Discusses the need for teachers to foster the creativity of elementary school students. Describes creativity boosters for the classroom such as designing and defining new words, providing open-ended problem-solving situations, designing original inventions, presenting "what-if" questions, and providing tasks that require divergent thinking. (CR)

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…

Argues that lists of great books ought to reflect both the comic and tragic sides. Discusses problems of censorship and of translation when presenting comic works to classrooms full of teenagers. Describes how the author approaches the teaching of Aristophanes'"Lysistrata," offering students a bowdlerized text and inviting them to improve it. (SR)

Argues that postmodern language theory offers useful insights into long-standing writing problems encountered by writing instructors. Discusses a postmodern view of language, how language shapes reality, the contributions of Jacques Derrida, and deconstruction and composition. Applies these ideas to two pedagogical ideologies, and suggests some…

Discussion of the use of daily habits or common social activities by anthropologists and sociology teachers to illustrate the power of popular culture focuses on the role of coffee. Provides a list of more than 60 specific songs and albums that could be used for classroom discussion. (Author/LRW)

Presents five activities: (1) transforming--requires that a student put aside a first draft and create a new piece on the same subject in a different genre; (2) meaningless words--encourages deleting unnecessary words; (3) group work; (4) definitions quiz; and (5) audience, synthesis, and the thematic analysis--considering these three when writing…

Describes the author's consulting experience, and focuses on two uses of this experience in her business-communication classrooms: a focus on teams (emphasizing differences between collaborative writing assignments in the classroom and team projects in business), and a case devoted to issues in the workplace. (SR)

Describes a program at a North Carolina high school in which students from the leadership class share an entire workday with a civic or government official. (SR)

Focuses on ways of using satellite imagery obtained from the Internet, to enhance classroom learning. Discusses satellite deployment; classroom applications, including infrared imagery, high-resolution photography, and global positioning satellites; and use of satellite data for hands-on activities, including cartography, city and community…

A popular author of young-adult fiction offers suggestions for teachers and students who want to write to authors and receive replies. Discusses how to organize letters from entire classes and student motivations for writing, and includes humorous examples of student correspondence. (LRW)

Presents suggestions for bringing reading and writing to life in the classroom and helping students develop a lifelong love of both. Includes creating a refrigerator door for displaying student work, using digital notebooks, establishing a publishing center, holding lunch-bunch meetings, binding students' writing into class collections, reading…

Presents transcripts of a "good" interview and a "bad" interview. Gives role-playing exercises for interviewing and using quotes. Instructs the teacher to make specific points about what was done well and what could be done better. Discusses how using these exercises can make learning to be a reporter fun. (SC)

Describes in detail the steps necessary to develop a Gallery Walk, a classroom project that was used to foster shared-learning, communal inquiry and individual empowerment. (NH)

Defines "balance" as a philosophical perspective about what kinds of reading knowledge children should develop and how those kinds of knowledge can be attained--rather than as one right approach to teaching. Outlines a set of philosophical beliefs and guiding principles for organizing a classroom reading program. Discusses benefits of…

Index cards provide an inexpensive and easy source of possible activities for language learning. They can provide a dynamic resource for lessons, giving students a welcome break from textbooks, worksheets, and other standard classroom fare. A few activities for using index cards in the English-as-a-foreign-language classroom are provided.…