One way to ensure that students are exposed to important ideas in a textbook is to use thinkers' cards with presentations. Student is given a colored card that they use to record a summary of the reading, issues the author doesn't address, and a thought-provoking question for discussion. (MLW)

Concept maps, diagrams that show the relationships among concepts in a piece of writing, can help students travel through literature to destinations that they can identify and defend. The use of concept maps for Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and The Sea" and Albert Camus'"The Stranger" is described. (MLW)

The narrative technique can be used as an effective teaching device at the college level. It can enhance students' motivation and provide a cognitive framework for learning. The narrative in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" is discussed. Three modes of illustration and using illustrations in class are described. (MLW)

One approach to teaching literature combines a work of drama or fiction with a popular text on human needs and relationships. Virginia Satir's "Peoplemaking," a book on family dynamics, provides a theoretical framework in which to evaluate the decisions of the characters in Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." (MSE)

In literature instruction, a log notebook can help cultivate a critical consciousness through dialogical exercises involving the student's personal ongoing questioning, responding, rereading, reformulating, or revising earlier assignments. Sequences writing assignments can be used to stimulate dialectical thinking and writing. (MSE)

Courses in Vietnam War history should incorporate Vietnamese, French, and English literary response to the war as complements to the history texts. Possibilities include an account of the French colonial experience, a required text in translation from the viewpoint of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and Vietnamese expatriate texts. (MSE)

The advantages of group consensus testing are discussed, procedures for preparing and testing students by this method are outlined, and research supporting consensus testing is reviewed. (MSE)

An exercise derived from observation of students' common notetaking practices is designed to make plagiarism less likely by involving the student in the writing from the beginning and by making the notetaking process more efficient. (MSE)

Interdisciplinary teaching helps students see how knowledge and tools within individual disciplines can be brought together to address problems or issues of concern to mankind. Team teaching within seminars allows students to witness and engage in disciplinary interrelations. (MSE)

Efforts by Siena College's faculty to integrate women's, minority, and other social perspectives into the curriculum are illustrated in courses offered in political science, religious studies, and English and in an interdisciplinary social sciences course. (MSE)

College Now is a collaborative high school-college program in New York to promote college for moderately achieving high school seniors whose grade averages are in the 65-85 range, who are not chronically absent, are not discipline problems, have limited occupational and educational vision, and need to strengthen basic skills. (MSE)

A two-hat debate technique is described in which one author wore a straw hat and spoke in favor of the American system, then donned a beret and argued for the French party system. The technique has been used to examine political issues, government policies, institutions of different nations, etc. (MLW)

Teachers as readers would have a more pleasant and stimulating job if they were reading essays that interested them. The step to reading a good paper is designing a good assignment. Some areas that need to be defined for students before they begin to write are outlined. (MLW)

Motivating students through preparing their writing for publication and then publishing it offers a better alternative to the task analysis method of teaching remedial writing to university students. One teacher's experiences at the Summer Bridge Program at Sonoma State University are described. (MLW)

When the teacher does writing assignments along with students, students see four things: how the teacher would approach the assignment; how to do revisions; how even the teacher makes grammatical and spelling errors in the first draft; and how those errors get corrected. (MLW)