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The educators you see on ReadWriteThink are working to improve literacy learning for every student. Check out their stories for inspiration.
ReadWriteThink couldn't publish all of this great content without literacy experts to write and review for us. If you've got lessons plans, activities, or other ideas you'd like to contribute, we'd love to hear from you.
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Author
John Paul Walter
| Name | John Paul Walter |
| Location | Washington, Washington DC |
| Role | Independent Writer and Scholar |
| Membership |  |
"As a teacher and a scholar, I believe in the importance of promoting English Studies as an intersection of literature, language, and culture. Writing lesson plans for ReadWriteThink has allowed me to explore these intersections in new ways."
Depending upon whom you ask, John is either a medievalist who thinks he’s a techno-rhetorician or a techno-rhetorician who thinks he’s a medievalist. Either way, he has taught composition, rhetoric, and literature courses at Saint Louis University; University of North Carolina, Wilmington; and Creighton University.
His teaching and research interests include composition studies; the history and theory of rhetoric; Old and Middle English literature and language; orality-literacy studies of oral, manuscript, print, and digital culture; science fiction and fantasy; rhetorical linguistic studies; and the teaching of English. He approaches English Studies as the study of language, literature, and culture. He is a member of NCTE and CCCC and is on the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication.
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Contributions on ReadWriteThink.org |
Grades 11 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
An Introduction to Beowulf: Language and Poetics
Students are introduced to Old English and the poetic devices of alliteration, kenning, and compounding in preparation for reading the epic poem Beowulf.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Exploring Literature through Letter-Writing Groups
Students discuss literature through a series of letter exchanges, as a one-time assignment or throughout the year with the students discussing, and making connections among, a number of literary works.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Heroes Are Made of This: Studying the Character of Heroes
Designed to explore the hero and the heroic in literature, this unit asks students to discuss their ideas of heroism and analyze heroes in literature.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Students are introduced to proverbs and explore how proverbs are often tied to a culture’s values and everyday experience, although their meanings are not always readily apparent to us today.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Proverbs: At Home and around the World
In this lesson, students work with proverbs from home and from around the world, exploring how these maxims are tied to a culture’s values and everyday experience.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Proverbs: Contemporary Proverbs
This lesson challenges students to craft more apparent meanings for traditional maxims by updating proverbs from around the world and writing proverbs of their own.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Reading Literature in Translation: Beowulf as a Case Study
Using several translations of the same passage of Beowulf, this lesson introduces students to the idea that translation is not an objective practice, but that it involves "imaginative reconstruction."
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
What Am I? Teaching Poetry through Riddles
Students explore figurative language in poetry by reading and writing riddle poems.
