This summer, I had the privilege of scoring Question 2 at the AP Literature Reading. I had not been to the reading in a few years, taking off the summer of 2021 and serving on the standard setting panel in 2022. I was reenergized by seeing all of our collective efforts in motion. After my hiatus,...
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.
Congratulations! You’re well into the first semester now. You’re developing new and solid relationships with your learners and creating a classroom culture of inclusion and learner safety.
For this activity, students are tasked with creating an Instagram post imagining that their assigned vocabulary word was a person posting on social media. All aspects of the post should relate to the meaning of the vocabulary word. It is more than okay if more than one student is assigned the same...
"The “Words of Doom” were an addition to our spelling instruction in middle school ELA. They could easily be adjusted or modified for upper elementary classrooms.
We are all constantly practicing the skill of character analysis. I remind my often insecure students of this fact before we dive into a difficult text. We are constantly asking ourselves questions like—Why did I just say that to my mom? What motivated my friend to get back with her jerk boyfriend?...
It’s that time! The school year is beginning and you’re ready to welcome up to 180 new learners into your classroom. Whether you’re in your first year of teaching or your thirty-fifth, the first day of school can bring both excitement and trepidation.
One of the greatest rewards of teaching history is when students are able to show that they can think in a complex manner and recognize that history is often muddled with differing interpretations and controversies. Catherine the Great is one of the more complex rulers that students must study in AP
Back in college, an older Latino gentleman asked me, “When you have kids one day, are you going to raise them as Mexican or white?” The question threw me for bit because of how out of the blue it was, but I answered, “I’ll probably raise my kids the same way I was raised.” He immediately responded,...
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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