To some students, summer is an exit from all things academic and literature, which means they might be coming back in the fall clueless on the newest or most popular literary hits from the summer months. They might be new releases or simply ones that soared in popularity from June to August. Either...
You feel it, I feel it, we all feel it: group dynamics are different now. I started this article with a rather long lament about it. We don’t have as much time to teach content now that social-emotional needs prevail, the skill disparity is growing, parents aren’t as supportive, resilience has...
There are so many more interesting methods to writing a character analysis than writing an analysis paragraph. Oftentimes, English or language arts teachers forget that there is creativity in language and we should embrace it while also staying on track to grade based on our standards or curriculum...
How do I get my kids in reading and writing shape, so they can move forward? Here are 6 questions I am asking myself as I attempt to help students build their stamina.
I know sometimes it can be a struggle to get kids excited about nonfiction. Even I find myself more drawn to the escapism of fiction. But our world is fascinating and complex and I find that the only way to fully understand it is by engaging with nonfiction.
As a high school language arts teacher, I’m always trying to provide my students with alternate but equal assessments that aren’t always an essay. It’s true—you can totally assess a set of skills using claim, textual evidence, and reasoning in creative ways. This 10-song playlist project is one...
This lesson provides strategies for predicting meaning, previewing texts, and making inferences about word meaning and vocabulary. Students will be able to visualize keywords and descriptions in texts and read around words and lines to increase their understanding of new terms. This lesson can be...
Student writers—especially reluctant ones—often struggle with choosing the most fitting words to create an appropriate tone or mood in their writing. As a result, their essays end up with a lot of words like “nice” or “things” or “people.” These words are fine (another less-than-stellar word), but...
I just finished my tenth year teaching high school English and let me tell you, teens like to read… well, most of them. Some of you might be doubting me, but hang on!
Although our middle school ELA students should have been capitalizing words like "I" since they were in early elementary school, many either just don't do it or don't take the time to proofread their work to make sure they did.
