Lists five key elements of cooperative learning. Shares some ideas on cooperative learning successfully used in the language arts classroom. (RS)

Discusses reasons for the high interest in educational standards. Notes that most of the standard-setting efforts fall into one of three groups. Concludes that educators need to sort through the rhetoric to determine whether standards are indeed powerful tools for guiding educational decisions or whether they are unnecessary provocations. (RS)

Describes "The Secret Codes of C.Y.P.H.E.R.: Operation Wildlife," a software program for language arts classrooms that joins natural science and communication/cryptography topics in a secret-agent interactive setting. (SR)

A folk arts curriculum in a Cicero (Illinois) high school addressed reading and language arts skills while promoting cross-cultural understanding. Techniques included sharing of cultural experiences, consultation with a folklorist in residence, and a folk arts festival. (SK)

Presents various ways to use quotations in the classroom to stimulate student thinking and introduce new curriculum topics. Suggests that students can construct posters or journals of their favorite quotations, or even create their own proverbial phrases and generalizations. (MDM)

Presents a six-step reading/study skills strategy which helps students learn how to approach a new text. (SR)

Describes using a passage from the book "Raney" by Clyde Edgerton as a read-aloud in social studies and language arts classrooms to explore value conflicts, understand cultures, study dialog and to introduce drama. (SR)

Presents an outdoor education drama created by a student in an outdoor education class. The primary purpose of the assignment was to introduce one or more environmental education concepts to students using drama. The example titled, "Goldenrod and the Three Barks" introduces the concepts of competition for food and mutualism for survival. (KS)

Reflects on teaching and provides inspiration for teachers through a discussion of what introspective teaching is all about. (MG)

Reviews two handbooks of research and focuses on what they have to offer professionals in the field of reading and language arts. (MG)

Discusses the language learning in "Workshop Pedagogy," an approach used in primary classrooms in Norway and Sweden, in which the instructional sequence and class activities move from the concrete toward the more abstract with concrete expressions given more attention. (SR)

Presents an interview with Pamela Childers, a high school English teacher for 30 years who is critically aware of the computer's possibilities and limits within the language-arts curriculum. Explores many of the tensions surrounding the computer's place in secondary English classes. (SR)

Finds (1) a steady progression (from grade 5 through grade 11) in students' ability to recognize irony; (2) the irony in a poem was more difficult to recognize than in a joke or in a story; and (3) less-able students recognized irony better than did academically able students. Offers pedagogical suggestions. (SR)

Describes a writing assignment in which students read only the first two paragraphs of Charles Dickens's novel "A Tale of Two Cities" and then, after some brainstorming and prewriting, write a paragraph or two modeled on those, explaining the confusion and turmoil of the present day. Notes how Dickens's expressions become more familiar…

Videos, virtual reality, and the World Wide Web create effective macrocontexts for integrating science and language arts. Contexts must be readily available, appropriate for the level, and interesting to students. Teachers should be able to identify scientific concepts and language skills embedded in them. Alternative assessment methods are more…