Here’s my one caveat, if you’re bothered by a lot and expect quiet student perfection, this might not be the classroom management plan for you. But if you want to share a mutually-owned space with students who crave independence, yet want help through tough tasks, this might help you start your...
This will be my 12th year teaching high school ELA, and you could say I’ve learned a few things that I wished I knew going into year one. One thing is clear about 12 years: there are going to be fun and easy years and there are going to be hard and challenging years. And I honestly can’t say why...
During Pride Month, everyone expects coming out stories or rainbow flags to take over their social media profile pics–and honestly, I love those parts of June. But as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, we love to hear stories of identity, whether or not it connects to sexuality or gender. Being...
The wonderful thing about Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is it isn’t content-specific; it can span all curriculum and grade levels. Knowing the five areas of CASEL’s Classroom SEL Framework helps decide where your strengths and weaknesses are as a teacher. Additionally, you can share these...
The best part of being an ELA teacher is getting to expose students to a diverse set of stories. To appreciate the new cultures and heritages more sincerely in a book, students have to start the book feeling like they understand or can relate to something with the characters with whom they spend...
Dynamic and flat characterization has been in language arts and English curricula forever, it seems. How do we up the rigor as students advance in secondary classrooms? I find a helpful graphic organizer gives students a perspective on which character is dynamic and which just isn’t. During Women’s...
Analyzing complex characters in a novel or a short story requires students to look at many things such as how they’re described physically, but also their motivations for their actions and events that happen, their reaction to external factors, and the relationships they have.
Many young adult books embrace the idea of a fresh start and characters who also have to rise up, advocate, reassess, and sometimes just get over it. Those journeys are valuable to our students and to put the right book in their hands is important as they start a new year with the best intentions.
I’m a #BookTok-er. It’s basically my entire For You Page (#FYP). And when you’re on BookTok, you come across repetitive recommendations.
Annotation is a life skill, especially for our college-bound students. Reading something with a purpose, a strategy to comprehend at a higher level, and interact with a text are all things every person needs to function in our society. It is our job as educators to help nurture that skill as we...
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