Describes a number of techniques used in a developmental English class. Notes that listening to colleagues in other disciplines and using writing-to-learn strategies are two ways to make a classroom successful. Suggests that these techniques can help developmental students become active listeners and readers. (SR)

Examines the good fortune that marks the career of writing teachers. Shows how creative writing activities stimulate and inspire writing teachers. Includes five poems written by the author. (HB)

Calls for careful and informed use of multicultural texts in the English classroom. Examines how students resist the study of difference. Considers how a teacher might help students read and write differently. Shows how peer response to student writing can be improved. (HB)

Describes one way that an adopted speller can be adapted so that it contributes to the overall spelling program via a spelling workshop. Discusses daily happenings in the spelling workshop. (SR)

Describes a project for kindergartners about "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" which uses learning stations for drama, art, technology, videotape, and books, and which culminates in a sequential videotaped story of the three bears using students' computer illustrations. (SR)

Presents five responses from practicing teachers to the question, "How do you incorporate commercial and/or public television in your English curriculum?" (HB)

Suggests that a superior way of teaching fractions is to assist learners to conceptualize fractions, especially to grasp the varied meaning of fractions. Advocates using hands-on procedures, gives three different meanings of the concept "fraction," and explains how to teach children the deeper meaning of numberline subunits, fractions as division,…

Discusses the importance of rituals and concrete things to help children deal with the death of a loved one. Eight books of fiction for elementary students that portray young people dealing with death are summarized, and ideas for classroom and library activities are suggested. (PEN)

Offers a teaching model and describes ways that social studies concepts can be taught using music. Discusses six steps for doing so, and describes three activities for using music in the social studies class. (SR)

Suggests that the school year is like a growing season, but with planting in the fall and harvest in the spring. Discusses ways teachers can "prepare the soil" for cultivating students' love of reading. Presents a baker's dozen ideas to build the desire to read. (RS)

Offers a suggestion to extend the K-W-L instructional activity (which helps young learners develop appropriate questions for research and organizing what they know) by adding another column: the "where" column, which helps young learners focus on where specific information can be located. Offers an example drawn from work with nine-year…

Describes a 10-week workshop at an alternative high school in New York City that explored how words come into a language and that involved students in writing their own reference books of words not yet in any dictionary (their "personal dictionaries"). Contains a 22-item annotated dictionary source list. (RS)

Describes how high school students can give J. Alfred Prufrock (from T.S. Eliot's serious poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock") a "makeover" so he can acquire more self-confidence. Shows how this makeover exercise can lead students to a deeper general understanding and appreciation of complex literary characters and of a…

Describes how one high school English teacher uses puns on a regular basis to augment his vocabulary reviews. Argues that doing so aids in developing students' vocabulary, since it compels students to pay closer attention and gives many students a chance to display their creative-thinking skills. (SR)

Describes a second-grade classroom activity in which children took photographs of their school while focusing on common themes generated by their teacher. Includes discussion of materials and costs for the activity, children's expectations, parental help, class sessions involved (instructions, taking pictures, developing photographs, sharing…