How might team teaching, young adult novels, and zines work together to engage students in thinking about, writing about, and building community? Four researchers worked with three eighth-grade English teachers and one student teacher to find out. The four eighth-grade English teachers teach as a team, meeting formally at least once a week to plan…

How can we prepare and encourage new teachers to take on the challenge of changing traditional views of literacy education? Teacher educator William Kist shares a first-year teacher's story of incorporating new literacies within an eighth-grade alternative classroom.

It is very important and fun for the English teacher to take time simply to read to the students. (JH)

Reluctant readers were helped to read and to gain some understanding of themselves and their classmates through story dramatization. (JH)

Discusses a list of books of varying lengths and difficulty that the reading teacher can use to help reluctant readers find that all-important breakthrough book to discover what reading can do for them. (KEH)

Describes how an intelligent and articulate eighth grade student, who could neither read nor write, was able to participate in Directed Individualized Reading (DIR) with the help of books on audiocassettes. (PRA)

Describes an eighth grade reading teacher's program which involved students visiting elderly adults in nursing homes. Argues that the experience provided the context for students to deal with responsibility in a realistic setting, and that the positive circumstances encouraged them to share their experiences in oral and written form. (RS)