The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) incorporates challenging literacy standards into middle grades and high school content areas within a variety of academic disciplines, not just English/language arts courses. The Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) provides schools with instructional tools needed to help teachers understand and implement…

For novice and experienced instructors alike, facilitating online discussions can seem like a daunting prospect. Many ask themselves how to do so in an effective and meaningful way that actually adds to the course experience rather than seeming like mere busywork. The MANIC discussion strategy is one that promotes deeper student interaction with…

This essay looks primarily at one approach to teaching about privilege in a feminist research course. I talk about the motivation to ask students to participate in this exercise and the potential as well as the challenges it has for raising awareness of one's own privileges before setting out to do feminist research. Additionally, the paper…

The author describes alternatives to traditional ways of conceptualizing the early American literature survey course, focusing on film ("1492" and "Black Robe").

Pairing an inquiry lesson with a traditional reading activity creates a jarring philosophical mismatch between the interaction, deep thinking, and scientific reasoning that drives meaningful inquiry instruction and the "scan the text, copy the answers" response often obtained from elementary nonfiction readers. Realizing that there must be a…

The assignment of pre-class reading is a common practice in higher education. Typically, the purpose of this reading assignment is to expose students to background knowledge that will be useful in an upcoming class discussion or to introduce a topic that will be presented more directly by the instructor. However, numbers of undergraduates actually…

"Not reading," even for many good students, has become a mode of operation with respect to book-length texts assigned in school. Many students enter secondary and postsecondary literature classes "intending" to "not read" the books teachers assign. More students than teachers want to admit do not complete assigned reading, choosing instead to…

This article includes a review of the literature on personal epistemology and the reflective judgment model and applies these theoretical concepts to undergraduate students who engage in service-learning projects. The application will provide instructors with greater understanding of students' abilities and limitations in their…

One of the most important challenges a teacher faces is motivating his or her students to complete reading assignments and to complete them carefully. After all, if students bring to class a basic understanding of the text up for discussion, much deeper learning can occur than if the teacher is forced to spend time explaining the reading to…

In this article, the author describes the design for her advanced oil-painting class. In this class, high-school students created a self-portrait painting and learned a glazing technique. The author also describes the students' evaluation of the class.

This article describes 10 recommendations for creativity, higher-order thinking, and meaningful learning activities that can be used to guide teachers in constructing an engaging AP course: (1) Be on the committee that decides how students will be selected for AP; (2) Maximize time and connections through blocks of time with an English colleague;…

Academics often treat students' discipline-specific literacy as unproblematic. In doing so they may underestimate the difficulties for university students as they move between subjects of study that may involve different disciplines, language genres and academic practices. This paper describes an initiative aimed at supporting students in reading…

Scott Windham details his redesign of the interactive syllabus, a Web-based method of organizing course themes and assignments developed several years ago by Sylvie Richards. Windham suggests that reconceptualizing the interactive syllabus as an assignment guide, integrating both well-structured and ill-structured techniques into it, and using it…

Reading instruction at the secondary level is important, and it is necessary. Students need to be taught how to organize ideas, question authors' conclusions, make predictions, draw inferences, and use and apply the information they learn to a variety of situations. Getting students excited about reading expository text is possible, and it…

Day after day, teachers hand out reading assignments; students ignore them; and both groups spend another day at school discouraged, less than enthusiastic, and bored. While principals struggle with stagnant test scores, teachers wonder how they can possibly work more diligently toward instructional outcomes. Getting students excited about reading…