Freebies

Book Shelfie Activity to Foster a Love of Reading

Book Shelfie Activity to Foster a Love of Reading

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.

End of the Year Note Ideas for Students

End of the Year Note Ideas for Students

At the end of the school year, I always find myself wanting to convey to my students everything that they’ve meant to me over the course of the school year. I want them to know that I care— even if it was a difficult year for the student in my class. I want them to remember that they had an English teacher who believed in them and wants the best for them.

PowerPoint Party: A Fun Persuasion Game

PowerPoint Party:  A Fun Persuasion Game

In their pure sense, PowerPoint Parties started becoming popular due to COVID, and friends/ family members would get together (albeit virtually) to present a PowerPoint on a topic of interest. This eventually morphed into a fun game for high school and college-age students (is it ok for me to add “drinking game” in here?). Currently, PowerPoint Parties have become popular on TikTok, which provided the inspiration for this post. Head over to TikTok and search for “PowerPoint Parties” to find ideas… be forewarned that some of these ideas will not be “school appropriate” but still humorous.

How to Avoid the Summer Slide with Summer Reading Challenges & One-Pager Projects

How to Avoid the Summer Slide with Summer Reading Challenges & One-Pager Projects

Summer has that way of magically erasing knowledge, so one way to prevent some of that summer slide is to engage students in summer reading through a summer reading challenge and also through one-pagers to help students interact, process, and analyze what they’re reading.

Prompt Sticks Reflection Game: An Interactive Way to Reflect Back on the School Year

Prompt Sticks Reflection Game: An Interactive Way to Reflect Back on the School Year

There are lots of creative ways to facilitate reflection at the end of the school year.  Integrating novelty into any lesson makes it more interesting, and the same concept applies to reflection questions.

The Art of the One-Pager

The Art of the One-Pager

One-pagers are all the rage these days. When students process their learning in this fun visual style, the results are powerful.

National Poetry Month: A WHOLE MONTH of Poetry Activities for Secondary ELA

National Poetry Month:  A WHOLE MONTH of Poetry Activities for Secondary ELA

Love it or hate it, poetry is unavoidable in the secondary ELA classroom.  I, for one, am a HUGE lover of poetry but fully acknowledge that it can be annoyingly cryptic at times.  Reading poetry reminds us that not all texts are meant to be beat "with a hose to find out what [they] really mean" like in the Billy Collins poem "Introduction to Poetry." 

Satire Through Subtlety-- Using the Comics of Savage Chickens to Teach Satire in High School English

Satire Through Subtlety-- Using the Comics of Savage Chickens to Teach Satire in High School English

I am a HUGE fan of Doug Savage's Savage Chickens "comics."  Savage Chickens is a single-frame comic drawn on a sticky note that illustrates the life of chickens whose experiences reveal the "savage" truths of the human existence.

The Five Most Important Argumentative Essay Topics of 2018

The Five Most Important Argumentative Essay Topics of 2018

As we kickoff 2018, the media is already reporting upon key issues that will define the new year.  These issues include women's rights, sexual harassment, DACA, the tax code, healthcare, unions, prescription drug abuse, cryptocurrency, and many others. 

6 Christmas Commercials to Analyze for Literary Elements and Techniques this Holiday Season

6 Christmas Commercials to Analyze for Literary Elements and Techniques this Holiday Season

The Christmas holiday season is the most popular retail season of the year.  Companies hire ad agencies to compete against all of the sales of the season in order to attract attention to their products and services.

Three Famous Christmas Speeches to Inspire Writing

Three Famous Christmas Speeches to Inspire Writing

It's the "most wonderful time of the year" once again!  Every year, the holiday season inspires new movie ideas, and some of these movies go on to become some of the most beloved films of all time with some of the most well-known movie speeches in film history.

The Logline: A Screenwriting Tool that Helps Students with Textual Analysis in both Fiction and Nonfiction

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!  

Writing is Recursive, NOT Linear: Free Task Cards Included!

Writing is Recursive, NOT Linear:  Free Task Cards Included!

Writing goes all ways: forwards, backwards, sideways, over there, and over here.  In fact, the only piece of the writing process that occurs at a set point in time is publishing.

Commentary for Literary Analysis:  Four Square Strategy for Success

Commentary for Literary Analysis:  Four Square Strategy for Success

Do you ever see something like this when grading literary analysis essays?

“Frankenstein’s monster says, ‘If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!’”  This shows that the monster wants to cause fear.”

The Essay Shaping Sheet:  Friend or Foe?

The Essay Shaping Sheet:  Friend or Foe?

Essay shaping sheets are essentially templates for writing that guide students through the writing process.  A shaping sheet can be as small as a sentence template or as large as an entire paragraph or even essay.  But are these tools helpful, or do they ultimately hinder student development?  Well, the million-dollar answer to this question is… it depends.

The Writer's Notebook in Secondary ELA: Introduction & FREE Guide

The Writer's Notebook in Secondary ELA:  Introduction & FREE Guide

The Writer’s Notebook is the heart of the English classroom. It is the place that holds a student’s reflections on literature and life...

Setting up & Assessing Book Club in Secondary ELA: FOUR FREE GUIDES FOR SUCCESS!

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.