Teacher/novelist Michele Dunaway writes, "as much as I preach individual choice in reading, I do believe there should be some literary works that everyone in middle and high school reads and experiences." Here Michele shares some of her favorite teaching touchstones.  Continue reading...

“Stop and think!” was a phrase deployed numerous times an hour by a former co-teacher, when we worked together in a preschool classroom. Whether it was a girl about to try to eat some sand from the sand table, or a boy seconds away from hurling himself off of the top of a slide, “Stop and think!” would ring out.  Continue reading...

We recently spoke to Nancy Mack, author of Teaching Grammar with Playful Poems, to find out how she was inspired to use poetry as an innovative entry point for teaching grammatical patterns to young students.  Continue reading...

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...

Writing teacher Margaret Hundley Parker has a dark secret she has to reveal.

Here's my confession: In the summer, I don't care about rules. I pen prose that would give a good copy editor a heart attack. I don't mind if someone "lays" down for a nap, I get in the line for "ten items or less" and refrain from muttering fewer under my breath. The news "impacts"people and I don't flinch. It's very liberating. The down side of all this is when friends—or worse, new acquaintances—ask me word questions and I give wrong answers. It's not that I do a brain cleanse every June, it's that I can't articulate the rules when I'm not really thinking about them.  Continue reading...

We welcome back Fitch O'Connell, a longtime teacher of English as a foreign language, working for the British Council in Portugal and other European countries. Here Fitch considers one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the English-language classroom: the dastardly phrasal verb.  Continue reading...