Sensitive to the increased importance of valuing diversity and diverse points of view since 9/11, this article describes activities through which ESL students contribute new knowledge to their classes while simultaneously improving their English language skills.

Middle school teacher Huntington Lyman takes a fresh look at the I-Search research method and shows how it can be modified to provide an effective project for middle school students.

What can improve students' engagement in persuasive writing? A strong ethical dilemma and strategies for developing intelligent responses.

The authors describe their struggles and eventual success with students in constructing a "counternarrative to colormuteness and colorblindness"—the self-imposed student segregation and silencing of voice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

High school teacher Jerome Evans makes popular culture an integral part of his courses. Through analyzing themes in song lyrics, rhetorical devices in essays and advertisements, and psychology in contemporary film, students improve their skills in critical thinking and writing.

This article summarizes and explicates research on 272 twelfth-grade students' reading autobiographies. Cope quotes from some noteworthy comments and makes some suggestions on how teachers and schools might do a better job of teaching literature.

Describes a four- to six-week project for high school sophomores in which students create pamphlets and in the process learn basic research skills and practice several elements of the research paper.

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

Methods such as the circle poem, the "poetic interview," the found poem, and the poetic field trip are just some used by the author to create an atmosphere of mutual support and enable students to initiate "imaginative possibilities."

Describes ways short story collections can be integrated into the English curriculum, including a short story fair, a short story hunt, using single short stories to extend a unit, using a short story by itself, using a collection as a whole, and using short stories as part of a focus on writing. Offers a list of short story resources.

Despite common misconceptions about haiku, there is a lively and vibrant haiku community throughout the United States and many other countries. Read this article for further discussion on the use of haiku in your own classroom.

Presents two brief articles--the first discusses purposes for using children's picture books in a secondary classroom, activities for children's literature, and integrating children's books into the classroom curriculum; and the second discusses using folktales in the classroom to engage reluctant readers and writers, suggests ideas/topics for folktale writing projects, lists writing prompts, and recommends folktales.