Presents successful classroom management strategies for substitute teachers, including maintaining a folder of activities, making introductions, reading a story, inviting problem students to be helpers, establishing firm rules, practicing the classroom teacher's rules, telling students about oneself, and rewarding good behavior with stamps on a…

Describes how teachers can make the most of authors' presentations to elementary students by taking necessary steps before, during, and after the visit and planning the day. The article also provides an eight-step presenter's guide for authors that can be photocopied and sent to authors before the school visit. (SM)

Outlines the many benefits of humor. Describes a reading and writing strategy to help at-risk college students reduce stress, appreciate the humor in many areas of college life, and use reading and writing about humorous college situations as a tool for developing critical thinking. Describes an application of the strategy. (SR)

This article questions the presentation of rules in the classroom and explores some of the different senses of the term "rule." After making some basic distinctions, the article considers implications for the classroom and suggests there is no single approach to the presentation of grammar rules, and that learners should be encouraged to…

Describes story ladders, a technique used to illustrate the development of story and to act as a catalyst for writing. (SR)

Describes how an elementary teacher developed a daily writer's workshop. Suggestions for finding time to write include reducing use of workbooks and skillsheets, looking for redundancy in curriculum programs, concentrating on writing for a shortened period of the school year, and creating time-saving instructional strategies. (SM)

Presents guidelines for developing thematic units for primary students (pick broad-based themes, gather resources, avoid time traps, let student interests guide the themes, create interactive bulletin boards, and organize materials). The article offers ideas, activities, and experiences for beginning a color unit and maintaining thematic teaching…

Describes several successful lessons that provide students with new awareness of the English language. Includes lessons focusing on language change, onomatopoeia, slang, word origin, dialect, and language functions. (MM)

Advent calendars designed by high school German students and displayed at a local mall for Christmas are described. (Author/LB)

Asserts that literary criticism and scholarly analyses provide a broad and enriching resource with which to inform instruction and discussion in a pluralistic classroom. Offers examples of a postreading activity based on seven major interpretations of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Presents follow-up and extension…

Describes how an English teacher used journal writing and how it improved the quality of the other writing his students did. Discusses specific journal writing assignments and details ways to help students maintain their journal writing. (RS)

Suggests that an effective way to develop students' writing abilities is to teach writing through journalism. Discusses the successes the author has had in incorporating journalistic writing strategies into elementary and secondary English/language arts classrooms. (RS)

Discusses three types of integration tasks in reading, rank ordering, first-level integration (looking for similarities within a list of items), and second-level integration tasks (looking for differences). Offers classroom extension activities. (SR)

Discusses critical thinking: what it is, analyzing what kinds are used, deciding what critical thinking skills to develop in courses, what specific teaching practices or assignments can incorporate these skills, and the implications of teaching critical thinking. (SR)

Presents three activities that use literature as a springboard for the study of history/social science and as a prompt for original writing. (SR)