While most early literacy development occurs in elementary school, teachers in middle and high schools continue shaping students' reading abilities, comprehension strategies, and critical thinking skills. By focusing on the science of reading, these teachers reinforce foundational literacy skills...
Transitional literacy focuses on bridging the gap between basic reading skills and more advanced literacy skills necessary for success during middle and high school. While the science of reading lays the groundwork by equipping students with the necessary skills, transitional literacy focuses on...
When it comes to assessments in English classrooms, many teachers fall in the routine of short answer questions, multiple choice questions, and essays. Rinse then repeat. While this can often be tedious for a teacher, imagine how your students feel.
Several years ago, I began using a 4-point Student Engagement rubric for assignments that were either early in the knowledge acquisition period or for process-type assignments. My Student Engagement Rubric is below:
Explore engaging and interactive Juneteenth lesson plans designed for secondary education students to deepen their understanding of this important historical event.
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...
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...
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