Group of teens of various ethnic, gender and sexual identities looking into camera and holding pride flags.

Exploring Identity Through Narrative Writing

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...

Poster board with a line graph drawn on. Next to the poster board are multicolored markers and an open novel.

Break out of an Essay Rut with Literary Graphs

Read. Annotate. Discuss. Write an essay. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes the most direct path is the best path. My classroom is often “un-instagramable.” However, with some units, I want to provide students with new ways to show what they know. I want to help my students see how different elements in a...

High school ELA students laugh while looking at social media posts.

ELA: Tweets to Check Reading Comprehension

I don’t know about you, but I hate grading reading comprehension questions. First of all, the answers usually could be “borrowed” from websites like LitCharts or Spark Notes so they don’t actually tell you if the students read or not. Secondly, just because a student can tell you what happened in a...