A couple of years ago I wrote a Visual Thesaurus column about writing song lyrics, focusing on basics: finding a storyline and a mood that many people can relate to, telling the story with simple words and painting the mood with vivid images, plus, without being vague, leaving plenty of room for romantic mystery.  Continue reading...

Figment is an online community for teens and young-adults to create, discover, and share new reading and writing. Figment enables its users to read amateur and professional content and create their own unfiltered creative writing to share with their peers on web and mobile networks. Since launching in December, Figment has more than 35,000 registered users and more than 75,000 individual pieces of writing. Check it out here!

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...

How did Shakespeare's plays originally sound? Audiences at the University of Kansas will get to find out, with a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" entirely in the original pronunciation, the first time such a production has been staged in North America.  Continue reading...

Hello, dear "Teachers at Work" readers! I hope all is well, and that you, unlike me, have not yet begun to calculate how many days are left in the summer before school begins again. What can I say? I like to know my limits. But everyone else should chillax, as my students would say, were they not asleep on the beach.  Continue reading...

Teachers, if you are considering having your students read graphic novels or create their own, check out these inspiring sites.

National Association of Comics Art Educators

Teaching Graphic Novels blog

Comic Creator

An Introduction to Graphic Novels podcast