Instructor (1990) articles from January 1999

Instructor (1990) archives from January 1999

Serving up economics: spark students' interest in real-life economics with a classroom restaurant project.
January 1, 1999... When you're teaching your students about the forests in your region, you're discussing a natural resource. When you don't have enough glue sticks to go around, you have a scarcity problem. When your students are researching inventors like...

Games that teach: spice up gray winter days by reinforcing math skills with challenging games.
January 1, 1999... We want to share with you four games that have worked well with our students - without the anxiety of timed tests or skill drills. Each of these can be adapted for students in the second to sixth grades. (Because most of these games rely on...

Blending boosters: techniques and activities to enliven phonics lessons.
January 1, 1999... As educators we know that spending more time practicing blending skills with our students results in better scores on their reading achievement tests. We also know that understanding how component sounds in words work together is a critical...

It's not so black & white; an educator's wisdom on teaching about slavery and other race-related issues (that make us uncomfortable).(Cover Story)
January 1, 1999... Last October public broadcasting stations aired a four-part documentary, Africans in America, that explored the central paradox of a democracy that declared all men equal but enslaved and oppressed one group to provide independence and...

What I told my son.(explaining slavery to four-year-olds)(Cover Story)
January 1, 1999... "Am I black?" my son Jonathan, then four years old, asked me in the grocery store one day. "Yes, you are," I replied. "But my skin is brown," he said. "Yes," I said, "but black is a term that people use to describe African-Americans, just as...

"But you didn't tell us you were giving a test today!".(use of tests as teaching tools)
January 1, 1999... How to stop the excuses and get the focus on learning. Using tests as teaching tools You said the test would just be on the Civil War. You didn't say anything about Abraham Lincoln," complains a perplexed student. "I study, I think I know...

Empowering the reader in every child: the case for flexible grouping when teaching reading.(includes strategies to use with flexible grouping)
January 1, 1999... The case for flexible grouping when teaching reading I'm convinced! Good fortune is sometimes disguised as misfortune. Take, for example, an experience I had a few years ago that led me to examine flexible grouping for reading instruction....

Creating metaphors.
January 1, 1999... Enliven your students' poetry writing by teaching them how to use metaphors. These clever literary devices are direct comparisons between two seemingly unrelated objects without using the words like or as (used in similes). They get a thought...

Amazing educational possibilities: that's what presentation software provides - for students and teachers alike.
January 1, 1999... The computer screen displays a simple, graphic time line. The dates represent milestones in the life of President John F. Kennedy. When a student clicks on one date, she hears part of Kennedy's inauguration speech. When she clicks on a second...

Cyberspace science.(The Cyber-Savvy Classroom)(electronic classroom activity)
January 1, 1999... How can you catch a bubble? How could you measure a bubble? Why do bubbles fall to the ground? Students of all grade levels can discover the answers to these and other intriguing questions as they investigate bubbles in a unit that integrates...

Developing technology leaders.(The Cyber-Savvy Classroom)(development of a student technology leadership program)
January 1, 1999... Teachers in our school wanted to develop a student technology leadership program that would build students' levels of expertise in computing proficiency and encourage them to use their skills actively. Joining the American Technology Honor...

Thank you, Mr. Ball.(sixth-grade teacher Clifton Ball)
January 1, 1999... A heartfelt tribute from Karen Hesse, the 1998 Newbery Medal winner for Out of the Dust, a novel in free verse Most of my childhood papers have vanished, mercifully, into the void, but not too long ago, my mother discovered a manila...

Dana's gift: a teacher talks about lessons learned from an extraordinary child.(nine-year-old student)
January 1, 1999... It was 1972. I was in the second year of my career, teaching the fourth grade, and very bright-eyed and idealistic. Several days after classes began, I was approached school's director of special services. She knew of a student who needed a...