A series of studies in a mature multimodal composing project demonstrates that through digital video (DV) composing about literature, diverse students, including many who struggled in school, learned new ways of engaging literature, performing meaning, and thinking symbolically through multimodal translations of the text. Students' focus in these…

Drawing connections between Chaucer, Eminem, and social issues, New York City high school teacher Tom Liam Lynch helped students become familiar with "The Canterbury Tales." Students wrote poems of rhymed couplets about today's social and political issues, created illuminated manuscripts, and recorded a rap CD. A book and album were…

Eighth-grade teacher Lesley Roessing designed an assignment that makes individual student research useful and accessible to the entire class. She outlines steps students take to create a guide to supplement their reading of "Waiting for the Rain: A Novel of South Africa." She then builds on the research experience in another unit by addressing…

This column shares innovative lesson ideas grounded in current literature or action research. Two books are discussed: Lesley Atwater Kahle's book "Cut Word Story," which allows students to become individually engrossed in words and grammar within stories that they create; and Anete Vasquez's "Literary Analysis 101", which gives teachers a simple,…

Students and teachers participated in an Arts Week program that was educationally sound and promoted communication among faculty members. (JH)

Describes how to make an inexpensive device which helps students in conjugating verbs. (RB)

A step-by-step account of a direct, different, and individualized method of teaching the use of commas and semicolons to high-school students. (SP)

Student-developed literature and language games are described. (SP)

An account of the author's experiment with student film making. His conclusion: The visual language has proven itself to be real and exciting in the English classroom. (Author/JB)

A high school teacher outlines how she successfully threw open the curriculum planning to the students in her English class. (Author/SP)

High school students, using group discussion methods, created poetry based on photographs, and came to an understanding of poetic imagery. (SP)

Presents the suggestions of seven contributors concerning ways to publish student writing, including: school magazines, community involvement projects requiring written communication, reproduction and dissemination of students' work within the school's library system, contributions to commercial literary magazines, and "public" readings of…

Erick Gordon, founding director of the Student Press Initiative, illustrates collaborations with teachers and students that have motivated students to invest themselves in the process and product of writing, including research, oral history, revision, and an immersion in and commitment to community.