Michele Dunaway, a teacher of English and journalism, writes: "In our haste to have students prep for standardized tests, English education has left behind a very important area: writing the letter."  Continue reading...

Before the beginning of the school year, we heard from Teachers At Work contributor Shannon Reed about a grant she had received to incorporate playwriting into a high-school science curriculum. Now Shannon returns with an update on this innovative cross-curricular program, which she has dubbed "SciPlay."  Continue reading...

(Read part one of "The Nitty-Gritty Essay" here.)

I'm not sure what the deal is, but people have a fixation with five-paragraph essays. It's as if five is some magical number that a good essay must have. However, that couldn't be further from the truth. Some essays simply aren't worth five paragraphs, and can suffice with three or even four paragraphs. Some need ten or more. For those writers who struggle with composition, it's what's in the paragraphs that counts, and how long the paragraphs are.  Continue reading...

We recently spoke to British researcher Dan Clayton about the new educational project, "Teaching English Grammar in Schools." The project seeks to enliven the teaching of English by using real examples pulled from a corpus of texts. In part two of our interview, we asked Dan how this corpus-based approach allows both teachers and students to investigate the intricacies of the English language.  Continue reading...

We recently learned of a fascinating new project in the United Kingdom entitled "Teaching English Grammar in Schools," and we were pleased to see that Dan Clayton, a researcher working on the project, had spoken highly of the educational resources of the Visual Thesaurus. We got in touch with Dan to find out how the project, part of the Survey of English Usage, is promoting new approaches to the teaching of grammar based on real usage examples pulled from a corpus of texts.  Continue reading...

The title of this month's column is a direct quote from one of my students. Please imagine it being delivered in an accusatory tone. What caused such a lament? You see, I had the audacity to suggest that learning new words was, well, fun.  Continue reading...