In this article Deidre Faughey shares an experimental classroom project that she developed with a diverse group of students in three ninth-grade English Language Arts (ELA) classes. Podcasts provide a unique opportunity for students to embrace experimentation and to take risks with their own voices, explore the school building and community, and…

Through a case study of a seventh-grade ELA teacher, this article examines New Literacies pedagogy and more specifically a digital video project amid high-stakes testing pressures that often place limitations on teaching and learning.

The author describes the complex process one teacher goes through to create meaningful formative and summative assessments to define and support student learning.

This article discusses how to make the classics matter to students through digital literacies and essential questions. The authors share their experiences with planning and delivering a unit that ultimately gave "The Scarlet Letter" real meaning for their students--and helped them do the same for other classics they taught. Students read "The…

The more the author delved into forming her poetry unit, the more poetry opened up to her. She began to appreciate it for its creative ability to help readers and writers understand texts, experiences, and ideas. It was the length of time involved that concerned her most. She was mainly trying to work out the pace needed to cover as much as…

In this article, the author discusses how she developed an innovative, interdisciplinary unit in eighth-grade English that links with the history teacher's Civil War studies. When constructing lesson plans, the author needed to rely on her sympathetic connection with students. To determine the best way to help students learn, the author had to ask…

Students in Deanna L. Nelson's high school classroom study vocabulary gradually over a period of time. Students begin by collecting words from readings and listing them on a designated whiteboard. They prepare practice quizzes to exchange with peers and engage in frequent vocabulary discussions that emphasize recognition of context clues and other…

Anne Burke and Shelley Stagg Peterson argue that "picture books offer a medium for teaching visual and critical literacy across the curriculum." To support this idea, they describe a multidisciplinary unit on World War II that pushes high school students to utilize visual and print literacies to analyze, comprehend, and relate to public events and…

In this article, the author discusses how to consolidate schools where enrollment have dropped significantly. In addition to financial concerns, effective and developmentally appropriate curriculum choices are important. The author states that the "core" academic courses must be offered no matter the configuration of the schools, but…

Asserts that an effective approach to mythology should illustrate the connection among international myths, folktales, and legends that continue to be told in current literature and media. Explains how sample units on mythology could implement two phases of instruction: an introductory unit, and a reacquaintance with the themes of the first unit…

Author presents three examples of successful English units given as high school electives, notes the positive aspects of the elective program, and discusses accountability in terms of communication of objectives in English. (SP)

Asserts that the key to incorporating music effectively into the English classroom is to provide a context for the music. Describes a teacher's introduction to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" that demonstrates one way to use music and which helps accomplish the goals of the literary unit. (PRA)

"A Natural Dialogue Unit" by Vincent Wixon and "Introducing Simile" by Patty Stone are provided as examples of successful techniques for helping students draw upon their knowledge of language. (DD)

Offers a rebuttal to the cooperative-learning practices described in an earlier article in this journal which presented a Middle East history unit. Discusses students' basic lack of historical background, student expectations, the unit's organizational problems, and the way in which the students were overevaluated. Presents a rebuttal by the…

Argues for a simple system of labeling words and groups of words as an approach to the teaching of grammar. Outlines a two- or three-week unit of instruction in which the system is implemented. (HB)