To celebrate the innumerable contributions of past English Teaching Forum Editor-in-Chief Tom Glass, we are pleased to reshare his creative Human Mind Maps activity. This engaging, movement-based technique requires students to think critically and creatively as they communicate and collaborate to identify and explain conceptual relationships.

Author Kamran Akhtar Siddiqui shares a project plan for engaging students in writing short opinion-based “letters to the editor” on current topics and for helping students submit their work to print or online news publications. The article describes key steps: analyzing model texts, selecting an issue, creating drafts, giving and receiving peer feedback, and using online editing tools to prepare texts for publication via an authentic news outlet or class e-book.

In this article, author Melanie C. González explores single-point rubrics, a simple, adaptable assessment tool that can offer student-friendly formative and summative feedback in many ELT contexts. Single-point rubrics use one list of evaluative criteria to describe how learners can demonstrate proficiency or success; this flexible rubric style also provides space for individualized, growth-focused instructor feedback in relation to each success criterion.

Author Aaron Mermelstein explains the importance of accurately placing learners at the correct level for reading practice, then describes the Reading Level Measurement Method, a student-centered device that can be used to measure students’ placement (and progress) and can give reading instructors important information about the effectiveness of their reading program.