In today's fast-paced digital age, where screens have become a ubiquitous presence, fostering a love for reading among high school students might seem like a daunting task. As educators, it's our responsibility to ignite the spark of literary passion within them.
Engaging Students with Scavenger Hunts in Secondary ELA
High-interest Books for Reluctant Readers in Secondary ELA
Should we are should we not teach the classics? I can see both sides to the argument, but with my students that struggle, I defer to the side of practicality and place more importance on getting students to read anything… something… rather than… doing nothing.
That gets us to the point of this post: a list of high-interest books for middle school and high school ELA. These books are sure to get reluctant students to read!
Adding Diversity to British Literature: Text Lists by Theme
The Canon of British Literature, as we know, consists of a homogenous group that does not reflect the rich multicultural world of Great Britain today. As a result, any survey of British Literature oftentimes becomes a skewed representation of the literary diaspora of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Five Ways to Infuse Humor into Your ELA Curriculum
Let’s face it, most great works of literature are heavy, and those are the ones we typically teach. Why is that? Probably because the moments of great pain and agony in life are the ones that have the most profound impact us. Ergo, we teach Hamlet or Macbeth over The Comedy of Errors. Or, we teach heart-wrenching memoirs such as A Long Walk to Water over Bossypants. I find that my students sometime ask me why all great literature is so dark and why we have to talk about death, violence, tragedy, and depression so often when there’s so much of that in the world already.
Texts to Diversify Your Secondary Curriculum
Now, more than ever, it is crucial that we as secondary English teachers work consciously to diversify the cannon. “Imagine a world in which all children can see themselves in the pages of a book.” This is the mission of the organization We Need Diverse Books. We Need Diverse Books has been working towards this goal for a long time, and they provide amazing resources to help teachers do just that.
The Junk Journal Novel Project for Secondary ELA
5 Ways to Use Jamboard in Secondary ELA
Jamboard through Google has become a cornerstone tool in my virtual ELA classes because one of my go-to strategies when we had students in class was to use sticky notes on the board. You can read more about the Board but NOT BORING: My Go-to Collaborative Activity for Secondary ELA strategy here.
How to Avoid the Summer Slide with Summer Reading Challenges & One-Pager Projects
Ideas for Pairing Classic Lit with Modern Lit
Connecting classic pieces of literature with high-interest modern texts is a great strategy to engage students in the classics while maintaining their interest. Not only that, but intertextuality (making connections between texts) allows students to extend their analysis into a compare/ contrast format that enables them to analyze literary elements and techniques on a deeper level.
How to Build a Classroom Library
TEN Children's Books for Secondary ELA
FOUR Ways to Get Your Students Hooked on Reading
5 Innovative Activities & Projects for Any Novel Unit
The Logline: A Screenwriting Tool that Helps Students with Textual Analysis in both Fiction and Nonfiction
In screenwriting (writing for movies and TV), the logline is key to brainstorming story ideas and also selling them or "pitching" them to buyers. Crafting loglines can help the writer to flesh out new plot ideas before writing the entire script. It's much easier to revise the logline rather than an entire hundred page script!
LiveBinders in the Classroom
Setting up & Assessing Book Club in Secondary ELA: FOUR FREE GUIDES FOR SUCCESS!
Book club is now considered to be one of the “best practices” in English Language Arts. Book clubs differ from traditional literary circles in that they are less teacher-directed. The students take on the responsibility of selecting their roles, making their assignments, keeping track of their reading, and much more.