A recent community wide reading program offers a valuable opportunity for students and teachers to respond to literature by attending community wide events, creating art, and developing relationships with community members.

This article describes the assignments the author created to engage preservice teachers in designing instructional materials that befit today's students to help them overcome hurdles sometimes present when learning classic literature. Secondary and middle school English teachers may find these assignments useful as well so their students, too,…

The authors describe findings from a research synthesis on content area instruction for students with disabilities. Seventy studies were identified from a comprehensive literature search, examined, and coded for a number of variables, including weighted standardized mean-difference effect sizes. More than 2,400 students were participants in these…

Considers the placement and pedagogical function of Ecclesiastes in an English course entitled "Classical and Scriptural Backgrounds to English Literature." (EL)

The University of the District of Columbia and the Washington, D.C., public schools developed a two-year collaborative project, which offered 60 public school teachers of grades 6 through 12 an opportunity to become involved in an intense and critical study of some major classical literary works. Each major classic was paired with a…

Media subliminally bombard people with negative portrayals and stereotypes of Black people while doing little to represent the great contributions that Blacks have made in society and literature. This trend and lack of representation are also visible in schools, in particular the English classroom. Students are not often exposed to many writers of…

Discusses the realities of teaching Shakespeare in the schools. Describes the beliefs undergirding the Folger Library's Shakespeare education program--Shakespeare is for all students; the teacher's job is that of tour guide and not translator; students learn Shakespeare by doing Shakespeare--and that students should make their own connection with…

This guide describes the nongraded phase-elective curriculum employed in the Cedar Falls (Iowa) High School. All students are required to take tenth grade English, which provides them with a relatively uniform background in the language arts. After that, the phasing classifies the courses according to difficulty and complexity of skills and…

Describes various resources indexed in the ERIC system that promote multiethnic perspectives in English instruction and English education, including introductory guides to multicultural education and programs for reading and discussion. (AEA)

For the past several years, the secondary-level literature section of the Hawaii English Project has been working towards an approach to classroom management and materials selection that will allow both structure and individualization. This paper provides guidelines for instituting a system in which the class works in groups of three to five…

As part of the community service program of a community college, courses in world literature were taught to residents of two nursing homes on a non-credit, tuition-free basis. This paper explains the origin of the project, course organization, types of subjects taught in response to student needs, and types of evaluative instruments completed by…

Describes programs offered by a university English department that both improve the department's public image and enrich the cultural life of the school and the community. (AEA)

Descriptions of six junior college English programs focus primarily on the teaching of composition skills and literature. Course offerings, textbooks, student evaluation procedures, faculty and student body profiles, and enrollment trends are also discussed. (RL)

With the encouragement of an English instructor for whom English was a second language and who was consequently enthusiastic about writing experiences, English students in a Texas high school put together an anthology of literary criticism on the modern American novel. Honor students read American novels of their choice and wrote evaluations of…

Explores the appeal of historical fiction for young readers and describes its place within any school curriculum. Describes a project in Dorset Middle Schools which used historical fiction to teach medieval history and English. Notes that students' historical thinking was improved, their knowledge of medieval world advanced, and their writing was…