Poetry is about the experience of meaning as well as the meaning of experience. To read a poem is to feel one's way into the inner workings of its language, rather than to peer through that speech to an extractable truth. Most students of literature today have difficulty in grasping the performative or rhetorical dimensions of the texts with which…

An increasingly prevalent and accessible form of hybrid nonfiction picture books blends factual information with poetry or poetic devices to create literary nonfiction. This important form of hybrid text has been sparsely examined. This article addresses three questions about poetic nonfiction picture books: first, how might we categorize picture…

Through a series of racialized stories, I illustrate the familial knowledge, racial hauntings, and educational experiences that forge(d) the beginning and the continuing of my racial identity as a Black male. To examine these stories, I employ racial storytelling as a theoretical, methodological, curricular, and pedagogical tool to assist me in a…

This paper is a self-study that uses the lens of Vygotsky's four phases of sign acquisition to examine one student writer's development of voice through writing produced from 5th grade through her second year of graduate school (17 years). Growing up as a twin--and as a visually impaired individual--the author learned how to use the written word…

Like science, poetry often involves a high level of abstraction in language and ideas, requiring specific critical-thinking skills and promoting interaction. Casteel and Isom (1994) acknowledge, "The literacy processes are the means by which science content is learned because content information is rooted in written and oral language"…

In cultures of excess, the challenge is to see. In a time of climate change, how will humans find the questions, the reflections, the poems, or the prayers that will bring ecological justice and peace? This writing begins a response to the call made on the last day of our gathering at Loon Lake for a "commonist manifesto" around…

Research evidence for the benefits of arts integration is mounting. The purpose of this study was to determine if integration of the arts was an effective strategy for teaching the water cycle to kindergarten students. The study included lessons that supported both a science and an engineering standard of the Next Generation Science Standards and…

The ability to function effectively in a dynamic, culturally diverse healthcare environment requires both critical thinking and clinical reasoning skills. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN, 2008) recognizes the importance of humanities in the baccalaureate nursing curriculum. This quasi-experimental, nonrandomized…

This article provides a description of three seventh grade English teachers' attempt to augment creativity, reading, and deep understanding, and the standards they used to come up with five essential questions surrounding an eight-week unit on poetry. Each of these questions helps to address the school standards and the Common Core State Standards…

This teacher inquiry project explored how I, a non-Spanish speaking teacher at the time, implemented critical, bilingual pedagogies to foster biliteracy development among my fifth-grade students. One, the project showed that students could further their biliteracy by incorporating their funds of knowledge through a family stories writing project.…

In this article, two teacher educator researchers engage in a duologue to explore the pedagogical and poetic openings experienced during two individual youth empowerment school-based research projects--one a middle school poetry project, the other a high-school mentoring project. The projects engage minoritized youth with undergraduate students in…

To equitably educate linguistically and culturally diverse students, teachers must consider literacy as socially negotiated and culturally embedded (Street, 1995). The current study qualitatively examines the literacy events that take place at a Finnish heritage language school in the United States. The study uncovers the ways these literacy…

In the middle of eighteen century, sources of the East were considered by European visitors. Accordingly, Hafiz (c.1320-1329) was one of these sources that influenced one of the greatest poets and thinkers of German. Goethe severely in his "West-ostlicher Divan" disclosed that Hafiz's poems attracted him. In this essay, we explain…

This article presents an engaging means for turning disfluent readers into prosody superstars. Each week students align with Poetry Power Man and his superhero friends to battle the evil Robot Reader and his sidekicks. The Fluency Foursome helps students adhere to the multidimensional aspects of fluency where expression and comprehension are…

The author will begin his investigation of Wassily Kandinsky's painting "Composition VI" with Kandinsky's own commentary on the painting. He will then turn to the analysis of Kandinsky and the "Compositions" in John Sallis's book "Shades." Using this analysis as his point of departure, the author will consider how "Composition VI" resonates with…