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...
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.
For some reason, students always struggle when teachers ask them to incorporate sources. It is a process that takes practice to do seamlessly, but when done well, it can boost your credibility in any argument. The thing that is so puzzling about our struggle to incorporate summaries, paraphrases...
The goals of ELA instruction in middle and high school range from developing basic reading comprehension and writing skills to reading and writing critically and analytically. National standards for middle and high school ELA include objectives targeting lower-level skills like explicit text...
Students' favorite streaming services, movies, and video games are all packed with compelling storytelling. To get them more excited about reading, I like to recommend books similar to my students' favorite shows. I have a bulletin board in my school's English hallway with "If you liked ____ try...
We've all been there– you hear endless praise for a book and buy it, fully intending to learn what all the hype is about. But then it sits on your TBR shelf for months collecting dust.
Join us for a conversation in partnership with Simon & Schuster with women YA and children's authors about the experience of being a woman in the publishing space, how identity informs writing, and writing to young audiences.About our panelists:Alicia D. Williams is the author of Genesis Begins...
Whether teaching literature or rhetoric, close reading is an essential and often difficult skill to teach. This note-taking system, which is a modification of the Cornell note system, helps students slow down and examine a text closely through a structured approach that requires them to summarize...
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