In this report, a comprehensive description is given of how an Austin Independent School District (AISD) 2nd-grade teacher, Mrs. Theresa Wood, integrated a drama-based Creative Teaching strategy into her guided reading lesson. This Creative Teaching strategy, called hot seating, involves students interviewing characters from the story they have…

Although vocabulary acquisition remains a critical to literacy development, teachers infrequently devote classroom time to vocabulary exercises. In this article, the author demonstrates the use of "vocabutoons" as an instructional activity which draws upon students' multiple literacies, in particular, visual literacy, in order to foster…

This paper reports on an innovative approach to oral language development in one British Columbia elementary school, in the context of a larger-scale research project aimed at building cultural inclusive classrooms through the development of imaginative teaching practices. A number of approximately three-week units were designed to lead students…

For four years, Pat Paugh, a university teacher educator, and Mary Moran, a teacher researcher, collaborated on action research by systematically studying literacy development connected to the latter's third-grade community gardening and urban farming curriculum. Their goal was to support an existing classroom culture that valued…

Each year, seventh graders at Woodlawn School in Davidson, North Carolina, learn about Japan through a compilation of literature, history, and art. They are introduced to a wide range of ideas and materials: they study the Heian and Tokugawa Periods as well as modern Japan, the code of the samurai warriors, haiku and its components, and Japanese…

The urban inclusive high school classroom is a challenge for both students with disabilities and their teachers. Pressure is intensified when a year long course of study ends in a mandated state examination in English Language Arts, required for student graduation. This article highlights the experiences of two teachers in a New York City…

This article presents an example of a project designed to get children of different ages working together and working for each other. The project relied quite heavily on children creating a dramatic context and the author shows how the dramatic element has the potential to affect their learning in positive ways. The provision of a shared…

The typical use of science notebooks is for students to record information as they complete an investigation, writing down their procedure, observations, data, results, graphs, and any other factual information pertaining to their experiment. The author did the same, but also incorporated specific writing assignments to prepare students to publish…

Joseph Coencas shows scenes from films to help special education students improve their visual and auditory skills, build confidence in their abilities to talk about and analyze the components of a narrative, and feel comfortable engaging in class discussion and writing. He also encourages students to pursue their interests in subjects they have…

In this article, the author discusses how children's book character Flat Stanley has linked students around the world and describes how teachers used the appealing character as a tool to bring reading, writing, geography, and other subjects to life through a classroom exercise. Often folded or laminated for protection and accompanied by…

The new Readers Theatre series features scripts for students in grades 4-8. These original scripts are written for the specific purpose of teaching literary genre. Each book is composed of 24-28 scripts, each of which will be keyed to published books, plays, poems or stories in that genre, encouraging students to read the originals in order to…

Describes the work of Storytelling Arts Inc, a nonprofit group that sends storytellers into New Jersey schools to spin age-old yarns and encourage young children and their teachers to speak their mind. The nonprofit's main goal is to inspire low income children to master the language arts. Teachers note that storytelling helps students with their…

Drama in the classroom means honing thinking skills, increasing comprehension, bringing the written word to life, and fun. And it's effective with general, gifted, and at-risk students from K-12. (Author/TE)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a philosophy of education for the gifted and place that philosophy within the framework of practical education. The paper sketches the philosophy--language arts must be taught in a way that emphasizes the wholeness of the language experience--and discusses two key points: (1) If language arts consist of…

Describes the use of teacher stories (both positive and negative) in teacher education, explaining the long-term goal of getting students to internalize stories that would help guide their actions in the classroom. Student reactions to teacher stories varied depending on the stories and contexts of the readings. A comprehensive list of teacher…