Language Arts Education Articles for Teachers - Page 2

Capturing the essence of the holiday season, Chris Van Allsburg’s celebrated picture book, The Polar Express, has become a contemporary holiday classic. As author and illustrator, Van Allsburg creatively relates a story about a young boy overcoming doubt to believe in the magic of Christmas...

The big transition to the Common Core State Standards is already in process, and if you’re like most teachers, you are just a little bit intimidated by the challenge of becoming familiar with the new guidelines. Let’s dive right in and get started with one of the most important writin...

What used to be a lesson for the elementary years will most certainly need to be extended into middle and high school. Learning to evaluate information will be more critical than ever as we are exposed to more of it. To start, it will be helpful for students to have a clear understanding of ...

December is Write to a Friend Month. During the time of holiday celebrations and recognizing the special people in our lives, taking advantage of the opportunity for old-fashioned correspondence can be a worthwhile tradition at home and in the classroom. Living in the technological age of social ...

It was a dark and stormy night when I realized that my writing prompts were not engaging students and achieving the results I wanted. The problem was that the half of my kids that pounced on the prompt were not the half that needed to be engaged. They were the ones who did whatever was assig...

Teaching the eight parts of speech is an essential component to any middle school language arts curriculum. Not only do pupils need to comprehend what each part of speech is, they also need to identify and correctly manipulate each one effectively in both written and spoken language experiences. ...

A primary key to unlocking a world of vocabulary is through studying Greek and Latin root words. Each year, I am amazed at how students are able to apply their newly acquired knowledge of these roots to other content areas. They discover new vocabulary over the course of the school year, and they...

As children, we find books that seem to stay with us and never leave our side. We love them like old friends. These are books that stand the test of time, the ones we pass on to our children, and read aloud to our students, knowing that at least one of them will take that same book and make it a ...

Ah, the noble pumpkin. Its wonderfully round shape, its hue that shifts from green to bright orange, and its potential as an effective and motivating teaching tool. As fall approaches, towns across the country will begin displaying and selling these lovely vegetables at very reasonable prices. Wh...

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a book for children of all ages. However, reading the text as a child may be quite a different experience than reading it as an adult. For instance, one of the most amazing aspects of Alice in Wonderland is the relationship that Carroll crafts between ...

Subject integration allows students to use concepts and skills from multiple content areas. It can range anywhere from designing lessons, to class projects, to units of study. For example, the language arts classroom is an easily adaptable setting where learners can combine reading and writing sk...

An author once wrote, “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.” A little nonsense, a dark and sinister twist, rich dialogue, and a way to capture the imagination of children all over the world, that is Roald Dahl. He was born September 13, 1916 and has penned som...

I remember being exposed to “Hansel and Gretel” as a child. I recall how I feared the cannibalistic old witch and vicariously learned the lesson to never leave my parents’ home. Using “Hansel and Gretel” and other Grimm fairy tales, we as educators, can teach ou...

Back-to-School Night is an opportune time to make an excellent impression on parents. The amount of thought and preparation you dedicate to making this a special experience for parents can make a huge difference in how the school year unfolds. Although the planning and preparation can be stressfu...

The ability to decipher unknown words using affix and root word knowledge is a valuable literacy skill to master. As with all instruction, I follow a three-step process to introduce, practice for mastery, and assess students’ learning of a concept and/or skill. During word study instruction and p...