Are your students moaning and groaning over taking another test or writing another essay? While these are tried and true methods for assessing many skills, I have been on a mission to find more innovative, unique ways of assessing student growth and learning.
Best Practices, Close Reading, Essay Writing, Lists, Writer's Notebook
One of the best ways to teach students how to integrate literary and rhetorical devices into their writing is to imitate the style of great writers. Here are 20 Great Literary Quotes to use as Mentor Sentences in Secondary ELA...
Best Practices, Essay Writing, Literature Articles, Reflections on Pedagogy, Writer's Notebook, Freebies
Contrasting literary movements as a pedagogical approach to teaching literature is a debatable method, but I have found that juxtaposing literary movements...
Lesson Planning, Writer's Notebook, Holidays, Close Reading, Poetry, Bundles & Units, Best Practices
This winter season, I found myself missing the snow for the first time in my life because we made a big move from a cold climate where we have lived for the past six years to a warm climate where there is no snow. I never fully realized...
The solution to taking back your holiday breaks all comes down to buying yourself time before and after the break to do the things that need to get done. In essence, it all comes down to planning...
Active and purposeful highlighting and annotating is an important skill that can enable greater success in being able to comprehend a text. Of course, there is an ongoing conversation as to whether or not highlighting in particular detracts from comprehension...
I always try to have a solid plan for my classes, but sometimes, a day sneaks up on me where I don’t have anything planned, and I’m scrapping to fill it with something enriching and meaningful. And, if I’m being completely honest...
I’ll be the first to admit that when I’ve seen other teachers doing interactive notebooks with their students, I thought of them as more of an “art project” than anything educational. But then...