Strategies for Building Vocabulary in Multilingual Learners

In my last post, I shared the success stories of two of my multilingual learners. I told you I used strategies, but I didn’t share which ones.

8 Books to Promote Social Emotional Learning in Your Classroom

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...

Incorporating Simulations in AP® U.S. Government and Politics

Discover how simulations can enhance learning in AP® U.S. Government and Politics. Engage students with hands-on activities like discretionary budgeting to deepen comprehension and foster multidisciplinary understanding.

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...

AP® Macroeconomics: FRQ Rules of the Road

Let’s face it, poorly answered free response questions are hard on both teachers and students. Most students shudder at the thought of answering the free response questions in AP Macro because it requires them to gather all their knowledge AND apply it. When teachers see poorly answered FRQs, we...

Teaching Strategies to Help Students Master Grade-Level Standards

Spring is in the air, and school children all across the nation are entering the last leg of the academic year. But before the final bell rings, many students will take end-of-year state assessments designed to gauge their academic aptitude and growth. For several children, just the idea of testing...

6 Books For Arab American And Middle Eastern Heritage Month

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...

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...

Success Stories: Inspiring Emergent Bilingual Learners’ Progress in Middle School English Classrooms

When I think about the success stories of my middle school emergent bilingual learners, I can’t help but smile. What about you? Sure, there were challenges – my challenges in providing instruction, theirs in learning. But the joy of overcoming those challenges is worth all the clouds in the sky.

AP Human Geography: How to Improve FRQ Responses

This blog entry is designed to provide some hints to help your students improve their writing on the free-response section of the exam. The expectations, instruction, and instruction that teachers provide students related to FRQ writing is extremely important and will dramatically impact student...