Motivation has long been viewed as a key element of learning. A study of over 300 high school juniors and seniors demonstrated that motivation was at least as predictive of achievement in a subject as was intelligence. Among younger students, motivation is a linchpin to learning, even at a time developmentally when overall motivation for…

It has been almost 30 years since the last systematic look at writing instruction in middle schools and high schools in the United States (Applebee, Writing). Since that report, there have been a number of significant changes in the contexts in which teachers teach and in which their students learn to write. Stretching back to the 1969-70 school…

Describes how a small team of district teachers created a year-long course for senior honors using world literature to help confront seniors' passage between childhood and adulthood by raising the questions that echo through time and by offering diverse and insightful suggestions. (SG)

Summer book groups enhance and sustain student literacy behaviors over the break, making available an enjoyable social forum for critical-thinking and critical-reading practices to occur naturally. Significantly, the book groups grant faculty and students an informal space to connect meaningfully through reflective discussion of texts. Because…

Describes an English literature assignment which engages seniors in library research on an author, an oral presentation, and creating and grading a writing assignment. (MM)

Believes that students must be able to make a basic connection to the collective humanity. Notes that teenagers especially care about injustice and through exploring the global picture of human rights violations, they become aware and have desire to act on that awareness. Uses the humanistic approach to make 16th- to 20th-century British…

Describes a teacher's efforts to introduce her students to modern poetry and to teach them that the value of poetry is not merely aesthetic but can actually be a voice of rare clarity. Asserts that what rubs off on students is a sense of richness of language--an ear and an eye for a rooted expression. (PRA)

Describes how a twelfth-grade high school English teacher used Robert Olen Butler's "Tabloid Dreams" as a reading and writing assignment. Students explored their responses to Butler's stories with attention and depth, and then wrote their own stories, making the potentially ridiculous meaningful, and using complexity and emotion. (SR)

Approaches a writing assignment in an all-girls classroom by differentiating between what men think is funny ("guyfun") and what women think is funny ("galfun"). (NKA)

Details the use and appeal of Web logs to enhance classroom discussion and allow for outside involvement in the classroom. Defines a Web log, addresses discussing literature in a Web log, and describes the author's first attempts at using Web-log technology. Presents considerations for using Web logs as part of classroom instruction. (SG)

Discusses using Utopian and dystopian literature in grade 11 and grade 12 English courses to help replace fright over the world's future with concern and commitment to needed action. (MM)

Describes a year-long evaluation procedure in which students accomplish greater involvement in assessing their own learning, beginning with a first-day questionnaire on learning and writing assumptions, continuing with writing workshop experiences, and culminating in a coursework evaluation project and publication. (KEH)

Describes two writing activities (based on S. I. Hayakawa's discussion of biased thinking in his book "Language in Thought and Action") that are designed to enable students to recognize and become sensitive to closemindedness. (KEH)