Students in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students' engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students' own interpretations of the authors' texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of…

Help students to explore the intertextuality of literature and to think more deeply and compassionately about the world. This book shows high school teachers and college instructors how to foreground a work's cultural context, recognizing that every culture has its own narrative tradition of oral and written classics that inform its literature.…

"What is Literature? A Critical Anthology" explores the most fundamental question in literary studies. 'What is literature?' is the name of a problem that emerges with the idea of literature in European modernity. This volume offers a cross-section of modern literary theory and reflects on the history of thinking about literature as a…

Today's students are inundated with popular culture and pop culture texts in their daily lives. One such form of pop culture is that of music. This medium is one that teachers must use as a way to connect to students and build a bridge to the curriculum. This article will discuss uses of music in the classroom from capturing students' attention…

This article is meant as a useful classroom methodology by which teachers of literature may give their students a coherent rubric for understanding literary meaning and exegesis which can incorporate most literary theories while addressing the basic-to-advanced concepts required of literary students. Also, it will provide a working methodology for…

This article introduces an approach that middle-school teachers can follow to help their students carry out linguistic-based literary analyses. As an example, it draws on Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) to show how J.K. Rowling used language to characterize Hermione as an intelligent female in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."…

This article shares the experiences, tips, and passion of an English I teacher who teaches English language learners (ELLs) who have been in U.S. schools for at least one year. She provides information about various teaching strategies that have been effective in her classroom over the past few years. The article addresses student grouping,…

Supporting upper elementary students' higher level (i.e., analytic) thinking about texts in writing is a challenge for many teachers, in large part because what it means to analyze text is not well defined and because this skill is a relatively new expectation in elementary grades. In this article, the authors clarify the goal of three common…

For the past few decades, stylistics has emerged as a discipline that encompasses both literary criticism and linguistics. The integration of both disciplines opened many opportunities for English literature and language teachers to get creative in their teaching--by introducing the stylistic approach in their classrooms. However, in a typical…

Whether constructed on literary analysis models or inspired by conventional acting theories, Reader's Theatre performance techniques are an invaluable instructional tool available to teachers who want their students to see, hear and feel Shakespeare texts in classroom discussion and performance. These exercises are designed to promote both a…

Literature circles or book clubs are small, heterogeneous groups of students who have chosen to read and discuss the same book together. The research on literature circles suggests that they hold great promise for increasing students' enjoyment of reading and honing their literacy skills. When evidence-based strategies are embedded into a…

The author, an elementary teacher, used an online message board and wikis to engage students in literature discussions and to deepen their understanding of and interest in the books they were reading. Her students were much more motivated to read and discuss books using the online tools.

This article describes an activity using Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" as a supplemental text in an undergraduate group communication course. This book will help stimulate conversation and promote easy avenues for classroom discussion. In addition to weekly quizzes over each chapter to help facilitate rich classroom discussions, the…

One of the greatest challenges for English language arts teachers today is the call to engage students in more complex texts. Tim Gillespie, who has taught in public schools for almost four decades, has found the lenses of literary criticism a powerful tool for helping students tackle challenging literary texts. Tim breaks down the dense language…

To re-engage students with literacy, teachers need an entry point that recognizes and honors students' out-of-school identities. This book looks at how artifacts (everyday objects) access the daily, sensory world in which students live. Exploring how artifacts can generate literacy learning, the book shows teachers how to use a family photo,…