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If you are doing, reviews in class. You might want to use the winners of this contest as models.

For those of you who do the movie/book comparison essay: "If I have a relationship with a book and it's poorly done on the big screen, on some level, I'm galled. But on the other hand, not every movie can be "Watchmen," and by now, I should be able to accept the nuance of adaptation, being an adult and all. On the whole, I'd argue that haggling over which is better, the book or the movie, is mostly pointless. The operative word being "mostly." Because there are extreme cases where book-lover rage is justifiable. Which cases? I pulled the Metacritic critic ratings of the top 500 movies on IMDb tagged with the "based on novel" keyword.1 I then2 found the average user rating of the source novel for each film on Goodreads, a book rating and review site.3 In the end, there was complete data for 382 films and source novels."

"Most teachers make an effort to get to know their students, and many regularly distribute surveys at the start of each school year to speed up that process. The problem is, most teachers read these surveys once, then file them away. Sure, they might have every intention of returning to the surveys and reviewing them later, but far too often, that time never comes. We rely on our day-to-day interactions for relationship building, and although we get to know some students quite well this way, others just fade into the background. A 360 Spreadsheet is a place for teachers to store and access the "other" data we collect on our students, giving us a more complete, 360-degree view of each student. It's a single chart that organizes it all and lets us see, at a glance, things we might otherwise forget. Many teachers already keep track of students' birthdays. Think of this as a birthday chart on steroids. Figure 10-1 is just one possible version of a 360 Spreadsheet:"

"Though often considered second best to his "Death of a Salesman" and opening to lukewarm, if not downright hostile, reviews, Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" continues to be mounted and taught worldwide because it speaks to universal fears of social isolation and the unknown - fears especially present in a rapidly changing world, not to mention in the topsy-turvy social order of school."

"In the first large-scale analysis of new systems that evaluate teachers based partly on student test scores, two researchers found little or no correlation between quality teaching and the appraisals teachers received. The study, published Tuesday in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association, is the latest in a growing body of research that has cast doubt on whether it is possible for states to use empirical data in identifying good and bad teachers."

"My previous post reviewed research on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and described the four qualities that have been identified as critical to helping students motivate themselves: autonomy, competence, relatedness, and relevance. In this post, I'll discuss practical classroom strategies to reinforce each of these four qualities."

"A year ago, we were approached by The Princeton Review to help them design a survey about Student Life in America. Rather than focusing on academic performance, they wanted to understand students' academic process. What goes through their heads when they do homework? Where do they turn for help when they're stuck? How do they think and feel during a typical school day? In short, the survey was designed to find out what only students can know: their thoughts, feelings, and goals. The results suggest that if we want to fix education, then we have to move away from blaming teachers, resources, or classroom size, and start talking seriously about what students are doing to create academic success -- and how we can best support them in that process. Here are some of the survey's most telling results."

A list of 20+ non-fiction writers under 40. There is a bio for each with a brief discussion of his or her work.

"Graham's review of the research doesn't resolve the age-old debate of whether students learn writing best naturally -  just by doing it - or through explicit writing instruction. But there are effective practices where the research is unequivocal. Distressingly, many teachers aren't using them. "We have confirmation of things we know that work, but are not applied in the classroom," said Graham. Here are three: Spend more time writing, Write on a computer, and traditional grammar instruction doesn't work.

"Be visual and conversational. Be concrete, make your reader see and stop trying to impress. Beware "the curse of knowledge." Have someone read your work and tell you if it makes sense. Your own brain cannot be trusted. Don't bury the lead. Clarity beats suspense. If they don't know what it's about they can't follow along. You don't have to play by the rules, but try. If you play it straight 99% of the time, that 1% will really shine. Read Read Read. The English language is too complex to learn from one book. Never stop learning. Good writing means revising. Never hit "send" or "print" without reviewing your work - preferably multiple times."

"Op-ed writing gives us the chance to delve into an issue we're passionate about and illuminate its importance for our readers. It's a powerful genre-with new research revealing the op-ed really does change people's minds. This month, we were honored to have writer, advocate and activist Dr. Anita Heiss with us. As our Guest Judge, Dr. Heiss offered invaluable advice on how to write an op-ed capable of catalyzing change. And today, after considering your compelling arguments, Dr. Heiss is eager to share her picks for Best Entry, Runner Up and Best Peer Review! Read on for her commentary on these original works. We want to send a special thanks to the Journalism Education Association for collaborating with us on this competition and for their commitment to helping young writers find their voice through journalism. "

VIDEO: "Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is often interpreted as an anthem of individualism and nonconformity, seemingly encouraging readers to take the road less traveled. This interpretation has long been propagated through countless song lyrics, newspaper columns, and graduation speeches. But as Frost liked to warn his listeners, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem-very tricky." In actuality, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood are "really about the same," according to Frost, and are equally traveled and quite interchangeable. In fact, the critic David Orr deemed Frost's work "the most misread poem in America," writing in The Paris Review: "This is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices… The poem isn't a salute to can-do individualism. It's a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.""

"We live in a world where communication is evolving faster than the speed of sound. Modern technology has changed the way written communication works on a fundamental level. And yet, many of the grammar rules taught today still cling to antiquated formatting. After consulting with writers from Walrus Publishing, authors J.R. Bowles and Mark Baker, and professional book reviewers from the Book Bloggers Do It Better group, I'm confident in presenting this list of the top eight grammar rules that are no longer requirements for good writing:"

"McPhee has now published more than thirty books, work that first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1963. He's written about Alaska (Coming into the Country), the Swiss Army (La Place de la Concorde Suisse), and an island in Scotland's Inner Hebrides (The Crofter and the Laird). His subjects have included the atomic bomb, the environmental movement, the U.S. Merchant Marine, Russian art, and fishing. Four books on geology. Three on transport. Two on sports. One book entirely about oranges. He has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World, his comprehensive survey of North American geology. His work has inspired generations of nonfiction writers, and he has distinguished himself especially as a teacher of literary journalism." This is an interview with him about writing and teaching.