Scholars and teachers often focus only on alphabetic texts in the classroom (Palmeri; Alexander and Rhodes; Jewitt; Selfe; Shipka); however, we do our students a disservice if we do not prepare them to compose with and understand the rhetorical consequences of using a variety of modes. In this article, I argue that we need to teach our students to…

In this article, the author, a poet and teaching artist, shares how he successfully brought slam poetry to College Hill Middle School in Texarkana, Arkansas. In 2001 he discovered slam poetry--a poetry-reading format in which poets compete in dramatic readings of their works--and went to Slam Nationals in Seattle on the Arkansas slam team. He…

Despite high levels of disengagement in urban literacy classrooms, few teachers have seen fit to explore spoken word--the performance of poetry--as a tool to engage students in literacy. Spoken word poetry serves as a powerful means of self-representation for youth that are traditionally portrayed as threatening, menaces to society that do not…

In this lesson, grade 6-8 students analyze a variety of poets and their poetry by reading and listening to their work. Students then use information gathered from Internet resources to select a favorite poet and perform one of their poems for the class. During the four 30-minute and five 20-minute sessions, students will: analyze a variety of…

This lesson plan contains poetry-related activities that aim to help students read and interpret English poetry, and write their own poems. The activities are introduced in each of the following parts: talking about poetry, understanding poetic devices, interpreting poems, using poetry for language acquisition, writing original poems, performing…

This journal issue presents teaching ideas based on the city of Chicago and the literary works of its citizens. The first article describes a combined social studies/English course based on the study of Chicago's influence on literature and history. Included is a course outline with required readings, class activities and assignments, an…

In reorganizing its core curriculum, Duquesne University (Pennsylvania) created a course that combined the required freshman composition and speech communication courses. A two-term pilot course offered eight hours of credit, meeting for one hour three times a week and for a two hour lab once a week. Oral readings were assigned in order to help…