Describes the "cultural pursuit" activity, a class activity in which students try to match descriptions of unusual or interesting skills and experiences to fellow students. Suggests the activity helps students get to know each other and feel connected to the class. (SR)

Describes present-day outdoor challenge education and briefly notes its history. Argues that it provides a framework for organizations to improve teamwork, problem solving, risk-taking, self-esteem, and interpersonal communication. Describes how advantages of outdoor education can be maintained when a program goes indoors. Notes advantages of…

Notes that projects provide opportunities to study in detail interesting subjects, and explores factors of successful project planning. Groups projects in three categories: event- or goal-oriented; child-initiated; and in-depth topic studies. Details attributes of the class, school, and teacher that determine project appropriateness. (LBT)

Describes phonemic awareness within the context of the multifactorial process of learning to read, presenting classroom activities that draw attention to form without losing sight of content. Activities focus on the following concepts: print carries a message; the concept of word; alphabet knowledge teaches that words are composed of letters;…

Discusses the long history of writing poems about a walk, noting many titles. Notes four basic types of walk poems and includes one by American poet Bill Zavatksy, called "Class Walk With Notebooks After Storm." Offers numerous brief ideas for both the writing and the form of walk poems. (SR)

Describes an assignment on writing instructions for the author's introductory sophomore-level business communication classes: a one-day instruction-writing activity that requires students to teach themselves. Describes the preparation and rationale for this activity, and includes the memo that directs students as they teach themselves during the…

Describes how, as a portion of the oral presentation assignment, business communication professors can foster a professional atmosphere in the classroom for both speakers and listeners by having students in the audience play roles commonly found during a business question and answer session. Discusses the roles, implementing them, and the benefits…

Describes how two eighth-grade language arts teachers ventured into the territory of vocabulary development. Describes several class activities and strategies they used to increase students' vocabulary and to make students into enthusiastic explorers and discoverers of words. (SR)

Describes "new literacy," and offers a rationale for creating a new literacy classroom. Discusses five characteristics of a pedagogy for a new literacy, offering a brief overview of each characteristic with examples of how each may be demonstrated in a new literacy classroom. (SR)

Describes one strategy used in high school English classrooms to teach for peace and dislodge violence: the poetry slam, a burgeoning pop culture phenomenon that combines poetry and performance art. Describes poetry slams that incorporate hip-hop culture. Discusses promoting slams in English classrooms to show students the power of words and…

Presents annotations of 36 adolescent/children's literature books published in 1995 or 1996 chosen by classroom teachers as "too good to miss." Notes that each annotation includes a suggested grade level, activities for incorporating the particular book into an interdisciplinary or a thematic unit, and ordering information. (RS)

Describes how one teacher begins to address presentation anxiety by presenting a lecture/discussion on controlling nervousness, followed by small group work in class intended to demonstrate the variety of ways in which nervousness is manifested in different people. (SR)

Describes how one professor uses a classroom trial (based on Hemingway's short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber") to prepare students for writing analytical essays about the story by teaching them to interrogate the text and by helping to cure the weaknesses of text-reticence and dubious deduction. (SR)

Discusses three books that can be helpful to teachers in demonstrating the connections between thinking and writing with journals, thus offering good models for "thinking journals." Notes that these books cover a wide range: beginning journal writers, professional journal writers, and the journal writer in all people. (SR)

Outlines a night adventure--a poetry hike for a junior high class. Discusses the group poem they worked on and gives examples of poems students produced after listening to readings of several poets' ideas and expressions of "night." (PA)