Having students read news articles or novels, watch television snippets, engage in class discussions, essay-writing, emailing, and drafting letters are excellent ways to broach any number of society's systemic and oppressive social maladies. Engaging in these activities in the English language arts classroom can serve as a catalyst to encourage…

Dvolver is a free moviemaking platform that allows users to employ animated characters to develop fun, concise scripts in a digital format. The author and a co-teacher created a 45-minute lesson plan for teaching students at the upper-beginner and lower-intermediate skill levels. The purpose of this article is to describe the utility of Dvolver…

Educational policies in the United States often adhere to society's ideal scenario for the perfect college and career ready student, but the realities of and differences in classroom instruction are often not considered. Whether or not policies will effectively improve student performance is unknown until implementation. The Common Core State…

This article explores the experiences and literacy practices of an adolescent boy enrolled in an academic support class, in which students received an open-ended invitation to respond to S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders" with the software programme Comic Life. In constructing this "telling case", we highlight how traditional…

This paper is an academic observation of an Educational Multimedia Content development-training programme funded by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in Tanzania. This project focused on skills development in script writing and in radio and video programme development, aimed at transforming selected subjects from text to multimedia content. The…

The unprecedented growth in numbers of children playing computer games has stimulated discussion and research regarding what, if any, educational value these games have for teaching and learning. The research on this topic has primarily focused on children as players of computer games rather than builders/constructors of computer games. Recently,…

Examines the published film scripts for three movies in discussing the value of reading such scripts as a part of film study in the classroom. (RD)

Addresses the task of teaching plays, emphasizing both the written script and the live performance. (AEA)

Argues that schoolwork with the plays of Shakespeare should be rooted in the twin concepts of performance and audience, for which the teacher needs to understand the scripts in terms of Elizabethan theatrical presentation and response. (FL)

Argues that the teachers' role in teaching Shakespeare is to raise questions that will alert the class to the implications in the text. (HOD)

Describes some of the Shakespeare software available to educators. Explains some of its applications in the secondary school language arts classroom. Shows how Shakespeare texts on disc allow students to cut sections of the play to enhance their own performances (for example, a 20-minute version of "Much Ado About Nothing") and how…

Describes how one English teacher stumbled on the idea of having student peer groups write scripts. Outlines a variety of ways that script writing assignments can be made. Advocates having such scripts created by student collaborative groups. (HB)

Dangers implicit in the recent back-to-basics movement--including a possible swing to the opposite of the open elective programs of the 1960s and a focus on drill and standardized tests--may lead to the neglect of students, who need to understand both the universality of their problems and how to deal with these problems. However, students can…

Students should be invited to write dramatic scripts rather than reporting or discussing. (JH)