Offers eight teaching suggestions from teachers, regarding an effective strategy for teaching inferential comprehension, how to chose a good book, book celebrations, annotation writing for developmental readers, an assignment to promote reading for pleasure, a discussion group program for adult new readers, memo writing as an information network,…

Describes an experiential learning activity in which a Connecticut fifth grade class designated a new holiday, Friendship Day, through an essay-writing contest. The class pursued legalizing the holiday through the state legislative process, and Friendship Day is now celebrated on the fourth Sunday in April in Connecticut. Shows how the class…

Suggests that the story of humanity can be presented as human groups solving the basic problems of human existence throughout time. Contends that delineating this basic theme of history can present students with a coherent view of history. Links the individual's story to the broader view and presents a teaching unit that conceptualizes this…

Describes a variety of writing activities and community service projects designed to develop middle school students' civic identity and pride in being citizens of the state of Kentucky. Includes teaching ideas and a project evaluation. (PRA)

Describes a contemporary adaptation of the "Footprint Puzzle," whigh was first developed in the 1960s for the Earth Science Curriculum Project. Students sequentially look at three frames of track drawings. For each frame, students first list observations and then make inferences about the observations. (PR)

Describes six activities from the "History Alive" program. These include an interactive slide lecture on the Great Depression, a photographic analysis regarding Mexican and Southwest culture, an experiential exercise concerning life on the assembly line, collages on Chinese belief systems, a response group on women's rights, and poetry writing.…

Describes a workshop used with classes doing Web research for their English papers in a computer lab. Shows how this is a good opportunity for students to learn to find, evaluate, and save Web sources, how to read critically and annotate the sources, and how to weave them into working drafts and avoid plagiarism. (SR)

Maintains that creative writing should be no less a part of the elementary social-studies writing program than other expository forms. Discusses using the poetic form, the cinquain, to teach about Mexican vaqueras and vaqueros in an elementary unit on the American Southwest. Includes illustrations and instructional materials. (MJP)

A goal of this double issue of English Teaching: Practice and Critique is to collectively consider what we mean when we talk about knowledge about language. How have our understandings changed over time? What are the implications of these new understandings for pedagogy in the field of language teaching? These are necessary and important…

For years, the author has been a fan of assigning students in business communication classes to draft messages that explained complex decisions or situations. The assignment is the author's variation of the negative or bad news message. This traditional genre has generated a new Web-based method by which people and organizations respond to public…

This article outlines the design of a new service-learning component central to a graduate course on teaching elementary and middle school writing. The service-learning involves course participants acting as mentors to middle school students as they write personal histories of local African American, Cape Verdean, and Puerto Rican senior citizens.…

"Lessons in Character" is designed to promote elementary and middle school students' knowledge about core character education values and, through that knowledge, shape children's positive behaviors and support academic success. It consists of 24 lessons organized around weekly themes, taught through stories, writing activities, and class…

As part of a larger ethnographic project addressing the construction of gender through literacy, this study focused on understanding how the children in one writing process classroom expressed their social selves in their written compositions, as well as how those compositions were engineered within the social dynamics of the classroom. The study…

This case study involved designing an electronic-based environment to explore the effectiveness of electronic mail (e-mail) as a writing tool for dialogue journaling. The setting for this study was an intermediate-level reading and writing class in the American English Institute Program on the campus of a large public university. Over a period of…

Beginning college writers often approach the writing classroom with attitudes of fear and alienation. Fostering partnerships between instructor and students allows these writers to extend their private selves, affirm their identities, and connect to larger audiences. Letter writing can help establish an authentic connection between instructor and…