Student enjoyment is important when creating any unit, but teachers should also consider if an activity will enhance learning. In addition to being enjoyable, drama-based activities enrich learning by disrupting passivity, encouraging participation, and enhancing comprehension. This article showcases ways to include these activities in a unit…

This piece explores how moving from grammar instruction to language study empowers students and their writing. To shift perspective and re-envision how language discussion can begin in the classroom, suggestions are offered with power dynamics and contextual needs of real communication situations. The authors detail activities that draw on…

An inservice training session triggered a crisis of confidence for the author, a veteran teacher, but it also inspired the author to rethink their approach to teaching reading and writing. While the author attended a conference, the state presenter explained that the new curriculum represents "shifts" in philosophy about teaching…

Many students experience that the prepackaged secondary English as a Second Language (ESL) curriculum used in many classrooms does not effectively engage them or further their English acquisition. This article shares the story of creating a curriculum the authors believe other teachers can emulate to successfully teach adolescents who are new to…

In this article, Michelle Ann Abate examines the typographical features of the comics and graphic novels frequently finding their way into English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms and challenges the viewpoint that they are secondary to prose-only texts, arguing instead that many comics can be seen as requiring more advanced levels of literacy…

What to assign students to read in a literature course--or a writing course for that matter--is one of the core questions that faces those who teach English. This article imagines that the world itself is a text, and to teach students to become critically literate in the classroom has important consequences beyond it, arguing that English teachers…

Research demonstrates that intrinsic motivation "drives students' amount of reading" and that students who read for pleasure, to explore topics they care about, and for interest "read a lot and achieve greatly" (Guthrie 2). As teachers incline their pedagogy to student interests, ownership, self- efficacy, social interaction,…

The author was invited as a teaching artist into a first-grade classroom in New York City to teach a 14-session poetry residency culminating in an anthology of student writing. They began by sitting together on a carpet by the interactive whiteboard and read aloud several examples of "I wish" poems from Kenneth Koch's (1970) wonderful…

During the 2016-2017 academic year, a collaborative of university faculty and high school teachers piloted an innovative approach to professional development, focusing on secondary level literacy in a diverse suburban district. The approach included innovations in both process and content compared to professional development (PD) and instructional…

The goal of this article is to share how the authors implemented a summer learning experience designed for the benefit of teachers and students simultaneously at Clear Creek Independent School District in Texas. They facilitated what John Hattie's research recommends: "a community of teachers [that] work together to ask the questions,…

This article examines a service-learning project held in conjunction with a reading of the nonfiction text "The Other Wes Moore." The assignment asked for high school students to provide a day of service focusing on literacy skills for an elementary school different from their own background. Service learning became a tool for…

This article considers how relationships in the English classroom are influenced by the types of literacy activities, the role of the teacher, the tone of oral comments, and the types of writing students share with peers.

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is based on the premise that: (1) students can learn to use the reading strategies that more skillful readers use automatically; (2) students can engage in high-quality discussions about text with peers in heterogeneous student-led groups; and (3) structures and supports can act as a vehicle for equitable…

In this article, the authors describe how self-directed learning allows students to design their own research projects and rubrics, differentiated for their cognitive readiness, learning preferences, interests, and affect. The authors found that students viewed their self-directed learning as challenging but fun because it is relevant and doable,…

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.