An ongoing struggle in the English Language Arts classroom is improving students' spelling habits. We educators know that good spelling is a crucial skill; is there anything more likely to derail a résumé or essay than a spelling error? Yet it's also a skill that requires assiduous practice on the part of our students.  Continue reading...

In an earlier article, I suggested that the selection of a "standard" English for teaching purposes was a bit arbitrary and that the "standards" selected frequently failed to be representative of the way that most native speakers actually speak English. I opined that it seemed somewhat disingenuous to expect learners of the language to struggle with mastering phonemes that many native speakers didn't bother with much themselves. This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Continue reading...

In this Wordshop article, Susan Ebbers considers how interest influences student learning. She focuses on a timely legal question sure to interest students and engage them in debate: whether Facebook "likes" count as free speech.  Continue reading...

Hi. What did i miss in class today. i want to keep up in english

I get a lot of e-mails. My favorites are the ones that come in from students who clearly like to prove to me how little they are using the skills I'm teaching. Thus, the group of teachers with whom I work decided to address the art of writing e-mail.  Continue reading...

At a summer journalism workshop, young writers were thrown into the deep end of the pool but came up with impressive results. Bob Greenman recounts how the high school students that he taught proved up to the task of becoming dogged reporters.  Continue reading...

Teachers in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are heading back to school this fall with some added anxieties: new Common Core State Standards seek to put reading, writing, and vocabulary at the forefront of the STEM classroom. Here, Shannon Reed breaks down what the new standards mean to STEM teachers, and how they can use the opportunity to engage with students more profoundly.  Continue reading...