A researcher investigating first-grade reading instruction found that students and teachers viewed the purpose of seatwork very differently. Suggestions for making seatwork more meaningful are offered. (MT)

Presents six impromptu speaking exercises suitable for developing a variety of speaking skills. (PD)

Fifteen writing instructors report their favorite ways of getting students to write. (RL)

Researchers have posited that when students work on assignments with many discrete tasks, that each completed discrete task may be a conditioned reinforcer. If the discrete task completion hypothesis is accurate, then relative task completion rates should influence choice behavior in the same manner as relative rates of reinforcement. Results of a…

Presents four poems of the "self" (poems that represent authors' perceptions of themselves) by secondary school students. Discusses how to assess such poems and students' development in writing poems like them. (SR)

This is the fourth in a series of articles on using children's literature to foster the principles of the Circle of Courage. In this issue, the author provides selections that foster generosity and altruism. (Author)

A science fiction problem was placed before the students, they had to plan a profitable trip for Galactic spaceship tour and for which group of five students was made to solve the problem, which would encourage cooperative efforts, and different people in the group could work on different aspects. An important part of this problem is that students…

"According to the Josephson Institute's 2006 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth, today's young people reveal deeply entrenched habits of dishonesty. The report, released as part of National CHARACTER COUNTS! Week (October 15-21) reveals high rates of cheating, lying and theft. Cheating in school continues to be rampant. A substantial…

This article presents a public speaking assignment that takes the study of rhetoric seriously. First, it shifts the approach from the common typology of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speeches toward forensic, deliberative, and epideictic rhetoric. Second, this assignment takes rhetoric seriously by generating the understanding that all…

In the early 1990s, the National Science Foundation funded many research projects for improving statistical education. Many of these stressed the need for classroom activities that illustrate important issues of designing experiments, generating quality data, fitting models, and performing statistical tests. Our paper describes such an activity on…

The data for 104 software projects is used to develop a linear regression model that uses function points (a measure of software project size) to predict development effort. The data set is particularly interesting in that it violates several of the assumptions required of a linear model; but when the data are transformed, the data set satisfies…

Suicide is a leading cause of American deaths. Given suicide's overall frequency and negative effects, specialized suicide training is warranted. This article describes a creative self-suicide assignment designed to enhance doctoral students' suicide assessment and intervention knowledge and clinical skills, and promote greater counselor empathy…

Getting through to students in the classroom continues to be one of the great mysteries of an educator's life. What will capture their attention, and, more important, what will transform their thinking? Film industry veteran and educator Barbara Tobolowsky returned to her roots in visual media to find answers. Using video clips to introduce a…

This paper presents a case study of writing tasks in graduate courses at a large, American university. The study investigates writing tasks across the curriculum and draws implications for curriculum design in English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Using actual course syllabi for task analysis, the researchers analyzed 200 course syllabi from 20…

This is not another tired lament for a Golden Age when all students were brilliantly prepared for college, but rather an elaboration of a central pedagogical reality the authors had each separately faced--it is not easy to teach the complex set of skills subsumed under the heading "research," that organic, contingent, messy, recursive…