In this lesson, students master some of the more interesting and challenging vocabulary words from a New York Times article by analyzing the writer's use of nouns and verbs in the article and then constructing original sentences using those words in different contexts. This lesson has multiple objectives-to teach the grammatical components of a sentence, to help students broaden their vocabularies, and to help students use wordplay as a means of teaching sentence structure.  Continue reading...

Knitter, English teacher and Johnstown, Pennsylvania's self-appointed ambassador to Brooklyn, Shannon Reed is also an accomplished playwright whose plays have appeared in prestigious regional festivals. "Currently at work on a play about fairies, vicars and princesses," as she tells us, Shannon graciously laid down her quill for a moment to share these terrific thoughts on playwriting and related books:

Writing plays is a tricky business because you're writing text that will need to be brought to life. Thus, it's worth any beginning playwright's time to read the text of a play they have seen and enjoyed. You might start by watching the movie of The Crucible. The 1996 version has a powerful screenplay by Arthur Miller that skews remarkably closely to his searing playscript. Then read the play itself, an American classic.

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The blog Never mind the technology, where's the learning? lists "10 very obvious ways to use iPods in education." We think they're more inspired than obvious -- and useful for teachers, and parents, too. Read the post here.

After a long hiatus, I caught up with my friend and expert writer Clark Morgan for another installment of "Bagel & Schmear" -- our occasional series of conversations about composition between bites and bad 80s music at our local Manhattan bagel shop. This time our talk turned to the paragraph, that unheralded workhorse of writing. Here's our discussion. - Editor  Continue reading...