Assessments, Best Practices, Reflections on Pedagogy, Teacher Tips, Technology Tips
Meredith Dobbs
Beyond the Test: 10 Innovative Ways to Assess ...

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.

Beyond the Test: 10 Innovative Ways to Assess Secondary Students
Best Practices, Close Reading, Essay Writing, Lists, Writer's Notebook
Meredith Dobbs
20 Great Quotes to use as Mentor Sentences in ...

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...

20 Great Quotes to use as Mentor Sentences in Secondary ELA
Best Practices, Essay Writing, Literature Articles, Reflections on Pedagogy, Writer's Notebook, Freebies
Meredith Dobbs
The Writer's Notebook in Secondary ELA: ...

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...

The Writer's Notebook in Secondary ELA: Introduction & FREE Guide
Bundles & Units, Close Reading, Lesson Planning, Literature Articles, Poetry, Writer's Notebook
Meredith Dobbs
The Romantics vs. the Imagists: A Comparison ...

Contrasting literary movements as a pedagogical approach to teaching literature is a debatable method, but I have found that juxtaposing literary movements...

The Romantics vs. the Imagists: A Comparison of Two Different Styles
Lesson Planning, Writer's Notebook, Holidays, Close Reading, Poetry, Bundles & Units, Best Practices
Meredith Dobbs
The Complex Themes of Winter Poetry: Creating ...

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 Complex Themes of Winter Poetry: Creating a Winter Poetry Unit for Secondary ELA
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Jack the Ripper + "Mack the Knife": A Nonfiction Lesson on Deciphering Tone and Bias Through Diction

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Jack the Ripper + "Mack the Knife": A Nonfiction Lesson on Deciphering Tone and Bias Through Diction

Murder stories are highly engaging topics for secondary students… and for all students alike. But bringing the crime story of Jack the Ripper into secondary ELA is a sure-fire way to keep students engaged and motivated. Crime stories even motivate at-risk students through engaging content. Jack the Ripper is one of those iconic mystery stories that captures the imagination. Crime stories provide an excellent means to engage the writing process.

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Famous Love Letters: A Unique Approach to Rhetorical Analysis and Creative Writing for Valentine's Day in Secondary ELA

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Famous Love Letters: A Unique Approach to Rhetorical Analysis and Creative Writing for Valentine's Day in Secondary ELA

Valentine's Day is a polarizing holiday-- people either love it or hate it.  But no matter how you feel about the holiday, Valentine's Day provides an opportunity for students to focus on the most powerful emotion behind literature and art:  LOVE. 

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The Five Most Important Argumentative Essay Topics of 2018

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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. 

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10 Essential Writing Workshop Supplies from Amazon

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10 Essential Writing Workshop Supplies from Amazon

Running an effective writing workshop can be a challenge on its own, but there are some supplies that can keep the writing process organized and effective for you and your students.  Here, I've compiled a list of my essential writing workshop supplies to get you through the rest of the year!

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

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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.

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Three Famous Christmas Speeches to Inspire Writing

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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.

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5 Ways to Show Your Students YOU CARE This Holiday Season

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5 Ways to Show Your Students YOU CARE This Holiday Season

One of the things I feel that I don't take enough time to do is show my appreciation for all of my students and recognize their efforts throughout the year.  I find that I spend far more time focusing only on my struggling students rather than recognizing each student's individual journey, success, and growth.

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Thanksgiving & Abraham Lincoln: A Rhetorical Analysis Activity

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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.

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

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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!  

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Screenwriting: A Creative Approach to Targeting the Common Core

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Screenwriting: A Creative Approach to Targeting the Common Core

Screenplay writing is a type of writing that we don't really address in secondary English Language Arts.  The closest students get to this type of writing is through reading drama.  But why is this the case in the 21st century classroom?

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6 Spooky and Engaging Halloween Activities & Lessons for Secondary ELA

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6 Spooky and Engaging Halloween Activities & Lessons for Secondary ELA

Halloween is a season during the school year when we can really engage our students.  Secondary students love gothic, horror, and mystery, and Halloween gives us a reason to integrate these literary genres into our curriculums.  Halloween provides us an opportunity to target necessary skills with high-interest material.

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

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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.

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Commentary for Literary Analysis:  Four Square Strategy for Success

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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.”

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20 Prompts for Photo-Inspired Writing in Secondary ELA

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20 Prompts for Photo-Inspired Writing in Secondary ELA

Photographs are great for inspiring all sort of essay writing from personal narrative writing to literary analysis writing to creative writing. Photographs serve the purpose of inspiring writing in our classes and can be used for writing workshop.

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TEN Writing Assignments to Build a Writing Community in the Classroom

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TEN Writing Assignments to Build a Writing Community in the Classroom

Creative writing is the art of constructing original ideas by synthesizing literary elements and techniques to communicate an overarching theme about life.  Oftentimes in our English classes, we spend more time on the deconstruction process, analyzing works of art by taking them apart.

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Ten Ways to use Canva in the Classroom

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Ten Ways to use Canva in the Classroom

A Facebook friend of mine recently posted the following question:  “Where can I go online to create an eye-catching poster for my upcoming show?”  99% of the people who responded said Canva.

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Blendspace (TES Teach):  An Easy Way to Bundle Resources for the Classroom

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Blendspace (TES Teach):  An Easy Way to Bundle Resources for the Classroom

Blendspace.com (now known as TES Teach) is an online tool through the education curriculum company TES.com.  It is a tool that is used for collecting and bundling information for a multitude of uses.

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

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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.

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LiveBinders in the Classroom

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LiveBinders in the Classroom

LiveBinders.com is a website that enables the user to create virtual three-ring binders of digital files including, but not limited to, YouTube videos, Google docs, DropBox files, images, websites, text files, and much more!