Describes a very successful writing assignment the author uses with his high school English students, in which students write about a letter of the alphabet. Notes that this assignment grants freedom for exploration and voice, the raw material for shaping and can be used to teach everything from the writing of poetry to essays for college…

Describes how students in the author's eleventh-grade American literature classes, in groups of three, brought a book, short story, literary character, or historical epoch to life by capturing its essence on video. Suggests these student-produced literary documentaries crossed many disciplines and engaged students thoroughly, while engendering a…

Describes a high school language arts elective course on the novel, based on copious reading both in and out of class, a mix of assigned books and personal choice books in a broad range of difficulty in sophistication, and a wide range of activities, discussions, and writing. Notes enthusiastic responses, individual victories, and the sense of…

Describes how an English teacher of disenchanted high school kids made students apprentice writers, and used genre study to bring reading and writing together in the classroom. Shows how students learned to do closer readings, looked at the writer's craft, did occasional sentence-by-sentence analysis, and wrote their own pieces in these genres.…

Paula Ressler, an English teacher, suggests unconventional ways to work with William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" in the secondary school English curriculum to challenge normative sexual and gender identity beliefs. Reading queerly to explore non-normative sex and gender identities and reading for social justice have the potential to…

Inner-city high school teacher Amy Rosoff stresses the importance of play for survival. She offers examples of activities requiring imaginative play from students in classes at all levels from ESL [English as a Second Language] to AP [Advanced Placement]. (Contains 1 figure.)

This paper presents findings of a study that explored the effects of assignment to an inschool suspension (ISS) program on high school students' academic performance. The study compared the before- and after-ISS grades in English and science of 32 ninth- and tenth-grade students who had spent a minimum of 5 days in an ISS program during a 6-week…

A study of 178 secondary school teachers in the California was motivated by the passage of the Ryan Act of 1970, which eliminated the high school speech credential and subsumed it under the English umbrella. The result has been that the speech communication subject matter is expected to be integrated into the English courses in the state. The 1987…

Intended for teachers, administrators, members of school district governing boards, and concerned others, this model curriculum guide was developed to reflect the strongest possible professional consensus about the English-language arts content that every student in the State of California should be exposed to before graduating from high school.…

One of two books prepared for high school level correspondence students in Alaska, this collection of lesson plans stresses problem areas in English grammar and the comprehension of literature. Topics covered in the plans are (1) subjective, objective, relative, possessive, and indefinite pronouns; (2) possessives; (3) sentence fragments and…

A study examined the effectiveness of the Pupils with Compensatory Educational Needs (PCEN)-funded English Instructional Services (EIS) Program which provided remediation in reading and writing to eligible New York City high school students. Subjects, 25,675 students from 100 high schools and programs, received remedial instruction in reading…

A study examined the effectiveness of the Chapter 1-funded English Instructional Services (EIS) Program which provided remediation in reading and writing to eligible New York City high school students. Subjects, 23,442 students from 100 high schools and programs, received remedial instruction in reading and/or writing for either a single term or…

To test the effectiveness of using the error correction method of teaching grammar rules, a study compared two methods of teaching English grammar and usage. Average and above average sophomore English students in a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, public school examined English grammar and usage rules and worked accompanying exercises on subject-verb…

There are rich teaching possibilities in the comparative study of prose and film versions of the same story. (JH)

The course described in this teacher's guide is intended to create an awareness of the pervasiveness of sexism in American culture as reflected in the language. Following an overview of the course, the guide provides a discussion of teaching methods that have proven useful in pilot studies of the course, including the following topics:…