Alfred A. Arth

Introducing Competition to The Middle Level Classroom: Providing for Success

Competition is a significant reality of life, but the decision to compete is a personal one, say these writers, who assert that competition must be introduced carefully to middle level students.

Building a Bill of Rights for the Elementary-School Child

Consider 1. The student has the right to be uninterested. He controls the right of entrance, or consent to learn. If the student refuses to learn, his refusal must be regarded as a humane right, one way in which self-respect is maintained. The student has the right to lash out angrily at the discomfort of forced learning. A teachers professional responsibility is to expect this reaction and to respond by structuring a more felicitous instructional situation. Any student has the right to remain uninterested, unreceptive-as long as a teacher is incapable or unwilling to restructure a learning situation.

Gifted and Talented Education: Part II: Programs, Curricula, and Outcomes

The debate over the identification of gifted students pales by comparison with the arguments that can arise over what to do for those students once they are identified. Regardless of the form they take, special programs for gifted and talented learners are likely to be with us for some time to come. In many states, they are institutionalized in law or state regulations which require the provision of special services and programs for gifted and talented youngsters. Even in states where no such rules exist, the demand from the public to provide special recognition for and treatment of talented students all but assures that every school district, if not every school, will have to determine what to do with their gifted and talented students. The choices of program, grouping strategy, and instructional approach constitute a formidable legion, but the choices remain clouded by conflicting claims, counterclaims, and ambiguous research findings. This paper attempts to sort out the program options available to middle level educators and, to the extent it is possible to do so, identify the effects of those interventions.

Examining Instructional Processes of Middle Level Educators.

Findings about teacher-student interaction levels at various times of the day can have impor tant implications for middle-level educators, accord ing to this writer.