ELA Guidebooks is an English language arts curriculum for core instruction. Made by teachers for teachers, the guidebook units ensure all students can read, understand, and express their understanding of complex, grade-level texts, ensuring their readiness for college or a career. Each text collection has a shared idea and contains authentic texts…

How do English teachers, with their amazing gift, empower students to see and experience literature not as a burden that must be endured and memorized for the test and then mercifully forgotten, but as a vehicle for self-discovery and reflection? One effective way to help students experience and discover literature is through the characters. For…

School is sometimes framed as a place for preparing, a place for becoming college and career ready. At times this approach positions school as an important space "within" the world of college and careers, envisioned perhaps as Dewey imagined it, as a safe place to try things, a space where real work of participation in society could be done but in…

Stories are a great way to acquaint young learners with geographic locations. A plethora of choices are available in the folktale genre, so librarians and teachers will have little difficulty locating a variety. Folktales provide an accessible and child friendly approach for engaging students. In addition, when connections are made between…

Making connections is always an important task for teachers. Science teachers are encouraged to connect new learning with students' prior knowledge, learning with student interests, learning with cultural experiences, and classroom activities across academic disciplines. Strategies that facilitate these connections help teachers enrich and enhance…

Bilingual education has been a focus in Taiwan especially alter the educational reform in 2002 (Ministry of Education, 2003). With the educational reform, many teaching methods and approaches had been explored and implemented recently to enhance English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education. The traditional teaching approaches focused on the…

High school teacher John Golden provides a variety of literature, film scenes, and classroom activities to introduce literary, cinematic, and theatrical elements. He shows students how to move beyond basic comparisons as students learn to analyze the techniques and changes film directors choose when translating literature to the screen. (Contains…

Examines the who, what, where, how, and why of informal drama instruction in the classroom, arguing that, given the current emphasis on "basics" in education, such instruction can provide one of the most basic educational experiences in language arts. (HTH)

Describes assignment sequence introducing secondary school students to finding and interpreting quotes from assigned literature by having students (1) respond in journals to a quotation chosen by the teacher, (2) analyze characterization by illustrating character traits with quotations, (3) create a collage or mobile visually interpreting quote,…

A teacher describes how a classroom diary, part of a daily classroom routine, was created through class members sharing their experiences with each other. The diary also served as a teaching tool in such areas as language arts and handwriting. (CB)

Author/illustrator Pat Cummings talks about drawing, her favorite illustrators, her first book, her work habits, teaching, inspiration, working with other writers, and offers advice to parents, teachers, and children about art. Lists books written and/or illustrated by Cummings, and suggests activities based on her books using art, language arts,…

Provides sample classroom exercises to develop middle school and high school youngsters' sensitivity to language skills, spelling, and grammar. Includes riddles, puns, puzzles, and other games drawn from J. Shipley's "Word Play." (JG)

This book offers integrated activities in which students explore words and, at the same time, develop their language arts and thinking skills. The book states that this way teachers can pay more attention to word study, without sacrificing other parts of the English curriculum and without resorting to word lists and memorization. In the first…

This collection of hands-on ideas for learning materials contains 26 different classroom learning aids for young children which can be used for a variety of language activities. The focus in the collection is on puppetry. The theory behind this collection is that students must be involved in the learning process and that by being an integral part…

This book focuses on quick and easy language arts activities to inspire and motivate students in kindergarten to sixth grades. Ingenious ideas appeal to children's enthusiasm for games, parades, race cars, their own names, and much more. The activities cost little or nothing. They engage young learners, and they work! This book is perfect for a…