Poet and essayist Gary Soto considers the senses while reading and the purpose of maintaining a reading life. According to the author, it's the pleasure of a story, and the intimacy of getting to know the characters well enough to exercise tenderness (or dislike) toward them. It's to weigh but not judge the behavior of characters, who are like…

In this article, the authors demonstrate how the reading of a novel along with culturally sustaining and responsive instruction can enhance students' sense of agency and advocacy along with their literacy development. The characters in the young adult (YA) novel "All American Boys" grapple with police brutality, as the novel's authors…

In this article, the author discusses how teachers can develop empathy in students through reading and writing about literature, which contributes to their development as citizens in a global community. By choosing texts that trigger empathic reactions, English teachers can help students better understand others' experiences with oppression and…

This article explores how choral reading can be used as a drama tool in a classroom setting to engage students with nonfiction rhetoric while adhering to the Common Core State Standards.

Examining largely unknown revisions of the New Criticisms reading pedagogy, the author argues that these revisions should serve as a model of how the Common Core ELA Standards might be revised to reconnect readers to the process of reading.

The authors share findings from a recent study of teens who freely select to read texts typically marginalized by schools (dystopia, vampire, romance, horror, fantasy), revealing the distinct functional and psychological benefits of pleasure reading. The students who participated in the study that the authors report on were eighth graders who…

In the author's effort to find out more about how "English Journal" articles have led to meaningful changes, he asked several teachers to write about "an "English Journal" article that made a difference." Several council members write about influential articles they read in the pages of NCTE's century-old journal. The brief stories they tell…

The need to teach students strategies for handling the various nonfiction texts they encounter has never been more pressing than in this digital age. Growing up in this digital age, students have a tenuous grasp on the differences between fiction and nonfiction, which can result in a lack of critical thinking about important political and cultural…

Textbooks and grammar worksheets do not adequately convey to students how readers or listeners are shaped by the language of the writer. The best way to help students understand the emphasis of a dash or another device is to see one used during a suspenseful moment in a dramatic selection. It is up to the teacher to select dramatic works that…

Entering into a century of conversations from "English Journal," the authors read, and reread, the words of many mentors, colleagues, and friends, discovering some voices they did not know and rediscovering many voices they did. In surveying "English Journal", the authors highlight voices from the past, of the present, and for the future to offer…

In this high-accountability era--one in which there is an expanding movement to condemn teachers for the failures of their schools--teachers teach students who believe writing is primarily an act of complying to a prompt, likely for a state accountability assessment or the troubling 25-minute essay that constitutes less than half of the writing…

Meaningful discussion helps students develop new knowledge about the world around them. "Progressive discourse" is talk that encourages people to develop a new understanding together. In this article, the author discusses how she used student collaboration to foster progressive discourse and describes assignments that engage her students in group…

"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…

Using examples from college and high school students, the author describes how asking students to respond to literature using a variety of graphic media can enhance their interpretive skills. Some students who don't like to write essays or who seemingly aren't good at writing essays enjoy making graphic response to literature and are good at it.…

Ken Donelson looks back on two classes that taught him that students are willing to share ideas when teachers are honest and reveal their biases and when classroom experiences are based on trust. Additionally, he recalls how important free reading and thematic units became to inciting authentic student responses to literature.