Practical Implications: Detailing the steps of a reading response unit designed to prepare students for literary analysis based on their own ideas can provide insights to current writing teachers and teacher educators regarding ways in which they can design/modify their assignments to be more purposeful and therefore more engaging for those they…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate how, through text-based classroom talk, youth collaboratively draw on and remix discourses and practices from multiple socially indexed traditions. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on data from a year-long social design experiment, this study uses qualitative coding and traces discoursal markers of…

To engage in critical praxis, teachers of literary response writing need concepts and methods for understanding the efficacy of teaching practices in helping students develop particular dispositions towards texts and the social issues they represent. In this article, the author uses concepts from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and Systemic…

Despite ongoing and prolific critical scholarship arguing for the widening of the secondary language arts curriculum, many practicing teachers are required or encouraged to teach a curriculum dominated by canonical texts. This is often the case at schools with highly diverse students whose varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds have…

This article presents and illustrates a qualitative research methodology for studies of uptake. It does so by articulating a theoretical framework for qualitative investigations of uptake and detailing a research study designed to invoke and capture students' uptakes in a first-year writing classroom. The research design sought to make uptake…

Outlines an elementary school unit on rivers, which drew on a range of reading materials both fiction and nonfiction, among them "The Incredible Journey of Lewis and Clark." Studies the degree of similarity in fourth graders' response to and understanding of fiction and nonfiction books. Observes that children do have unique responses to…

Describes a four-day unit of study based on the novel "A Thief of Time" by Tony Hillerman. Discusses student expectations of detective fiction, presents definitions of key Navajo terms, and a looks at Hozro poetry. (HB)

Describes a 4-week unit of study that focuses on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," a text that has been especially controversial in today's climate of increased multicultural awareness. Involves students in a larger conversation about the possibilities for reading and interpreting literature and prepares them to write mature analyses of the…

Describes a unit (utilizing The San Pebbles") which explores the attitudes of different people and nations toward the United States. (SW)

Describes in detail an elective unit that used novels, plays, films, and historical texts to engage student interest in a difficult and relevant topic. (JL)

Finding ways to build on the language abilities students of diverse cultures bring to school, this book recounts an experiment in helping urban African American high school students to interpret literature by drawing on their own rich oral tradition of "signifying." The book defines signifying as a contest in which the most imaginative…

Describes a project that immerses students in the world of Nazi-occupied Europe. Students study the works of Holocaust victims and survivors, examining influences on style, content, and themes as a writer. (AEF)

Describes a nine-week, secondary-school, language arts unit on the American dream with an emphasis on multicultural issues, particularly as they concern those students who are apathetic about or resistant to the multicultural program. Reviews specific lesson approaches to "The Great Gatsby,""Baseball in April,""Justin and…

Traces the development of a literature program for use in high school journalism classes in California. Contains a synopsis of the program units. (DF)

Presents a series of lessons that can be used to teach children about underlying literary patterns in folklore. The six lessons address the study of (1) nursery rhymes; (2) repetitive tales; (3) cumulative tales; (4) archetypes; and (5) the motif of the hero. Book titles that are representative of these categories are included. (six references)…