Salt and Light

We all know that many of our students spend hours upon hours of time chatting with friends on the Internet.  This new form of communication has brought with it a wealth of abbreviations and modified spellings to make online chatting quicker and easier.  Well, what happens when our students’ papers and essays are riddled with […]

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While reading Alsup and Bush’s text, “But will it work with real students?” I was startled to come across the charge that we, as English teachers, need to consider “why [we] think literature should be taught” (2).  My initial reaction was a dumbfounded, “well, isn’t it obvious!?” Reading and studying literature helps students learn to […]

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       Rex Gibson, in his book Teaching Shakespeare, states, “Knowledge about Shakespeare’s language is best acquired actively.  When the language is spoken, enacted, explored, performed and used in ways which recognize and celebrate its dramatic qualities, response to the language is enlivened” (p. 92).  There is no denying the excitement and drama of Shakespeare’s language […]

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How many of you can remember attempting to read Shakespeare for the first time and coming away frustrated and confused?  Maybe your students seem to resist the Elizabethan English that sounds so different from Modern English and have trouble understanding the basic plot structures.  Fear not- we’ve all been there before.  Chances are, we will […]

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            Constructivism: when “instruction becomes less a matter of transmittal of an objective and culturally sanctioned body of knowledge, and more a matter of helping individual learners learn to construct and interpret for themselves”  (according to Applebee (1993) as quoted in Appleman (2000).
            What an exciting endeavor the field of English Language Arts instruction is!  […]

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I am a pre-service teacher studying for my Masters and Certification in Secondary English Education.  I plan to use this blog to demonstrate my continued thinking and learning on the subject of English Language Arts Education.  I am excited about the possibilities of using blogging to enhance my own learning and to connect with other […]

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