This pioneering book, by one of the founders of the media literacy field, provides evidence of the impact of media literacy on the academic achievement of adolescents. Read about the practice of high school teachers who prepared their students to critically analyze all aspects of contemporary media culture. These teachers incorporated popular and…

Developed by classroom teachers during the development phase of Minnesota's Graduation Standards, this performance package is made up of locally designed assignments that, taken together, show whether a student has learned and can apply the knowledge and skills related to writing in the English language for a variety of academic purposes and…

An approach to teaching the novel to high school students by tying literature and the printed media (newspapers and magazines) together is described in this brief article. PROCEDURE (excerpt): To link the study of the printed media to the study of the novel, book reviews, one positive and one negative, were duplicated for classroom use. Students…

Claims that high school curricula should provide opportunities for students to vicariously explore the relationships, roles, and ideas that appear in Shakespearean drama. Uses the dilemma dramatized in "Hamlet" as an example. (JD)

Critiques the Capacitor-Aided System for Teaching and Learning Electricity (CASTLE) curriculum. Criticism is made of the model's use of a compressible-fluid model to demonstrate charge conduction. An alternative model is proposed. (ZWH)

This lesson plan highlights one episode in the "Divine Comedy" to provide students with an introduction to Dante's poem. After a brief introduction to the opening of the "Divine Comedy," which portrays Dante as a pilgrim guided by the poet Virgil on a journey through the Christian afterlife toward God, students read Canto 5 of…

This lesson plan complements study of plot and characterization in "Romeo and Juliet" by focusing on Shakespeare's use of lyric forms and conventions to spotlight moments in the drama and thereby heightens the impact of the action on the stage. Students look first at the sonnet in which Romeo and Juliet meet, analyzing the imagery to…

Anthologists and editors prepare the way for poetry readers, selecting works that reward close reading and assisting interpretation through annotation. But on the Internet people can return to poetry in its native state--one set of words among many others competing for appreciation--and read with fresh eyes. The learning objectives of this lesson…

Presents procedures for student-guided critical analyses of current topics in biology. (ZWH)

An innovative and practical resource for teachers looking to move beyond English and American works, this book explores 175 highly teachable short stories from nearly 50 countries, highlighting the work of recognized authors from practically every continent, authors such as Chinua Achebe, Anita Desai, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera, Isak Dinesen,…

An approach to teaching literary point of view to high school and college composition classes is described in this brief article. AUTHOR'S COMMENT (excerpt): My students demonstrate little understanding of the concept of point of view. They seem unaware that selecting a point of view is an important decision for a writer, because it controls the…

Describes an assignment to focus students' attention on the thinking process in which students write dialogues that reproduce concretely the dialectic movement of a formal argument. Includes a more advanced exercise in which students' address the remarks of literary critics. (HTH)

Intended as a guidebook for high school English teachers, this book contains analyses of American novels commonly read in high school English classes. Each chapter is divided into two sections: an analysis of the novel, including discussions of story and setting, characters, themes, and language and style; and a guide to teaching the novel in the…

Based on the idea that the study of postmodernism is a useful and valuable pursuit because it engages students in discussions of fundamental questions about the individual's situation in the world, this book takes an interdisciplinary approach to address postmodernism effectively. The book conceives postmodernism as a widespread cultural…

Uses ideas contained in King's book as the basis for a unit on critical analysis of horror films for composition students. (NKA)