Illustrates, through the story of elementary-school teacher Jan Cogley, how improvisation, drama, and comedy can be used to emphasize learning so that children will enjoy and remember. (MP)

An interview with world-famous clown Emmett Kelly, Jr., conducted by "Instructor editor, Elizabeth F. Noon.

A "flipping" clown figure can be used on a number line to help students conceptualize operations using negative numbers. (SJL)

There are a number of characteristics of gifted children reported by teachers and researchers. Such characteristics may include curiosity, advanced mathematical skills, large vocabulary, acute sense of humour. This paper examines the demands that humour, as a creative activity, makes on cognitive and social development. It is derived from research…

Twin children were videotaped hitting an inflated clown figure. Three behaviors (number of hits, intensity of hits, and number of quadrants hit) showed adequate response characteristics, rater reliability, and test-retest reliability. Twin analyses of the three behavioral ratings yielded no evidence of hereditary influence. (Author)

One example is given of the success and feasibility of specially designed teaching toys that are really mini-computer terminals connected by telephone lines to a minicomputer which transmits individualized, daily programmed instruction to children. (MN)

Describes the separation of modern professional writers from the real world and their misplaced concern with presenting an image of toughness instead of truly communicating. (DD)

The speech procedure, utilizing an attractive mechanical device in the form of a clown, proved to be effective and efficient for use with retarded children. (Author)

In this article, the author describes Fun Hour, a social program for kids with disabilities. This YMCA program in Pennsylvania focuses on social interaction and peer relationships. The Fun Hour program started in March 2006 on Friday nights with 20 kids and their families. It has celebrated its first anniversary, and the kids that have been in the…

Using a post-structural, interpretive perspective, we studied children's humour in a grade-1 and -2 classroom. In this article, we report our observations of two boys who took on the role of "class clown." The boys used humour to negotiate power, which we defined as participation in discourse, taking on the role of class clowns and…

Purpose: This study used the cross-modal picture-word interference task of P. J. Brooks and B. MacWhinney (2000) to compare effects of phonologically related words on lexical access in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Children (7;1 [years;months]-11;2) named pictures while ignoring auditory distractors. Three stimulus…

This study assesses the effects of three kinds of verbal plans, temptation-inhibiting plans, reward-oriented plans, and task-facilitating plans, on children's resistance to temptation. Each plan was studied in an elaborated and an unelaborated form. Subjects were 70 four-year olds, 35 boys and 35 girls. The major piece of apparatus employed was a…

Describes a teacher's experience of teaching a class entitled "Testimony, Magical Realism, and the Carnivalesque" which focused on the invention of aesthetic means to counter dominant, silencing discourses of power. Explains that students were asked to select a story from their own lives and were required to tell the story in three…

This study assessed the validity of striking a Bobo clown as a measure of aggression by correlating the rate of this behavior with peer ratings, teacher ratings, and self-ratings of aggressiveness in a preschool. (Author/JMB)

Examines mothers' discourse in joint picture book reading in terms of the level of abstract thought it requires the child to make and compares this with language used in an interactive, product-oriented task, modelling a clown using play-doh. (39 references) (GLR)