Teacher-researcher, Katherine Macro spent six weeks observing an eleventh-grade Advanced Placement and Composition class at Sunnybrooke Central High School to examine the teacher's use of creative drama to teach Shakespeare. In this article, Macro describes ways the instructor used theater-based instructional strategies, especially a staged…

This paper investigates the language demands of creating texts in the English classroom, which involve transformations in context. In particular, it focuses on the tensions inherent in tasks which require more traditional textual analysis to be presented in ways other than traditional 'essay' format. These tasks are interpreted differently by…

The English classroom is an indispensable site to critically engage the social complexity of the climate crisis and COVID-19. A question comes up, however, about how to plan for such critical engagement when teaching canonical literature that is seemingly removed from the specific concerns of the current moment. The focus of this article is on…

Purpose: This paper focuses on the affordances of and issues surrounding the teaching of George Orwell's novel "1984" (1949) as a set text for General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) English and English Literature in an examination-obsessed and heavily surveilled school system. It considers this by focussing on the classroom…

Despite opposition to 'queering the text' by established Shakespeare critics, this essay sets out to ponder the possibility of teaching Shakespeare in a queer context. The essay begins by examining the social and sexual conditions of the early modern period, making the observation that there were a wide variety of sexualities, moral attitudes, and…

A conversation between scholars demonstrates how two experts found common ground and made classroom recommendations while wrestling through an underlying question: Who cares about "The Grapes of Wrath?"

Based on a 1-year interview-based case study of a preservice English teacher, this article considers the limitations of both intersectional literacies and reader-based responses to texts. In an effort to address students' problematic discussions of female sexuality, the participant implemented a queer pedagogy that emphasized alterity, or the…

My article argues that the concept of "aesthetic learning" can be helpful for English teachers on two levels. First, it can be a useful identity for English teachers and students to adopt, based upon my own experiences as a secondary English teacher, creative writer and PhD student. Second, I argue that "aesthetic learning" is…

This article uses complexity theory's concept of 'shadow systems' to explore innovative ways of teaching Shakespeare, particularly "The Merchant of Venice." Using data drawn from observations at a secondary school in Sydney, Australia, and interviews with two secondary teachers, this article aims to consider how embracing ideas which…

Read and admired throughout the world, Shakespeare's plays and poetry have been the guiding light of statesmen, of authors, and of artists. His writings are the indispensable foundation for understanding English literature, language, and rhetoric. Yet less than 8% of the nation's top universities require English majors to take even a single course…

This article reports on the first two phases of a project to promote the classics through English at Key Stage 3, a scion of the Cambridge Schools Classics Project. We discuss the primary importance of speaking and listening in the English classroom both for the individual and the collective, and reflect on the power and importance of using…

In her book "Why Do We Care about Literary Characters?" Blakely Vermeule addresses the tendency of the academic establishment to dismiss affection for literary characters in favor of objective analysis, describing teachers with "the furrowed brow, the worried expression: responsible teachers [who] wean their students off their passion for literary…

This purpose of the study was to determine the effects of teachers using the Question Exploration Routine (QER) in regularly scheduled secondary-level English Language Arts classes to help students answer questions about the development and use of main ideas in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." Questions were posed in both…

Teach "The Little Prince" to senior English students? Senior Advanced Placement English students? What could these people who had analyzed "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," wrestled with "The Sound and the Fury," dissected "Heart of Darkness," and deconstructed "East of Eden" possibly find of value in a "children's book"? The tendency to…

One of the most important aspects of developing a close, personal relationship with literary characters is "relevancy." Readers have to find something to connect with in characters to care about them, and for that connection to take place, stories and their characters have to be relevant in the eyes of an adolescent to the point where they can…