NCTE

Already Readers and Writers: Honoring Students' Rights to Read and Write in the Middle Grade Classroom is meant to help all middle school educators encourage their students to build literate lives both within the classroom and well beyond it.

Veteran middle school teacher Jennifer Ochoa has brought together middle school teachers and teacher leaders, children’s author and We Need Diverse Books cofounder Ellen Oh, children’s literature scholar Kristin McIlhagga, reading and writing workshop teacher-author Linda Rief, and censorship expert Millie Davis to examine current middle school literacy practices that support students’ rights to read and write.

By showcasing their experiences and activities, and positioning NCTE policy statements—The Students' Right to Read and NCTE Beliefs about the Students’ Right to Write—as foundational guiding documents, Ochoa and her colleagues prove that even in today’s standards-driven environment, authentic reading and writing practices can create literacy-rich middle school classrooms.

As a bonus, teachers who don’t have strong support in their schools to implement these practices will find a myriad of suggestions for developing a virtual personal learning network—a grassroots professional development tailored to their needs and interests—that will support them in their efforts to help kids as readers and writers.

About Principles in Practice

Books in the Principles in Practice imprint offer teachers concrete illustrations of effective classroom practices based in NCTE research briefs and policy statements.

Each book discusses the research on a specific topic, links the research to an NCTE brief or policy statement, and then demonstrates how those principles come alive in practice: by showcasing actual classroom practices that demonstrate the policies in action; by talking about research in practical, teacher-friendly language; and by offering teachers possibilities for rethinking their own practices in light of the ideas presented in the books.

Beyond Standardized Truth, included in the Principles in Practice imprint, is the result of the author’s own efforts to bridge the gap between valuing reading and being able to respond with appropriate instruction or evaluate growth in reading. 

Scott Filkins brings us into his classroom and the classrooms of his colleagues to demonstrate how high school teachers across the disciplines can engage in inquiry-based reading assessment to support student learning. Based in the IRA–NCTE Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing, Revised Edition, the classroom portraits highlight the importance of incorporating genuinely formative assessment into our instruction. 

Filkins unpacks his own history with assessment through engaging “confessions” of his early practices and eventual growth toward a framework that situates reading assessment in an inquiry model. Throughout the book, he showcases his colleagues’ attempts to use an inquiry framework, including the various tools and documentation methods that help them inquire into their students’ habits and thoughts as readers, use formative assessment to fuel the gradual release of responsibility framework, and use reading assessment as a means of professional reflection. 

Finally, Filkins challenges us to broaden the conversation about assessment to a wider range of stakeholders and offers a vision of assessment as an expression of care for the students in our charge.

A deep dive into the rich resources available for teaching Shakespeare’s plays, Bring on the Bard is for every high school teacher—early career to veteran—looking for new, hands-on activities to draw students of all ability levels into the work and world of Shakespeare. 

Shakespeare didn’t write his plays for readers; he wrote individual “cue scripts” for actors who hadn’t read the entire play but had to perform on the fly with almost no rehearsal. Those cue scripts have become the written form of his dramas, compiled originally in the First Folio of 1623. And the actors’ cues for meaning, emotion, and emphasis are still embedded in Shakespeare’s language, ripe for discovery by today’s students. 

Shakespeare’s plays rightly remain a staple of the ELA curriculum, but evolving standards and youth culture itself challenge teachers to put students—not a text—at the center of a reading experience in order to support diverse readers and learners.

How can we do this? 

Experienced educators Kevin Long and Mary T. Christel introduce us to the Folio technique, which builds on active drama approaches that position students to engage with a rich text through low-risk speaking and improvisation activities. Without requiring students to become actors, the Folio technique helps them to discover the clues the Bard built into his works that allow actors to efficiently understand their characters’ text, context, and subtext. Teachers can use excerpts from the First Folio along with a mass market paperback or digital edition of a play to help students get closer to Shakespeare’s intentions; understand the language, action, and emotions of the characters; and perhaps even explore the challenges the Bard’s modern editors face.

The book offers suggestions for using parallel text, graphic, and abridged editions of Shakespeare’s works, as well as activities using cue scripts and a variety of viewing experiences. 

Building Literate Communities: In Conversation with Sheridan Blau offers a rich collection of essays that honors and extends the contributions of Sheridan Blau to the fields of English education. It is required reading for educators and researchers committed to advancing learning, instruction, and practice. It is an essential resource for anyone invested in writing studies, literature instruction, literacy, or teacher education. 

Blau and his work invite all of us into a conversation about how to best serve learner needs. This volume demonstrates the beauty of and need for building literate communities through collaboration, discussion, and action.

This collection includes:

• An account of Blau’s impact: Learn how Blau’s work has influenced communities of students, teachers, and scholars since the 1960s, promoting a richer, more collaborative approach to literacy learning and education.
• An in-depth examination of key issues in English education: Explore how Blau’s principles and practices continue to inform fields such as Composition and Literature Studies, Professional Learning, and Mentorship. Read about Blau’s leadership and legacy in the work of Professional Communities—including both the National Writing Project (NWP) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
• New work from leading voices in writing and literacy studies: Hear from scholars in the field about both the history of and projected future for English education.
• Inspiration and support for new and veteran educators: Wade into current pedagogical debates and discover innovative approaches to meet the needs of students and teachers in a rapidly changing educational landscape.

Unlock the transformative potential of English language arts to redefine civic education in K–12 classrooms and beyond with this innovative series. This collection highlights how literacy, critical skills, and a strong commitment to civic engagement can inspire new possibilities for building a more equitable and inclusive future. The chapters in this and subsequent volumes, written by community-engaged scholar-educators, share innovative stories and strategies of how literacy has been leveraged by youth, teachers, and community members to imagine and enact equitable social futures. 

In this volume, you’ll: 

• Hear community-engaged scholar-educators share real-world stories of youth, teachers, and community members using literacy to shape equitable social futures. 
• Receive practical, future-oriented civic literacy learning strategies currently transforming K–12 classrooms. 
• Discover focused strategies to empower and elevate Black students in civic education. 
• Access valuable guidance for integrating civic literacy into your English language arts curriculum. 

The Civic Literacy series showcases how the knowledges, skills, and commitments of English language arts can explore traditional understandings of “civic education” and in its place offer creative possibilities for civic world-building in K–12 classrooms and communities.

This, the third volume of the series, features contributions from educators, researchers, and students to explore:

• The transformative role of civic education in ELA classrooms and teacher preparation programs;
• How to incorporate an antiracist pedagogy and a disability-informed approach in the classroom;
• How focusing on social justice, critical literacy, and activism can help you develop learners who will one day become good citizens;
• How to navigate book bans and censorship in the literacy classroom;
• How to cultivate a community culture through youth participatory action research.

The essays in the Civic Literacy volumes share innovative stories and strategies of how literacy has been leveraged by youth, teachers, and community members to imagine and enact equitable social futures. The first volume focuses on the future-oriented civic literacy learning taking place in K–12 classrooms. The second volume examines the transformative learning that occurs in out-of-school informal literacy learning environments.

Collaborative learning is not only a standard part of writing pedagogy, but it is also a part of contemporary culture. Collaborative Learning as Democratic Practice: A History examines the rich historical and political contexts of collaborative learning, starting with John Dewey’s impact on progressive education in the early twentieth century. 

In the 1930s, for instance, collaborative practices flourished. In the 1950s, they operated in stealth, within an ideology suspicious of collaboration. Collaborative pedagogies blossomed in the protests of the 1960s and continued into the 1980s with the social turn in composition theory. Twenty-first-century collaborative practices influenced by pragmatism are found in writing centers, feminist pedagogies, and computer-mediated instruction. Mara Holt argues that as composition changes with the influence of ecological and posthuman theories, there is evidence of a significant pragmatist commitment to evaluating theory by its consequences.