Associate professor and department chair of English Dr. Felicia Jean Steele teams up with W. W. Norton to preserve the English department. Read how she ensures her English students are prepared for any career and gain access to her career competencies table she provides all her students.
Category: Literature
“Digital Detox”: Using Norton Critical Editions To Promote Critical Thinking
The Norton Learning Blog has recently featured several posts that offer suggestions for generating greater classroom success by integrating ChatGPT and similar machine-learning-applications. (I find the latter a more accurate—and less anthropomorphizing—term than AI.) However, this particular post goes out to all who—for pedagogical, or numerous other reasons—search for the grail of LLM-free spaces.
Using Courseware to Gain Meaningful Insight and Inform Teaching and Learning
I have long observed in my teaching practice that the most memorable learning tends to occur after students are able to pinpoint gaps in their own knowledge or understanding of course material. Put another way: failure is an effective teacher. However, many college-level courses are delivered in a mode of instruction traditional to higher education: lectures followed by summative assessments, such as term papers or exams. The feedback students receive is delivered and received not as an opportunity for reflection or further inquiry but as a final, definitive grade.
Using Famous Figure Chatbots to Make Challenging Ideas Accessible: Q&A with Martin Puchner
I started to play around with the technology and was amazed how relatively easy and interesting it was. It made me realize that much of what had driven my work—how to make the past speak to the present, how to read ancient texts, and what it meant that the words of long-dead authors were available to us in the present—was relevant for interacting with chatbots.
Is It Poetry?: Engaging Students with Taylor Swift
When is the last time any of us saw that question in the popular press or animating everyday conversation? Lately, those words are on everyone’s lips because of the release of Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.
The Whys of Poetry: Affordances of Poems in the Classroom and Life
With National Poetry Month underway, the authors of this post wanted to share why we read, write, and teach poetry. The curriculum in today’s English Language Arts classroom is often over packed, and poetry offers an immediate entry to a classroom experience that allows young people to be critical and reflective thinkers. In a time …
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Rereading and Annotation to Support Secondary Reading and Writing
Tara B. Johnston, PhD is an assistant professor of education at York College of Pennsylvania. She is a former elementary school teacher, reading interventionist, and literacy specialist. Her research interests include content literacy practices, teacher knowledge and beliefs in relation to literacy, and pre-service teacher training in literacy instruction. Tara JohnstonImage Credit: Emily Rund The …
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Don’t Teach in a Vacuum: How Literary Nonfiction Prepares Us for Major Works
Kate Hoffman has taught for 25 years across public and private schools and at many levels—middle school, high school, and college. For many years she taught AP® Literature and Composition, and she currently teaches in Central Pennsylvania. In her spare time, she enjoys going to thrift stores, antique stores, and independent bookstores. She writes regularly …
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#TeachLivingPoets: Activities for Equity in Poetry
Melissa Alter Smith is a high school English teacher in Charlotte, where she earned the 2017 District Teacher of the Year, as well as an AP® Reader and AP® Consultant. She is the creator of #TeachLivingPoets and TeachLivingPoets.com. Melissa is co-author of Teach Living Poets, and the Norton Guide to AP® Literature. Melissa was on …
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