Describes teaching a Shakespearean play ("Macbeth") to eighth and ninth graders with learning difficulties. Describes combining a scaffolded reading experience with an interdisciplinary unit approach to maximize student engagement and success. (SR)

Describes a literature-based program that illustrates the connection between the world of work and the classroom for high school remedial students. Describes how visits to workplace facilities, collaboration with business partners in and out of the classroom, and the examination of literary characters' occupations improve students' attitudes and…

Reports on a case study which shows how a middle school student was transformed through her interactions with her teacher, the novels she read, and her journal. Discusses how a single text, "Dicey's Song" by Cynthia Voigt, became the touchstone that the student returned to throughout the school year, generating the potential for intertextuality…

Describes the use of electronic mail as an integral part of reading education courses, in which students read journal articles related to course content, write their responses on e-mail, and distribute them to the entire class. Notes that e-mail drew students together to form a community of learners who shared and learned from one another. (SR)

Describes how low-level, at-risk urban middle school students became proficient with notetaking, main idea, and summarization skills using a 12-minute daily newscast, which eventually engaged them in current events, news analysis, and analysis of commercials. (SR)

Describes how a teacher new to social studies created a social studies curriculum that was real, authentic, and interesting by teaching social studies through language arts with current events as the framework. (SR)

Outlines the many uses and value of historical newspapers, available on microfilm, for secondary school teachers in a number of classroom disciplines, including reading, social studies, English, and more. (SR)

Describes how a group of Asian high-school students in an English-as-a-Second-Language humanities class begin the school year reproducing information and looking for definitions, and end the school year having found their own voices. (SR)

Argues that learners need to know that their teacher values their knowledge and respects their individual ways of constructing meaning, and that such a classroom environment will cultivate students' intrinsic motivation and connect it with their literacy learning. Offers suggestions to nurture students' intrinsic motivation for literacy learning…

Discusses the deterioration of reading culture in Hungary over the past 15 years. Notes increases in television viewing, decreases in achievement and in reading comprehension, and changes in amount and types of materials read. Notes hopeful evidence of relative improvement of reading. Characterizes some important trends (practical, commercial, and…

Emphasizes that the purpose of parent-teacher conferences should be to inform parents, foster positive parental involvement, and improve student performance. Discusses scheduling of conferences, the need for full-size furniture for adults, and the importance of students being present with their parents. (SR)

Presents case studies of two family literacy programs in Michigan, showing how they adapt their programs to their participants' special needs. Discusses four critical and comprehensive factors revealed in the study (participation, curriculum, staff and administration, and fundraising) that need to be considered when designing effective family…

Discusses a project and study that focused on literacy acquisition among middle school students from the Dominican Republic attending a school on Manhattan's lower East Side. Describes how a book writing project focusing on "stories from home" engaged students, taught them ways to discuss and ways to think, and fostered their literacy acquisition…

Finds that second-language university students believed that dialog journal writing, as a strategy for learning English, enhanced their motivation to write and increased their fluency. (SR)

Describes a children's literature course for preservice teachers, team-taught by creative writing and education faculty, in which students do not simply read and discuss children's literature but also write it, and what they create is then critiqued not only by their peers but by fifth to eighth graders. Calls this approach "learning children's…