Overview
This page includes documents from a variety of agencies, organizations, and people. My goal is to create a page of reference points for current thinking and best practices in the teaching of English. Anyone who has a report to recommend should send me the URL for consideration. Also, you may inquire about posting your presentation, article, or report to this page in order to be able to direct people to it. My goal: help teachers and other educators get access to the ideas and resources they need to do their job better so they can help kids.
Articles
These articles appeared in various magazines and journals in recent years. They are not all about education; some, for example, appeared as part of an annual column I wrote about Father's Day for a parenting magazine.
Book Lists
These book lists come from many different sources, but all are excellent and frequently praised by teachers, students, parents---readers!
Favorite Books About Teaching Reading
Though they change with each publication season, these are a representative set of books I find useful and often recommend. I do not update this list often, but will do so when I finda book everyone MUST read.
Favorite Books About Teaching Writing
So many great books out there about writing. I like these, though I could always recommend others. I tried to offer a represenative bunch, books that show us how to teach a variety of types of writing in different ways.
Favorite Books About Teaching English
My own list, topped shamelessly by my own book.
Reports
- NCES Report: "What Happens in Classrooms?: Instructional Practices in Elementary and Secondary Schools 1994-95"
- CELA Report: "Excellence in English in Middle and High School: How Teachers' Professional Lives Support Student Achivement," by Judith Langer
- CELA Report: Beating the Odds: Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well," Judith Langer
- CELA Report: "Issues in the English Language Arts: A Survey of Teachers and State Coordinators," by Arthur N. Applebee
- CELA Report: "Literacy in the National Science and Mathamatics Standards: Communication and Reasoning"
- NWREL Report: The Six Traits of Effective Readers
- State Standards Documents (for all states)
- NEW: Kids & Media @ The New Millennium (Kaiser Family Foundation Report)
- NCITE Research Synthesis: Reading and Diverse Learners
Articles
- "Reading Happens in Your Mind Not Your Mouth: Teaching and Learning Academic Literacy in an Urban High School," by Cristine CzikoTeaching & Learning "Academic Literacy" in an Urban High School
- "Literacy Learning Cases as Catalyst for Secondary Content Teachers' Professional Development," by Ruth Schoenbach and Cynthia Greenleaf
- "What Are We Thinking About When We Are Thinking About Computers?" by Sherry Turkle
- "Virtuality and Its Discontents: Searching for Community in Cyberspace," Sherry Turkle
- "Seeing Through Computers: Education in a Culture of Simulation," by Sherry Turkle
- "Children in the Digital Age," Kathryn C. Montgomery
- "Multimedia and Multiple Intelligence," Shirley Veenema and Howard Gardner
- "Does English Matter?" by Robert Scholes
- WestEd Strategic Literacy Initiative
- "Literacy in the National Science and Mathamatics Standards: Communication and Reasoning" (CELA Report)
- Article: "Reading Happens in Your Mind Not Your Mouth: Teaching and Learning Academic Literacy in an Urban High School," by Cristine CzikoTeaching & Learning "Academic Literacy" in an Urban High School
Digital Documents
- Nathan Shedroff's "Taxonomy of Experience"
- Nathan Shedroff's "Taxonomy of the Senses"
- Nathan Shedroff's "Communications Matrix"
- "Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design," by Nathan Shedroff
Essential (and Free) Articles
- What Works in Classroom Instruction: The "Essential Nine"
- "Engaging Students in the Disciplines of English: What Are Successful Schools Doing?" by Arthur Applebee