Spoken word is a performative poetry that combines "words, sounds, and movements that privilege a Black aesthetic" (Winn 60). It has roots in blues, spiritual, and hip-hop music and has been popularized in particular by the slam performances exemplified in the documentary "Louder Than a Bomb." Due to its performative nature,…

This article presents ways to incorporate the works of artist Edward Hopper in the ELA secondary classroom. Students analyze Hopper's paintings as a text and create their own responses in the form of poetry, short story, photography, and other visual media.

In this article, the author shows that Shakespeare exhibits artistic mastery in the way he cleverly interweaves rhyme throughout his plays, effectively manipulating how audiences view the action onstage. She also demonstrates how educators need to help students discover the intricacies of rhyme in the plays to learn to navigate through…

While it may be true that different interpretations of Shakespeare's words elicit varied responses, Shakespeare's popularity in Renaissance England was due in large part to his ability to appeal to a socially and educationally diverse audience. Shakespeare knew what it took to fill the seats. To encourage appreciation of Shakespeare's universal…

Illustrates the power of responsive teaching and how one teacher used a modern poem about cruelty to address a recent incident of her own students' cruelty to a classmate. Notes that the class responded with compassion, tolerance, and a sense of caring for those who are different. (MG)

A community college teacher emphasizes the dynamic aspects of language correctness and helps his students understand that achieving correctness is not simply a matter of following a set of rules. His students write letters and speeches in which they demonstrate the relationships among language, power, purpose, and audience.

Shares the observations of an educator visiting a high school classroom. Comments on how planning can support students' initial responses and their deeper thinking. Argues that teachers of literature can be both intuitively planful and planfully spontaneous in providing students with powerful language tools for shaping personal meaning. (MG)

Describes the experiences of a junior high English class as they read Larry McMurty's novel "Lonesome Dove" and watched the television miniseries based on the novel. Discovers that the relationship between the reader and the written word is similar to that between the viewer and the film. (RS)

Asserts that role-playing peer-response groups provide effective feedback and help students develop a sense of the characteristics of a particular audience. Illustrates with a sample lesson (a college application essay) by outlining five steps of the process. Offers other uses of the role-playing peer-response groups method. (PRA)

Describes a flexible format for a literature unit which avoids the problems associated with a structure which is too rigid or allows too much latitude for students. Notes that the students produce some excellent thinking and writing. (MG)

Shares the attempts of one teacher to structure a program that allows students to learn and grow as a community of readers and writers through the use of a response-centered curriculum. (MG)