An Introductory Lesson to Annotation The first time I heard the word “annotate,” I think I was in college. Back in high school, my teachers just told us to “mark up the text.” It’s funny, because I remember all of them telling me to do that, but I don’t recall being told why I should…
I was eager to see the books that won this year’s Pulitzer prizes and am thrilled with the results. (I mean, a book with trees as characters won the prize for fiction!) But I’m most pleased to see that David Blight’s biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom won the Pulitzer for history, because any opportunity…
As a student and young reader, I am often inundated with syllabi and must-read lists that beat me over the head with the “essentials.” One can only be told to read Twain, Austen, Faulkner, Dickens, and Hemingway so many times before one itches to rebel. What else is out there? There have to be other…
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Some of the most important issues to be addressed in today’s classrooms include racism and gender equity—but they’re also some of the most intimidating topics for teachers to tackle. Luckily, Southern gothic literature deals with these ideas head on. This subgenre highlights the disparity between idealized notions of the antebellum South and the realities of…
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Admit it: reading Shakespeare is not your cup of tea. At first, trying to read Shakespeare's works may seem like learning a foreign language. Performed for audiences over four centuries ago, Shakespeare's plays were written in Early Modern English, so it’s natural to feel confused by word choices and sentence structures that have evolved since…
For many students, reading comes naturally. It’s possible your students probably don’t think about how they read—they just do it. So for those who speak and read English proficiently, taking extra time to teach them reading skills may seem redundant. However, all students of English—from those who grew up with the language to those who…
Every time I tell my middle schoolers that we are going to analyze the elements of a story, I get a big groan from about half the room. Somehow, it’s gotten into their heads that writing stories is fun, while breaking down other people’s stories is the most boring thing in the world. To combat…
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Herman Melville’s classic novel about the grand whaling voyage of the Pequod first landed on bookstore shelves exactly 167 years ago. Moby-Dick was widely panned in both England and the United States—Melville’s experimental style flew over the heads of most critics. But today the book is widely read, loved, and discussed. To celebrate the novel’s…
