A language arts teacher of junior high students with deafness or hearing impairments familiarized her students with "Romeo and Juliet" by telling the story in speech and signs, exploring the characters's personalities, reviewing vocabulary, putting the characters into contemporary situations, and directing the students in a full-scale…

Describes a performance assessment which accompanies an integrated curriculum for the third and fifth grades in two schools and is designed to reflect a wide spectrum of literacy processes that appear in an integrated curriculum. Follows two third-grade students as they perform each of the tasks. (SR)

Provides information useful to educators who are rethinking their current approach to assessment and identifies characteristics of each assessment that seem particularly noteworthy. Concludes by raising a number of questions that should be considered before deciding whether or not to use these new performance-based assessments. (MG)

Recounts the history of Pennsylvania's attempts to invoke large-scale changes in language-related instructional curricula. Discerns patterns among school districts in terms of literacy instruction as well as in factors that seem to be associated with successful change processes. (RS)

Presents a case study of a sixth grade teacher trying to increase her use of literature for language arts instruction. Shows the challenges and successes of attempting to get better at teaching. (PRA)

Reviews six professional books and classroom materials that could support teachers and other educators in making the transition from integrating reading and writing to a synthesis of language arts with other areas of the curriculum. (RS)

Offers annotations of 12 items from the ERIC database regarding research or classroom practices concerning the relationship between reading and writing in the primary grades. (SR)

Describes class activities for the primary grades based on Margaret W. Brown's book "The Important Book" which connects reading and writing. (SR)

Discusses how teachers can incorporate a science poetry contest into the curriculum to encourage students to use poetry to express their thoughts about the natural world. (BB)

Describes how one sixth-grade teacher of English/Language Arts stopped teaching from grammar texts and instituted a writing workshop. Describes flak he received from colleagues and parents, encouragement he received from students and from his principal, and how, over time, writing workshops have spread in his school. (SR)

Describes how the author uses a poem by Marge Piercy called "Barbie Doll" to help students discover for themselves the implicit power of gender. Describes how students (1) examine the poem's language and have lively and insightful discussions as they find meanings for themselves; and (2) extend and elaborate on these meanings as they…

Describes a literacy autobiography assignment used as the first writing assignment in a methods course for preservice English/language arts teachers to model some strategies for literacy teaching and to encourage reflective thinking. Discusses the kinds of information and insights the autobiographies can reveal, and notes benefits of the…

Compares the effects of different types of humor in the classroom: humor drawn from literature, humor at the expense of literature, humor that puts someone down, humor that builds up or shapes identity, and humor as a classroom-management tool. Shows how teachers can use laughter as a conduit for students to find humor in what they read and write.…

Argues that humor is an invaluable teaching tool in English classes. Describes how the author and her students: found humor an important means of discovering profound truths in Shakespeare's dramas; enjoyed the epic "Paradise Lost"; worked with satire in Chaucer; and used humor in students' own creative activities. (SR)

Presents brief accounts from four secondary English teachers describing short stories and short story units that they have successfully taught. (SR)