Explores the use of drama as a teaching tool to promote students' interest in literacy and to support every aspect of literacy development. Describes how drama can help develop affect, emergent literacy, decoding knowledge, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic knowledge, discourse knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge. Discusses also using…

Discusses how a literature and multimedia course for 11th and 12th graders used active-learning experiences to engage students with Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part One." Describes how shouting Hal's soliloquy; constructing a chart of character relations; rewriting a scene in their own words; performing, filming, and critiquing a scene; and…

States that developing and implementing educational experiences that foster resiliency can be as easy as gaining a new perspective on traditional academic activities. Provides five examples of academic projects that can be used to build five important elements of resilience: competency, belonging, usefulness, potency, and optimism. (Author/MKA)

Discusses how alien students and teachers are to each other, especially when it comes to literature. Argues that these differences are at the root of many difficulties faced in helping students become readers and appreciate literature. Offers brief descriptions of 10 new or overlooked young-adult books worth reading. (SR)

Teachers should stop teaching traditional school-room grammar entirely. There is no reason to wound youngsters with something they will never learn and never need. Instead, teachers should treat usage and mechanics in gentle, encouraging, nontechnical, and innovative ways. A communication correctly understood by a native speaker is grammatical.…

Describes a high school elective English course that matches books of American Literature, at least one classic and one contemporary, so that students can begin to see the patterns. Discusses some of these pairings, such as Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" with Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and B. Mukherjee's "The Holder of the World." (SR)

Comments on the discussion by Ginette Delandshere and Anthony Petrosky of the numerical rating of complex performances in the context of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Early Adolescence/English Language Arts assessment. Conceptualizes the discussion in terms of matching information to purpose in testing. (SLD)

Responds to Susan Brookhart's comments on the discussion of assessing complex performances by Delandshere and Petrosky. Notes that the article focused on the meaning and usefulness of scores or ratings in the context of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards assessments. (SLD)

Describes a student checkbook program for a third-grade classroom that integrates mathematics and behavior management. Reinforces arithmetic, language arts, and social studies skills. Discusses pedagogical implications. (ASK)

Examines broad issues in creating standards for Australian English teachers by exploring the relevance of the Early Adolescent/English Language Arts (EA/ELA) Standards to the situation in Australia. Outlines methodology and presents findings from a study of 15 exemplary classroom teachers who considered the transferability of the United States…

Illustrates how poems engage readers in heightened experiences of the world and of language itself. Shows some of the strategies that adults and elementary students employed when reading and responding to poems: summarizing the poem, entering in and opening out, entering the world of the poem, opening to the outside world, finding rich…

Staff at the Cucamonga (California) School District discovered no magic key to improving mediocre student performance in their schools. Academic gains became evident only after implementing several steady-improvement strategies in teaching, instructional technologies, learning focus, libraries, remedial reading, and summer school. (MLH)

Discusses the purpose of alternative assessment in language arts classes in the middle school setting. Notes how alternative assessments encourage higher order thinking skills, provide an alternative to failure, encourage students to experiment, and keep teachers interested. Provides directions and scoring guides for examples of alternative…

Discusses how curriculum can be designed so that it has the transforming power to change lives and transform words and actions, especially through literature study. Describes a group of third-graders' transactions with Patricia Polacco's "Chicken Sunday" to show how a "narrative curriculum" can be transformative. Discusses distinctive features of…

Points out the importance of teaching writing and the teacher's responsibility. Recommends providing feedback to student writings. Provides a sample student survey and responses to the feedback. (YDS)