This article discusses the imaginative activities and assignments that teachers often assign that violate the text around which the lesson is focused and that mislead students about its meaning.

An annotated bibliography of books that exemplify the plot elements, character, setting, and theme. Includes guidelines on how to do a book talk.

This book isn't about technology. It's about the teaching practices that technology enables. This book addresses the ways in which teachers and students work together to navigate continuous change and what it means to read, write, view, listen, and communicate in the twenty-first century.

Colleen A. Ruggieri offers a multigenre, mulltiple intelligences unit on transcendentalism complete with suggested texts and an assessment plan.

Describes a research paper in the author's high school English classroom which connected to the lives and interests of students, who delved into community problems with as much rigor (and using many types of research as traditional essays exploring arcane philosophical questions). Describes creating a context for exploration, and students' final projects.

Kenneth Lindblom and Patricia A. Dunn teach language awareness and use through published complaints about the teaching of grammar. Students are able to recognize issues of race and class that determine acceptable usage and learn the importance of audience in their own language use.

Suggests the authentic audience found on the Internet has a profound effect on the quality of student writing in all grades, and that the key to successful technology projects is integrating them into the curriculum so that computers are a means, not an end. Offers ideas for classroom activities and projects using stand-alone computers, and using computers with Internet access.

Argues that regular homophone practice enhances vocabulary knowledge, spelling skills, pronunciation ability, and overall reading proficiency. Describes how card games played with decks of homophones helped to accomplish these things. Notes particular benefits of homophone games to ESL students, and outlines key advantages of using the games.

Veteran educator Howard Miller shares a set of strategies that can propel middle school writers (and "inventive" spellers) into the role of being responsible and strategic in this Voices from the Middle article.

Describes how an English teacher uses ghost stories in his classroom to further students' interest in and understanding of epics. Presents a short unit in which all the class work focuses on scary kinds of things.

The book offers a practical approach to Hurston using a range of student-centered activities for teaching Hurston's nonfiction, short stories, and the print and film versions of Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Provides high school teachers with teaching strategies, classroom activities, and student samples for teaching the works of Sherman Alexie.

Carmaletta M. Williams provides high school teachers with background on Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance as well as help in teaching Hughes's poetry, short stories, novels, and autobiography.

Carol Jago offers ways to teach the works of Judith Ortiz Cofer in the high school English classroom.

Offers high school teachers an activity-based approach to teaching the works of Amy Tan, especially The Joy Luck Club and The Opposite of Fate.

Carol Jago offers readers a handy guide for bringing this celebrated author's work into the classroom, including biographical information, ideas for literature circles using Walker's short stories, sample writing lessons using Walker's poems, suggestions for teaching The Color Purple, and a wealth of resources for further investigation of Alice Walker and her work.

Reading internalizes every aspect of good writing—if you're reading good writing, which most middle school textbooks aren't. Here are criteria and suggestions for good content-area articles and trade nonfiction books.

This article describes different ways that students can report on books they have read other than the traditional "book report."

Offers 50 diverse suggestions intended to offer students new ways to think about a piece of literature, new directions to explore, and ways to respond with greater depth to the books they read.