Assessments

Tips for Grading Essays: Don't Grade Every Piece of Paper! Try These 8 Strategies for More Efficient and Effective Grading

Tips for Grading Essays:  Don't Grade Every Piece of Paper!  Try These 8 Strategies for More Efficient and Effective Grading

Teaching on the secondary level can be challenging with the number of students that we are required to teach each year.  Therefore, it is essential as a secondary teacher to develop strategies for more efficient grading practices and to rethink our roles as auditors rather than graders.

9 Tips for Teaching AP Literature

9 Tips for Teaching AP Literature

Teaching an AP course is incredibly difficult because it comes with the added pressure from students’ desires for college credit, parents wanting their money’s worth from the exam prices, and the administration looking over your shoulder.

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.

Thanksgiving & Abraham Lincoln: A Rhetorical Analysis Activity

Thanksgiving & Abraham Lincoln:  A Rhetorical Analysis Activity

For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to go back to the roots of our celebrated "Turkey Day" to address the fact that the original Thanksgiving had nothing to do with pilgrims or turkeys at all.

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!  

The Worst Essay of Your LIFE: A Unique Approach to Assessing Writing at the Beginning of the School Year

The Worst Essay of Your LIFE: A Unique Approach to Assessing Writing at the Beginning of the School Year

The beginning of the school year is an important time to assess the writing skill levels of new students in our English classes.  One way to do this is to assign a diagnostic essay in order to "diagnose" each student's writing level.

The Most Important Essay for High School Seniors: The Personal Philosophy Statement

The Most Important Essay for High School Seniors: The Personal Philosophy Statement

Teaching high school seniors makes for an interesting group of students because they've mostly already passed their standardized tests and know their next steps in life-- college, work, military, etc.

10 Songs for the END of the School Year to Inspire Reflection

10 Songs for the END of the School Year to Inspire Reflection

I can't believe that another school year is almost over!  Are you looking for super quick and easy reflective prompts to wrap up the end of the year?  Here is a list of TEN songs along with prompts to inspire reflective writing.

Playing Devil’s Advocate:  A Game for Practicing Argument Skills in Secondary ELA

Playing Devil’s Advocate:  A Game for Practicing Argument Skills in Secondary ELA

An essential skill for secondary English Language Arts is the practice of argumentation.  Some writers view all modes of writing as arguments; thus, rhetorical skills are key to crafting persuasive messages for targeted audiences.

Grading Essays: A Strategy that Reflects Writing as a Process

Grading Essays:  A Strategy that Reflects Writing as a Process

Writing is a process.  It is recursive.  No piece of writing is ever "final."  Something can always be better.  I often feel this way whenever I read back over my own old essays and inevitably find a sentence that could be better, a paragraph that could be stronger, or a word that could be more precise.  

Beyond the Test: 10 Innovative Ways to Assess Secondary Students

Beyond the Test:  10 Innovative Ways to Assess Secondary Students

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.

15 Computer Games to Target the Common Core in Secondary ELA

15 Computer Games to Target the Common Core in Secondary ELA

“Can you please tell my son to stop playing video games?”

I’ve heard this desperate plea from parent after parent during parent teacher conferences for the past several years.  “All he wants to do is play video games and not study,” they say in desperation.