For years, reading teachers in the schools have emphasized word identification skills and believed that reading is comprised of a set of subskills that a child must master before he or she can learn to read. To teach a child to read, however, instruction must focus on comprehension. Therefore, word attack skills should be taught in conjunction…

Noting that computer instruction for teaching composition is generally limited to the component skills of spelling, punctuation, and grammar, this paper proposes a program that can help elementary school students use computers to generate ideas for descriptive writing. The first section of the paper provides orientation procedures designed to…

Foreign language testing in schools has followed the general trends of foreign language education, from teaching and testing grammar, through a combination of reading and translation, to the audio lingual approaches of the sixties and the developments since that time. Contemporaneous with the decline in foreign language programs in the 1970's…

Several models of the reading and writing processes suggest that the two should be taught together as part of the communication process. The first responsibility of a teacher interested in teaching the connection is the selection of a model that seems to fit perceptions about the connection. Next, the teacher must decide the balance and sequence…

A handbook for participants of a workshop on the process of describing and documenting the implementation of bilingual programs is presented. The workshop is part of the Bilingual Technical Assistance project. Workshop objectives are to: generate implementation questions appropriate for a given bilingual program; apply a strategy for describing…

Suggestions for providing more effective performance appraisals for school media specialists address questions of what performance items and evidence are appropriate for evaluating media specialists in schools of different levels and sizes, and what procedures will successfully involve media specialists, principals, and district level personnel.…

The relationships that exist among the skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening suggest a need for greater attention to oral communication processes in the formal instructional program. The extent of these relationships is such that four national associations drafted a joint paper stating that oral language competency is the basis for…

In the back to basics era, creative dramatics should still be used in the English classroom because it helps to develop the entire child. For some time, teaching strategies have been directed at the left brain, the hemisphere that deals with logical and linear functions. Recently, however, attention has been given to the right side of the brain,…

The paper discusses a method of integrating parent report with teacher report on the Minnesota Child Development Inventory (MCDI) and the Burks Behavior Rating Scale (BBRS) to aid in the assessment and placement of young children with behavior disorders and developmental delay. Two samples of children were used to collect the data: 3 to 6 year old…

Results are provided from a formative evaluation of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) designed for training of foster home certification and licensing staff. The evaluation was undertaken to provide information on issues of feasibility, installation, and implementation of CAI. Project data were obtained from two sources: the first was a review…

This report presents a method for analyzing curriculum using the examinations of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). The method provides a system by which the NBME examinations can be used each year to compare the content of an external licensing test with the content of the curriculum at the Wright State University School of Medicine…

Three innovations combine to make it possible for Arizona State University to move 1,600 students a year through a performance based communication course with no expense but the salary of a single faculty member. Apart from the obvious economic benefits, the mass lecture/small group breakdown format assures that the student will receive an…

The inservice materials described in this monograph are designed for regular classroom teachers who are working with mainstreamed children in elementary and secondary school classrooms. The first section contains abstracts of six series of inservice materials: (1) "I'm a Lot Like You"; (2) "Educating Students in the Least Restrictive Environment";…

An annotated bibliography is organized to match the format of the Standards for Evaluations of Educational Programs, Projects, and Materials, including sections on utility, feasibility, propriety, and accuracy of evaluations. It identifies literature that includes in-depth information about the issues covered in the Standards. The Standards are…

There are three general approaches to organizing a basic mythology course: geographical, conceptual/thematic, or a combination of the two. The geographical approach offers a wealth of material organized by focusing on one or several of the world's mythologies and offers the opportunity to find out more about the influences on the development of…