This innovative guide shows teachers how to transform high-school English students into passionate readers with a trust-based approach that honors both student choice and teacher expertise. The authors begin with a series of reflective invitations to help teachers rediscover trust in themselves and in their students. The book offers methods for…

Describes redesigned thematic units used by a middle-school teacher to make social justice a year-long focus that unified all aspects of her class endeavors. Claims that opening the door to the tenets of social justice expanded the classroom community to include the insight of teachers in a neighboring city, the wisdom of a Holocaust survivor, and…

This teaching guide is for use with two novels of young adult literature, "A Far-Off Land" (Rebecca Caudill) and "The Trail on Which They Wept" (Dorothy Hoobler). The teaching guide is divided into three sections: Major Themes (8 themes are listed); Interdisciplinary Topics (9 topics are suggested); and Significant Quotations…

Describes how Michigan's English Language Arts Assessment (ELA) takes parts of the old fifth-grade writing assessment and fourth-grade reading tests, adds new elements, and wraps everything around a theme. Presents a seven-step activity to help prepare fourth graders for the ELA. Concludes that the overall impact on scores is not known. (SG)

One of the major problems with the English curriculum is that literature, language, and composition, the three major strands of the curriculum, have been separated rather than integrated within the curriculum. This inservice program, which was given for English teachers at Niles High School in Skokie, Illinois, advocates the use of conceptual or…

Presents activities for a thematic unit of literature exploring humankind's relationship to the land, as inspired by Robert Frost's poem. Activities include planting flowers, examining travel brochures, viewing a transparency exhibit of images of nature, and journal writing on topics dealing with owning and working land. (HTH)

Summarizes readings for a unit of literature on traveling. Includes a prereading travel heuristic based on the students' own travels and a projected trip and other follow-up activities. (HTH)

Redesigned to reflect a more standards-driven as opposed to course-driven approach, the Applied Literature and Composition courses (I and II) described in this paper not only prepare the two-year college/technical school students for entering the real world of work, but also for post-secondary and college level work. It notes that the course is…

The teaching activities presented in this paper focus on four literature assignments. The first explores the concept of love throughout two short stories, John Collier's "The Chaser" and Max Shulman's "Love Is a Fallacy." It contains a "true love opinionaire," a discussion of irony in the stories, and a follow-up evaluation. The second assignment…

Examines the way one ninth-grade English teacher used the film "Dances with Wolves" as part of a thematic unit entitled, "Strength from Diversity." Shows how the film was used and provides responses from many students in the course to the film. (HB)

A practicum aimed to increase the relevancy (to the ethnically diverse students of contemporary classrooms) of the regular high school senior English course in British literature and composition by expanding the curriculum to include selections from countries (other than the United States) influenced by the British Colonial Empire. Using a…

Many high school students are on a quest to find out who they really are. Using the theme of "Searching for Identity" in both "A Fine White Dust" and "Great Expectations" will help students identify their feelings. Cynthia Rylant's "A Fine White Dust" has easier language than "Great Expectations,"…

Sophie and Cody in "The Wanderer" (Sharon Creech) share the duties of recording their journey to an ancestor's birth land. The strong bond of family and accomplishments through the voyage home personified the embodiment of an adventurer. For Sophie and Cody, close family bonds were forged and washed clean by the sea. Odysseus, the…

Discusses a theme-based project (third in a four-part series from the California Academy of Mathematics and Science) provoking critical thinking concerning meeting human needs through technology. Notes that students were "transported" back into the Middle Ages and had to raise money for their travel back to the future using science, mathematics,…

All people have to deal with feelings of loneliness, isolation, fear, and lack of acceptance, especially in the teenage years. Both of the novels "Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes" and "Frankenstein" deal with these issues. By 10th grade, students are really searching for who they are and what they want out of life. It is…