The climate crisis raises questions such as: Why are corporations continuing to produce plastic for their products when more sustainable solutions are available? Does recycling make a difference? Can oil companies be "green" and "sustainable," as their ads claim? Why are factories, landfills, and extraction sites located where…

It's vitally important for English teachers to engage their students in critical media literacy (CML), a theoretical and practical approach to media that encourages and empowers students to read and create media texts critically, with an eye toward power relations. In this article, the authors share a two-week unit related to climate change that…

Although plagiarism is not new, the rate and frequency of plagiarism has steadily (and somewhat alarmingly) risen in the past twenty years, coinciding with the ease of access to the Internet. The current generation of students - Gen Z, they've been labeled - is growing up in a world of sharing, a world where, with a quick tap of a button,…

The author shows how using art helped a blind student in an AP class and students in Creative and Practical Writing classes improve writing proficiency and critical thinking.

Having students read news articles or novels, watch television snippets, engage in class discussions, essay-writing, emailing, and drafting letters are excellent ways to broach any number of society's systemic and oppressive social maladies. Engaging in these activities in the English language arts classroom can serve as a catalyst to encourage…

Overland Park, Kansas, may seem like an unlikely setting for using the "New Yorker." While it is not the "Wizard of Oz" Kansas -- more suburban sprawl than expansive wheat fields -- the ethos is far from the cosmopolitan aesthetic of New York City. The "New Yorker" covers can raise questions that may lead to relevant…

Little research has been done on key concepts related to peer feedback, including whether learners are able to transfer skills learned to future related tasks or to other classes and content areas, and whether the gains observed through peer feedback are the result of "giving" peer feedback or of "receiving" peer feedback. The…

In an era of "colorblind racism," in which race and racism are often suppressed as topics of discussion in classrooms, this article explores how students used comics to invent workarounds for "colormuteness" in their school. Knowing comics are not generally taken seriously, students employed the medium to subversive ends.

Examining largely unknown revisions of the New Criticisms reading pedagogy, the author argues that these revisions should serve as a model of how the Common Core ELA Standards might be revised to reconnect readers to the process of reading.

This article provides an overview of a unit plan that integrates nonfiction and issues surrounding social justice. The author's goal for the article is first and foremost about practice, highlighting a unit they taught using nonfiction that centered on how reading and writing can be used to address issues of social justice and change. The author…

Using memorials and related nonfiction print and nonprint texts, students explore elements involved in creating a memorial and learn to think critically about the relationship between these elements.

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…

Larissa Pahomov teaches students English and Journalism at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The school opened its doors to students just seven years ago and was designed to encourage both inquiry and critical pedagogy. To those ends, there is a thematic curriculum for each grade level--for sophomores, it's…

This article details a unit designed for a high school English classroom to address social injustice and the silencing of LGBTQ individuals. The authors believe teachers have a civic duty to help students become critically aware and informed citizens. Creating active citizens means fostering critical thinking skills relevant to the political…

It is important for students to understand and analyze political language so that they can be participatory members of a democratic society. This article stresses the importance of understanding and analyzing political language. The author claims that the mastery of such skills is what allows students to be participatory members of a democratic…