in their lives. (SR)

Explains the Big6 approach to information problem-solving based on exercises that were developed for college or upper high school students that can be completed during class sessions. Two of the exercises relate to personal information problems, and one relates Big6 skill areas to course assignments. (LRW)

Describes the experiences of a university professor who has been teaching graduate courses in Florida via the Internet. Topics include course preparation, including an initial face-to-face session; Netiquette for working on the Internet; the importance of technical staff; assignments and exams; and student evaluations. (LRW)

Argues that humor is an invaluable teaching tool in English classes. Describes how the author and her students: found humor an important means of discovering profound truths in Shakespeare's dramas; enjoyed the epic "Paradise Lost"; worked with satire in Chaucer; and used humor in students' own creative activities. (SR)

Three studies evaluated a method for developing prior-knowledge structures that prepares students to learn from a text or lecture. Findings indicate that there is a place for lectures and readings in the classroom if students have sufficiently differentiated domain knowledge to use the expository materials in a generative manner. (TJQ)

To shorten the line at his desk, a fourth-grade teacher tries to build thought and work habits that will inspire his students to strive for excellence and achieve it in every assignment. Each lesson incorporates an experience, criteria for excellence, student practice, a rubric, examples, self-evaluations, peer and teacher evaluations, revision,…

Describes an assignment in a corporate-communications class in which students examine the design and the language of their apartment leases. Discusses how this assignment teaches students about the Plain English laws and the need for plain English in leases and in ethics. (SR)

A study examined the amount and types of responses to homework assignments reported by 577 parents of academically talented elementary students. Students completed homework with few negative responses. While homework assignments increased with grade level, the amount of time parents spent assisting with homework did not increase beyond first…

Examines the types of literacy support parents gave their children at home with 15 students from a diverse class of 23 third graders during an eight-week integrated unit on writing autobiographies. Finds pattern differences between genders with respect to the nature of support given at home. Suggests that particularly African-American males…

Proposes assigning polemics, suasive essays, and paradoxical encomia as a means to help students write in classical civic discourse forms, which enfranchise the personal in the service of the community. Presents guidelines for each assignment. (NH)

Argues that any curriculum of peace must have at its core the teaching (not preaching) of empathy. Recommends ecphrastic poetry (poetic response to works of art) as a teaching tool for empathy, and discusses how the author uses one particular poem written in response to a World War II photograph to stimulate student writing response and…