Too frequently textbooks used in class are criticized heavily by educators. In and of itself, a textbook is neither good nor bad. If the text has been carefully chosen, there may be reasons for criticizing its use. Textbooks should always be carefully evaluated when new basals are chosen so that the very best one(s) are selected for a class.…

The borders that separate and connect different cultures often come into sharpest relief when the focus is on themes and motifs found in the literature or the visual arts of several lands. With the Internet, students can discover such points of intercultural contact for themselves, crossing borders that can lead them to a broader perspective on…

This lesson plan highlights one episode in the "Divine Comedy" to provide students with an introduction to Dante's poem. After a brief introduction to the opening of the "Divine Comedy," which portrays Dante as a pilgrim guided by the poet Virgil on a journey through the Christian afterlife toward God, students read Canto 5 of…

Monsters have haunted the literary imagination from earliest times (e.g., the Cyclops, Grendel, etc.), but a particular interest in horror and the Gothic form dates back to the 18th and early 19th centuries. Taking their name from the Gothic architecture that often served as a backdrop to the action, these novels present supernatural events in…

This lesson plan complements study of plot and characterization in "Romeo and Juliet" by focusing on Shakespeare's use of lyric forms and conventions to spotlight moments in the drama and thereby heightens the impact of the action on the stage. Students look first at the sonnet in which Romeo and Juliet meet, analyzing the imagery to…

Anthologists and editors prepare the way for poetry readers, selecting works that reward close reading and assisting interpretation through annotation. But on the Internet people can return to poetry in its native state--one set of words among many others competing for appreciation--and read with fresh eyes. The learning objectives of this lesson…

This book brings new life to the study of social studies by integrating the tools of creative drama and theater tools like pantomime, movement, improvisation, scripted drama, oral interpretation, debate, public speaking, readers theater, storytelling, and the many other ways the body or voice can be used to creatively communicate ideas to others.…

This paper elaborates on using picture books in the classroom--not just for young students' recreational reading, but also as a creative method for introducing complex concepts to the middle school adolescent. The paper contends that the language arts classroom needs to become a secure community where students are "pulled into" literacy…

Integrated instruction may be everyone's ideal, but it is the reality in few classrooms. This review of existing literature examines research to determine why this ideal may be infrequently realized. The review concluded that the mismatch between ideal and practice may be at least partially explained by the ambiguity in definitions in the…

This paper contains some hands-on activities that relate science to art and language arts. The focus is placed on middle schools and activities engage students in the discovery that chemicals are used to draw and color. Students also read and write poetry and literature that employ science-related topics. A number of spin-off activities are…

This Digest discusses teaching interdisciplinary thematic units in language arts, noting that such units typically integrate broad areas of knowledge, such as social studies, mathematics, or ecology with the teaching of the four major language skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The Digest presents a definition and rationale for…

The use of portfolios is a rather recent innovation in teaching the language arts. A characteristic of the portfolio process is that students are led to notice their own progress through the work included in the portfolio. Many educators welcome the portfolio process because they recognize that standardized tests do not tell enough about what…

This article describes a project in which the reality and importance of newspaper production was integrated into the language arts curriculum in a second-grade classroom. Both a print- and a multimedia-based class newspaper were produced using the Student Writing Center software and HyperStudio. The activity involved the input of a university…

Test publishers have promoted their commercially available norm-referenced achievement tests as viable solutions to assessment challenges faced by states. They argue that their tests are developed professionally and therefore possess sound psychometric properties not often found in state-specific efforts. This study compared judgments from two…

The purpose of this study was to compare the achievement of students in 14 Pascagoula schools and 9 Biloxi schools implementing School Renaissance (SR) to those of students in matched Control schools. The achievement measures to be examined were from the 2003 administration of the Mississippi Curriculum Test (MCT) for Reading, Language Arts, and…