Student enjoyment is important when creating any unit, but teachers should also consider if an activity will enhance learning. In addition to being enjoyable, drama-based activities enrich learning by disrupting passivity, encouraging participation, and enhancing comprehension. This article showcases ways to include these activities in a unit…

Through the careful observation and analysis of a poetry unit that focuses on the work of one poet, Seamus Heaney, the authors provide mindful strategies to make familiar the processes of reading and appreciating poetry.

The author was invited as a teaching artist into a first-grade classroom in New York City to teach a 14-session poetry residency culminating in an anthology of student writing. They began by sitting together on a carpet by the interactive whiteboard and read aloud several examples of "I wish" poems from Kenneth Koch's (1970) wonderful…

The authors describe how an Author-Out poetry writing workshop challenges students' pervading beliefs and assumptions about poetry and cultivates students' proficiency as readers and writers of poems.

This study introduced developmental adolescent readers to literature circles to balance literacy instruction based on students' needs. Providing students with the option to choose accessible novels to read, discuss, and connect with helps them experience the world of literacy as well as explore their own world in a way that most developmental…

This article discusses how literacy and literature goals merged in a media project designed to encourage high school students to build new connections with the poetic elements of Shakespeare's plays "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Caesar." Using the free software Animoto movie maker, students were challenged to look closely at…

This article details the authors' success in using youth as a construct to facilitate literary analysis skills among high school students who claimed not to like reading--and who demonstrated difficulty with reading comprehension. The authors provide descriptions of the analysis activities in which the students participated.

How teachers can use such materials as parallel-text editions, graphic novels, and film adaptations to increase students' understanding of and interest in Shakespeare was the impetus for a classroom action research project that examined the effects of teaching methods on student comprehension and engagement. The author of this article…

It's one of those assumptions of the English teaching game that students must learn and store up vocabulary as a precondition of tackling literature or history or any of those fields that feature big words. How, some ask, could a child read a challenging passage if he or she didn't understand those key, usually multisyllabic, words often sprinkled…

In this "prosumer" era in which people seem always to be producing and consuming texts, words matter as much as--or more than--they ever have. Learning how grammar works in the texts they read and write is essential to students' literacy. It is time to reframe English teachers' view to include both writing "and" reading as contexts for grammar…

In this article, the author discusses several comprehension strategies for high school English teachers. These include: making connections; questioning; visualizing and inferring; determining importance; and summarizing and synthesizing. The author also outlines a lesson guide that illustrates how teaching comprehension strategies can be used to…

Implementing multimedia in the high school language arts curriculum has become necessary so that teachers may build connections between the background knowledge of students and the printed texts that are thrust upon them. This idea comes from an area of research in cognitive science known commonly as schema theory, which contends that every…

For several decades, teachers and researchers have argued the value of homework. There have been research reviews suggesting that homework is beneficial, such as the meta-analyses done by Harris Cooper, Jorgianne C. Robinson, and Erika A. Patall. However, critics of homework argue that it is not effective and interrupts family interactions and…

Students in Ginger M. Eikmeier's high school classes link themes and terms from their readings to episodes of "The Simpsons." Because students are already familiar with "The Simpsons," Eikmeier believes that using the show supports students' comprehension and retention by activating prior knowledge. Additionally, it shows students that she cares…

Students can explain and read if they understand the plot and base of the story. Musical devices have a vital effect in learning lyric poems. The ways in which musical devices affect literature are stated.