Every year the author and his colleagues take their grade 12 English students to see four plays at one of Canada's major theaters. Chatting about the series on the last day of class, his students asked him if he had seen "the blue glow from the back row." Laughing at his bewilderment, they told him that during the performances so many students…

Teach "The Little Prince" to senior English students? Senior Advanced Placement English students? What could these people who had analyzed "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," wrestled with "The Sound and the Fury," dissected "Heart of Darkness," and deconstructed "East of Eden" possibly find of value in a "children's book"? The tendency to…

The author had been assigned two sections of Contemporary Literature, a semester-long senior elective, and he wanted to do something new with poetry. He planned to teach Arthur Sze's "Quipu." Sze's poetry is nonlinear, adopting principles from science, anthropology, and history into a multilayered poetic texture--text unlike anything students…

According to a 2009 AP-MTV survey of 1,247 people ages 14-24, 50% of those surveyed have experienced cyberbullying (Gatti 1). Victims were twice as likely to need help from a mental health professional and were three times more likely to drop out of school than those surveyed who did not report being cyberbullied (5). Given this alarming social…

Motivation has long been viewed as a key element of learning. A study of over 300 high school juniors and seniors demonstrated that motivation was at least as predictive of achievement in a subject as was intelligence. Among younger students, motivation is a linchpin to learning, even at a time developmentally when overall motivation for…

It has been almost 30 years since the last systematic look at writing instruction in middle schools and high schools in the United States (Applebee, Writing). Since that report, there have been a number of significant changes in the contexts in which teachers teach and in which their students learn to write. Stretching back to the 1969-70 school…

Prior to her joining the California Writing Project's (WP) Improving Students' Academic Writing (ISA) program, the author relates how she used to get frustrated when she read her students' essays. As a result of her new understanding gained from her participation at ISA, the author boldly banished traditional literary analysis papers that asked…

Pairing high school seniors with elementary students to write, edit, and publish children's picture books proved to be an engaging project for the students. Seniors stayed focused and eager to work on the project and proved they had learned editing lessons by teaching them to the younger students.

Graduating seniors will require a range of reading skills in college. Sherri Bell designs a senior English class to help students develop task commitment, comprehension, evaluation, fluency and speed.