Describes student-designed laboratories that promote higher-level thinking skills through scientific reasoning, analysis, and evaluation. Discusses development of course objectives, course format and pedagogical assessment, examples of laboratories designed by students, and student response to the laboratory. Contains 13 references. (JRH)

Presents an award-winning short story about a middle school student's wistful reflections on his civics teacher and the other students in his class, many of whom were pregnant, poor, or disadvantaged in some way. (TB)

Explains how student-generated, computer-based multimedia projects can be meaningful learning activities to integrate into the K-12 curriculum. Describes three phases: design, including goals and objectives of the project and use of the finished product; production, including choosing multimedia software, prototyping, and usability testing; and…

A rationale is presented for developing gifted education projects that are differentiated from the regular curriculum. A specific activity, called "Let's Build a Sailboat," is described to illustrate guiding principles for success in student project development. The project taught planning and management skills to junior high school gifted…

Discusses the development of expert system shells and the use of expert systems as instructional tools, and describes a program which required junior high school students using Macintosh computers to create a knowledge base on topics of their choice. Benefits of such student-created expert systems are discussed. (LRW)

Recommends a variant of desktop publishing for classroom publishing of newsletters, school newspapers, and class-compiled and individually authored books, taking writing beyond traditional classroom contexts with teacher as sole audience. Promotes cut-and-paste production using whatever computers and software are available as expedient and…

Illustrates the use of projects to increase non-English speaking students' motivation for learning English. Appropriate projects may generate materials that teachers can use with other students. (CB)

Discusses the use of invented spelling to help kindergarten students learn to spell. It provides a natural foundation for building spelling abilities by making students think about words and generate new knowledge. Activities are suggested and guidelines are presented for a developmentally sensitive spelling program. (SM)

Presents creative ways for teachers to interest students in learning history by encouraging a feel for the context and interrelationships of events. Names, dates, and events are interspersed with opportunities for students to experience history through their own lives (e.g. oral histories, personal scrapbooks, family photographs, and household…

An anthropology professor required students to compose essay questions that they felt summarized the principal issues and objectives of the course, based on lecture content. In the final examination, students were given several of their own questions to answer. Students felt they learned more from this format. (MSE)

Discusses how a teacher and university researcher brought to their students their concerns that students' portfolios were not "academic" enough. Notes that the teacher and researcher recognized the potential of literacy portfolios for strengthening a child's capacity to narrate the events of her life with authority and to tie these events to the…

Outlines seven common mistakes in student-produced videos; suggests ways to avoid them. Mistakes include too much open screen space; unnatural, abrupt transitions between camera shots; odd juxtapositions of performers with background objects; endless talk without shot changes; no space between the subject's head and top of the video screen;…

Describes a learner-generated learning plan. The content of the program comprises two phases: student as editor/publisher in which learners create their own course text based upon selections of already-published materials; and students as author/publisher, in which learners use a publication-house simulation to develop, organize, investigate,…

Describes a technique for teaching English in Nigeria that uses folktales. In this activity, students tell each other folktales, the learners in each group discuss the stories and decide which they would like to write, the teacher helps students produce a clean copy of the stories, and then each group produces a final copy with drawings. Students…

The extensive use of commercial kits in molecular biology and biochemistry has prompted us to design a series of practical sessions to help students become familiar with the uses and limitations of pre-packaged assay systems. To facilitate an understanding of these assay systems and to promote reflection on their appropriate use, students…