This article explores the possibilities (and complexities) of multimodal meaning-making in the digital dimension, which allows students to compose with a variety of different modes, such as images, sound, music, and writing. This lets them think deeply about the ways in which meaning is constructed, conveyed, and eventually interpreted by an…

This piece explores conditions that stimulate classroom activities to facilitate creative habits of mind in an effort to motivate educators and students to better understand the complexities of creativity and how to promote it.

This article details the experiences of two teachers attempting to move music-enhanced English curriculum--using music to teach--to a music-integration approach to teaching--students creating music and advancing their knowledge in English.

Sara's story reports the effects of an experimental intervention applying knowledge-building principles for learning, as well as the unanticipated improvement of literacy skills of students with IEPs. According to the author, if you believe that knowledge is socially and collaboratively constructed, as the author does, then an overwhelming…

Teaching poetry offers both challenges and promises for student engagement and response. Because of the ways many students interact with poems in school settings--with an emphasis on the technical elements of poems, rather than on the emotional resonances they evoke--for many learners, poetry can often seem elusive and uncommonly difficult. This…

Picture books are often seen as a valuable tool for younger readers. In this article, the author suggests that the multiple literacies required to read a picture book can provide scaffolding and transmission of additional concepts for older readers.

This article reports on an ethnographic analysis of students who play chess at a mixed comprehensive school in England. The authors explore how children learn when playing chess and speculate about how the appeal of the game could be used by secondary teachers to improve English lessons.

Folklorist Andrew Lang, in his Preface to his 1910 edited collection "The Lilac Fairy Book", celebrates the ongoing repetition and retelling of fairy tales, including both the cozy retelling by the family fireplace. In the century since Lang wrote these words, many authors have joined the ranks of Shakespeare and Homer in putting fairy tale…

Students' relationships with language are likely to change when they are permitted to play with it, but teachers must construct multiple classroom situations for experimentation, and thus change, to take place. Margo A. Figgins and Jenny Johnson give several ideas for how to foster wordplay among students, describing use of eponyms, word…

Encourages teachers to foster students' metaphoric thought. (DD)

Educator and researcher Robert J. Sternberg's two theories, the theory of successful intelligence and theory of wisdom, are discussed. The teachers who wish to nurture students' expertise should take care of their analytical ability, creative and practical thinking.

A method for stimulating thought processes and broadening the imaginative scope. (RB)

Offers 10 classroom-tested assignments that result in successful writing experiences and assist students in developing creative and critical thinking skills. (RL)

Recommends a handful of activities that have consistently proven both useful to the author and helpful to his students. Describes activities including the Thesaurus Game, Word Pairs, Signs and Notices, the Sears Roebuck Game, the Mental Symposium, and Cubing. Concludes that these six devices prod students in directions that help them concentrate…

The theory and practice of analyzing jokes, with implications for class discussions. (RL)