Presents four ideas for writing lab strategies and activities. Discusses creating prewriting collaborative research teams, learning new software, peer review, and supporting evidence. (SR)

Presents activities to help elementary students learn to interpret history. Using the voyage of Columbus, students can learn how history is written, what a historian's job is, and why it is important to analyze more than one point of view. The activities also teach students to understand historical symbols. (SM)

Describes a cross-age literacy program involving first- and fourth-grade students. Discusses tutorial activities, subject-matter acquisition activities, reading and creative dramatics activities, and writing and book making activities. Notes that the motivation, enthusiasm, and practice the program provided was more than expected. (RS)

Describes a classroom collaborative activity in which students are asked to write one-act plays based on three characters, two of whom know each other, and a third who affects the other two. Presents details of carrying out the assignment, and evaluates student response. (HB)

The article describes a project in which gifted seventh and eighth graders developed a brochure about child abuse for children. The students distributed their brochure across the country, produced a play, and agitated for greater visibility for the child abuse hotline telephone number. (DB)

Describes how a learning activity called "Find Your Partner" that can be extended to cover both linguistic and conceptual areas when used with experienced language teachers. The linguistic aim is "varieties of definitions," but the conceptual aim is to allow clarification and refinement of participants' thinking about methodological/linguistic…

Presents a collection of Valentine's Day-related kindergarten activities designed to help friendships grow. They include making personalized place mats as a group, creating decorated mail pouches, building heart shaped bird feeders, reading a book about friendly secrets and surprises, and decorating hearts with compliments about each student. (SM)

Offers an overall plan (using lectures, audiovideos, discussions, self-assessments, simulations, and peer evaluations for a total of three classroom hours) for teaching managers to ease anxiety, handle shyness, rehearse, and make oral presentations with confidence. (SR)

Presents 13 citations from the ERIC database that focus on integrating reading and writing, ranging from the early literacy experiences of the preschool child to the practicum experiences of the apprentice teacher. (SR)

Advocates the interpretive communities approach to teaching political communication. Discusses philosophical issues in the teaching of political communication courses, and pedagogical techniques (including concepts versus cases, clustering examples, C-SPAN video examples, and simulations and games). (SR)

Describes a two-week unit on the language of advertising. Maintains that students can learn to imitate the language of advertising to their advantage as writers of arguments. (SR)

Home/kindergarten transition activities comprise two distinct categories: those involving coordination or communication between school and preschool levels and those including parents as participants. Transition activities are more often found in schools with a prekindergarten program, a high poverty level among families served, and considerable…

Describes an activity used with fifth graders to keep the children using new vocabulary acquired during a shared literature study. (PRA)

Shows that students can be made aware of their "illusion of knowing" text material by having them read a three-paragraph factual passage with a carefully inserted phrase near the end which contradicts the main point of the passage. Notes that few students recognized the contradiction and that discussion afterward raised awareness of the…

Offers a plan for teaching the strategies and procedures of preparing oral presentations over two class sessions, using a combination of lectures, videos, discussions, self-assessments, simulations, and peer evaluations. (SR)