A teacher educator explores the way students' metaphors for literacy reveal depth and complicated emotions. Metaphor has played a major role in Jen McConnel's scholarship and teaching, both as a reflexive activity and, as her research methodology. In her most recent work, she developed a metaphor elicitation process that is, primarily, a creative…

When teachers engage student confidence in discerning visual metaphor and when they make students aware of their skills, they can teach them how to transfer the reading of the visual to the reading of text. This article details some activities for facilitating that transfer. Engaging and challenging visual activities can lead to an enhanced…

English teachers have a unique opportunity to expand and develop the way their students think. Too often, students are comfortable in thinking about reading and writing processes in a concrete or linear way. They are used to "right" or "wrong" answers in their other studies and look for the same in their English assignments. While teachers often…

How a person teaches grammar depends on what he or she believes it does. Some see grammar as a set of rules, inherited from wise forefathers. For them, teaching grammar means making students aware of, and then holding them to, these rules. Others see grammar as an expression of style, an invitation to the writer to explore how to create a…

Describes a poetry unit for grade 8 aimed toward (1) showing that contemporary music can be termed poetry; (2) involving students in expressing themselves dramatically; and (3) exposing the students to various types of poetry to illustrate how words can be used to enhance their own lives. (MM)

The challenges of teaching metaphorical language to English language learners are discussed. Pugh, Hicks, and Davis's Metaphorical Ways of Knowing helps the students in learning new metaphors.

Discusses the purpose and method for getting youngsters to approach a piece of literature with these queries: I wonder what a fellow human being had to say here...." What's his vision of things?..." I wonder how this composer has used language to express his thoughts, feelings, and dreams." (Author/RB)

Describes how to use the "Make a Wish" television series to stimulate student interest in the art of playing with language; includes a sample of student writing based on study of the series. (DD)

Students can learn to write verse by (1) perceiving that poetic materials are inside and all around them and making lists of items that appeal to their senses, (2) organizing their material through the use of imagery, (3) experimenting with various meters, particularly the ballad stanza, until they can arrange words in rhythmic patterns (4)…

The use of films in the classroom can help motivate students not only to write but also to consciously employ literary techniques. A film offers visual and audio parallels for conventions traditionally associated with writing, such as metaphor, plot, theme, point-of-view, dialect, satire, and imagery. Since these film conventions can be directly…