English Journal - Volume 94, Issue 4, 2005

Members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee comment on topics of importance to English language arts educators.

“Snapshots” offers insights about teaching and learning through teacher stories about a particular classroom event.

“Speaking My Mind” invites readers to speak out about controversial issues relevant to the teaching of English language arts.

In anticipation of National Poetry Month, James Brewbaker presents a collection of lessons for teaching poetry, all utilizing the same group of five poems. Various educators provide the lessons, demonstrating the value of diverse approaches to the same material.

Using a traditional African poem as a model, Deborah Womelsduff helps ninth-grade students find their writing voices. She has learned through teaching this poetry project that having a well-defined structure allows students to think and write creatively.

Arguing that analysis of the musical qualities of poetry is often avoided, Lewis Cobbs presents strategies teachers can use to help students understand how these elements contribute to constructing meaning. He relates the musical qualities of poetry to similar features of popular music.

Finding it difficult to get students excited about writing authentically, teacher-researchers William P. Bintz and Trisha Henning-Shannon took a risk. They used Fleischman’s books of poems for two voices as models, and high school students responded with moving poems of their own. The authors cite a number of factors that led to the students’ success and include examples of the poems that resulted from this innovative assignment.

When students reject or ridicule our favorite work of literature, it is easy to take the rejection personally. High school teacher Rebecca Hayden relates what happened when she taught the novel she credits with turning her into an English teacher.

Using examples of successful classroom activities, John T. Crow shows how he helps his students become better writers by first helping them to understand how we construct meaning as readers.

As a high school student, Kelly V. Bouldin suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that resulted in partial amnesia and learning disabilities. Now a graduate student preparing to teach, she describes the difficulties she faced in returning to school and recommends strategies educators can use to help similar students they encounter in their classrooms.

Since current research suggests that the best way to teach vocabulary is to group related words, James Blasingame Jr. and Alleen Pace Nilsen present a lesson focusing on the names of muscles but relating them to more common words. Students create visual representations of word groups and teach the words to the class.

Objective grading techniques and disciplinary procedures are increasingly employed in schools to provide a safe and fair educational environment. However, high school teacher David Narter argues that such mechanistic procedures can never be truly objective and that they will result in more harms than benefits.

While studies show the ineffectiveness of direct grammar instruction to produce better writers, high school teacher Susan Losee Nunan finds that explaining grammar rules provides students with tools for building complex thoughts and expressing themselves more elaborately.

High school teacher Mark Holding created a unit to help uninspired seniors write personal essays for college applications. The carefully developed steps help students move away from formulas to regain their freedom and voice in writing.

Thoughtful use of technology to supplement classroom instruction can improve student learning. High school teacher Vivian Jewell shows how the use of online discussions of literature assignments increases student participation by extending dialogue beyond the physical space and time of a single class.

Don J. Kraemer argues that helping students intelligently critique standardized tests is a necessary form of test preparation. His detailed analysis of typical questions reveals what students are truly asked to do on the tests.

“Research Matters” provides teachers with review and application of research that illuminates the daily concerns and activities of English language arts teachers and classrooms.