This article considers how media sports culture is an apt space for digital media literacy instruction. Describing a senior year high school English course that requires students to deconstruct and compose with sports media texts, the author outlines how learning modules, analysis of curated collections of texts through heuristics, and mentor…

Our district reading data at the secondary level has remained stagnant over the last decade with respect to grade-level reading ability. We knew we wanted to find a way to engage students in reading and strengthen their literacy skills. In response to this, we sought to examine if we were hindering literacy development through our instructional…

This supplemental report explores the developmental needs of Colorado's recent high school graduates, examines the postsecondary success of students who need developmental education and explores equity gaps as they relate to developmental education. It builds upon the report titled "The Postsecondary Progress and Success of High School…

Sooner or later, as schools move to implement the new Common Core and other forthcoming standards, almost every teacher in the United States will face the challenge of how to support students from homes where English is not the dominant language in meeting subject-matter academic expectations that require increasingly demanding uses of language…

Using Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" as an anchor text, the authors argue for applied theatre strategies as vivid and viable tools for exploring challenging texts and applying critical lenses in an embodied way. Readers are guided through a series of theatre-based, English-classroom accessible improvisational frameworks to help…

A close look at literature and language shows that the two are closely related. This close relationship is obvious because from all indications, literature presupposes language. It is inconceivable to discuss literature without reference to language. But going by the traditional practice at the secondary school level in Nigerian context, there are…

For most Anglophone countries, the history of grammar teaching over the past 50 years is one of contestation, debate and dissent: and 50 years on we are no closer to reaching a consensus about the role of grammar in the English/Language Arts curriculum. The debate has been described through the metaphor of battle and grammar wars (Kamler, 1995;…

This article offers a personal view of the reform of the undergraduate English syllabus which is soon to come into effect at Oxford University. The particular example is analysed in relation to two more general developments: on one hand, changing conceptions of the place and purpose of language study in the discipline of English, and on the other,…

The article analyses the presence of William Shakespeare as intertext in three recent novels by black British writers which deploy the work of the Bard as they explore British and European identities. Caryl Phillips's "The Nature of Blood" recreates an Othello-like figure who in early Modern Venice struggles to come to terms with his…

Ms. Mayer, a recently retired English language arts teacher, frequently used strategies described in John Golden's book "Reading in the Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom." In this book, Golden suggests that ELA teachers "reverse the order: use a film clip to practice the reading and analytical skills that we want our students to…

The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) is increasingly used as an instructional framework to help elementary and secondary teachers support English language learners (ELLs). This useful tool has helped teachers gain the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to support ELLs learn subject-area content and skills while learning…

Molly Poland is a first year English and Home Economics teacher who began her career in a small Far North Queensland town. In this article, she writes about her first year teaching and the last year of her degree and the challenges she faced as both teacher and student. Reading Boomer's "Negotiating the Curriculum" forced her to think a…

In this response to Peter Medway's paper, "English and Enlightenment' (Changing English 17:1, 2010), I take issue with little of what he so lucidly writes, except his implicit and occasionally explicit denunciation of Romanticism as the proper basis of English pedagogy. I am concerned in this paper to emphasise the positive aspects of…

John Yandell's "The Social Construction of Meaning: Reading Literature in Urban Classrooms" provides a powerful counterpoint to current policy discourse in education. By focusing on the social interactions that occur in the classrooms of two English teachers, Yandell shows how their pupils are able to explore dimensions of language and…

In the context of public and policy concerns about human induced climate change, it is striking that dominant models and histories of English teaching marginalise the environmental significance of English as a school subject (Matthewman, 2010). This is in spite of a growing body of ecocritical work within English and cultural studies which has…