Describes an historical narrative assignment that stimulates students' interest in questions of rhetoric and scholarship as it requires students to combine role-playing, research, and revision. Discusses how students' role as participant/persona in writing the story prompts an intricate multiplicity of decisions as it forces them to filter data…

A teacher at Chicago Vocational High School describes how he interested a group of urban high school students in American poetry. Emphasizes anticipating the reasons for student resistance and drawing on students' likes and interests. (FMW)

A teacher recounts how a classroom atmosphere of comfort and trust was developed as 10- and 11-year-old students wrote a play, acted in it, directed it, and designed sets and costumes, based on the book "The Lion's Paw" by Robb White. (DB)

Describes a project in which elementary school students create a computer-generated time line of milestones in their lives, noting such an activity can give them a good start on writing autobiographies. (SM)

Presents two standards-based language arts activities for middle school students. The first involves collecting family photographs, writing a descriptive essay based on each one, and publishing the final product using Microsoft Publisher. The second involves creating one-page autobiographies, designing a publishable product, and publishing it…

Understanding multiple perspectives--how different people see one another and events now and in the past--is often cited as a goal of social studies educators. This article describes one way to encourage children to consider a variety of perspectives on a person's life story, using a literary model as a guide to thinking about the past. The book…

Eleanor Roosevelt could be called a Superstar First Lady. In the era when women's suffrage was first being exercised, she was "pushing the envelope" of what the President's wife, and women in general, might be expected to do in civic life. She wrote syndicated columns for magazines and newspapers, the most famous of which was entitled "My Day," a…

This article investigates the forming of student teacher identities in initial teacher education. By analysing student narratives of school experiences the article argues that although reflective, reflexive and critical discourses are helpful interrogatory tools, they presuppose a prior subjectivity which fails to acknowledge the idea that it is…

In this article, the author states that teachers should look more carefully at their students and treat them as if they may someday become the future leaders of their nation and the world. Teachers need to seriously consider the magnitude of their good fortune and responsibility as teachers of those who will one day guard their nation's safety,…

In this article, the author advocates the use of literacy narratives--assignments in which students are asked to describe and reflect upon their experiences with reading and writing. Among their other uses, she believes that they provide a sense of students' prior literacy experiences and of their general feelings toward reading and writing, and…

In this article, several teachers share their ideas on what they enjoy about coaching, directing, or advising. One of them, Mary Ann Yedinak, teaches middle school language arts, has a family, and has several partially written books still stored on her computer. However, she still wants to add an extracurricular activity such as Drama Club to her…

A case study of an autistic child (now a successfully employed graduate student and author of the article) whose parents and teachers capitalized on her fixations and compulsions by using them in learning activities illustrates how the needs of drive of autistic children can be redirected to motivate successful academic achievement. (CB)

Describes a method for incorporating writing into the basic mathematics program using personal math journals composed of a graph showing the number of hours devoted daily to math homework, a record of test grades, and at least one paragraph about the student's math experiences or another math-related topic. (AYC)

Three teachers describe classroom experiences with students who are deaf or hard of hearing. These narratives demonstrate the importance of the process of conversational classroom transactions in the development of basic writing, reading, and teaching skills. (DB)

A personal reflection on the author's professional development applies the principles of thematic cycling to identify six cycles from "a beginner's initial questions," through "more teaching, more questions, and more study," to "taking stock of where I am." Forty years of changes in the field of educating students who are deaf or hard of hearing…