This guide contains a short introduction on the value of teaching poetry in elementary school and some ideas on how it should be taught. The guide presents seven classroom activities to make poetry come alive. Seven figures illustrating the activities are included. (MS)

English for native speakers is compared and contrasted with English for non-native speakers by examining the influence of Moffett's (1968) structural curriculum for native speakers and the notional functional syllabus approach for second language learners. Both approaches are more rhetorical and less grammatical then the approaches that preceded…

The growing spirit of professionalism of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is reflected in its increasing representation within the elementary, secondary, and college level sections, its involvement of teachers from all states, and its development of a unified professional voice. NCTE began in 1911, when 35 members of the English…

Secondary school teachers of English often avoid teaching T.S. Eliot's poetry because they consider his work too difficult for young readers and too full of esoteric allusions. However, at the heart of his work is a variety of rich, concrete images which can be used to reveal his meaning and which can be offered to students in the form of drawings…

The various roles that a teacher enacts are examined from four perspectives in this paper. Part one: "The Curriculum Text" presents a series of observations of classroom activity, and part two: "A Student Perspective" includes a collection of interviews with students who had been previously observed. The teacher's tape-recorded thoughts are…

This paper offers some guidelines, to be shared with students, that can help make the evaluation of creative responses and projects affirmative, honest, and heartfelt. What should teachers look for in a creative project? The project should move the audience in some deeply personal way, contain some element of surprise, and fulfill the spirit--if…

To develop an appreciation and understanding of poetry in young children (K-3), grade school teachers should consider choosing poems that appeal to children and implement an enthusiastic instructional poetry program that can make a positive impact on the students. Recent comprehensive studies of young children's concepts and attitudes about poetry…

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) must take steps to ensure that proposals for reform in literacy education are based on the best research, theory, and practice of teaching as well as on the perceived needs of the public and press. NCTE members can take steps to advise legislators and school board members of some of the…

A process-oriented freshman composition instructor who stresses invention, drafting, and revision can simultaneously integrate a form of grammatical instruction. Various methods and strategies, both from experience and research on grammar from the classical to the contemporary era, suggest such a creative integration. First, the teaching of…

A major goal in teaching basic writers is to show them the importance of revision in the writing process, specifically revision for correctness (correcting), for creating content (adding), and for cutting out inessential material (subtracting). Revising for correctness includes varying or limiting the assigned revision tasks, varying the length of…

This paper discusses case studies as an active learning strategy for helping students develop the critical thinking processes that are key to composing, interpreting, and responding to literature and are important in other fields as well. To illustrate how case studies work in the classroom, why they are exciting and beneficial, and how they are…

English teachers' approaches to the problems of assessment and evaluation have been characterized by uncertainty and confusion, and this uncertainty is communicated to students. It is not simply that students do not know "how" they are being judged; they do not know "when" they are being judged. They soon begin to stop taking risks and fail to…

Three young adult novels published in 1983 or 1984 that are worthy of a place in the literature curriculum are discussed. These books have a special appeal to adolescents, deal with problems students might encounter growing up, expand their self-awareness and their experiences, and are teachable. They contain balanced, recognizable, and…

Often when teaching creative writing to grade school and middle school students, teachers encounter two problems: students state that they do not have anything to write about, or students keep their poetic voices quiet and imitate the examples that they are given. If students are encouraged to mentally create images of poetic forms and to write…

Adapting strategies of invention from the new process-oriented rhetoric, the literature teacher can help students understand what they read through prereading exercises. Presenting students with an abstract model of a text's metaphoric structure, the teacher can spark students' immediate and imaginative response to the model, involving them…