Describes the experience of one English teacher who bent the rules of the school when faced with the task of writing an "interim report" on a bright yet underachieving student. Shows how a teacher's willingness to improvise and invent methods and rules in individual cases is sometimes essential for student growth and well-being. (HB)

Details a program designed to use an awareness of cultural reader response to stimulate multicultural understanding among middle-school students. Provides strategies for reading multiethnic literature with students from varied backgrounds. (HB)

Provides the insights and reactions of one fiction writer who discovered that her works had been included on Great Britain's official reading list of the Revised Orders. Considers the rationale of the inclusion of the writer's own writing on the reading list. (HB)

Argues that what really matters in vocabulary development is that students come to love words, know that words have power, and develop for themselves a range of language choices. Argues that this can be brought about in classrooms with effective practice for vocabulary instruction: extensive reading, meaningful word study, and diverse…

Advocates concept-related vocabulary instruction, in which students link individual words with larger literature concepts. Outlines four steps to creating a concept-related vocabulary lesson. Offers examples of how concept-related vocabulary lessons can be conducted while reading, before reading, and after reading. Outlines web, weave, and…

Two papers examine how to promote literacy among high risk students by better utilizing literacy time blocks and providing faculty development. One explains that poor children with good decoding skills still can have vocabulary and comprehension deficiencies. The other describes how bringing reading research into the classroom requires giving…

Considers how using music in teaching language arts and literature helps to create kinship between students from various backgrounds and various parts of the world. Outlines the philosophical and historical basis for such an approach and discusses more benefits of a music-related approach. Suggests several class-tested curriculum strategies and…

A practicum designed and implemented a program to address the related problems of negative attitudes toward reading, low reading abiility, and poor student working vocabulary. Intervention strategies and critical thinking activities were used to raise students'"Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) scores and to improve students' attitudes toward…

This booklet discusses the "whole language" approach to language instruction, which teaches students "from whole to part" through the integration of the language processes of reading, writing, speaking, and listening with an emphasis on meaning and purpose. The booklet explains what whole language is, describes its use in the teaching/learning…

Intended as a resource for instructional planning, this grade 6 language arts curriculum guide purposes to promote greater student achievement through alignment of the written, the taught, and the tested curriculum, and to promote broader and higher levels of thinking through objectives, activities, and strategies which integrate content and…

This book, a series of essays developed at a working conference on the integration of reading and writing, surveys the historical, cultural, situational and social forces that keep the teaching of writing separate, skew the curriculum to favor reading over writing, and discourage development of pedagogies that integrate the language arts; examines…

This manual provides teachers with abstracts of instructional materials intended for use with mildly handicapped students in language arts classes. The materials are correlated with the intended outcomes of each course as specified in the state curriculum guidelines for grades 9-12. The abstracts are organized by subject matter and level: applied…

This annotated bibliography contains 30 references and provides resources to understand the theoretical foundations of reader response--a literary theory that is currently gaining increasing attention in literature instruction. The bibliography ranges from 1982 to 1989 and is divided into four sections. The first section, "Teaching of…

Three informal measures for determining whether students can read the assigned text material are described in this paper. The diagnostic measures are the informal textbook test, the cloze procedure, and the informal skills test. In the informal textbook test, a student is asked to read a 250 word passage selected from the textbook intended for…

The home mission of the University English department is the teaching of reading and writing, and its foreign mission is the "converting" to a higher literacy of those outside the English department, especially those who teach English in the high schools and other subjects at the college level. Potential high school English teachers'…