The classroom library is a concept that is catching on in ELA classrooms across grade levels because it gives students immediacy to books within the classroom.
12 Podcast Episodes for Secondary ELA
Engaging Secondary Students with Crime Stories
There is a reason why crime stories dominate tv and film. People love them! They are equal parts mysterious, suspenseful, horrifying, gruesome, and terrifying. These are the exact traits that draw us in as viewers, and these are the exact same reasons why crime stories are an excellent way to engage secondary students.
10 Humorous & Shareable Teacher Quotes
5 Activities to Encourage Creative Thinking in Secondary ELA
Here are five ways to encourage creative thinking in secondary ELA while also targeting essential reading and writing skills. Some of these activities are collaborative while others are for independent work. All of these activities can be integrated into the curriculum for any literary unit of study.
TEN Children's Books for Secondary ELA
FOUR Ways to Get Your Students Hooked on Reading
5 Innovative Activities & Projects for Any Novel Unit
Five ESSENTIAL Questions to Guide Textual Analysis
Tips for Grading Essays: Don't Grade Every Piece of Paper! Try These 8 Strategies for More Efficient and Effective Grading
9 Tips for Teaching AP Literature
How to get Started with Mentor Sentences
Mentor sentences are an excellent tool to use in the secondary ELA classroom to model essential skills from grammar to literary devices. They reinforce quality writing skills from published in authors in a positive way rather than the traditional sentence correction method that modeled negative traits.
8 Ways to Help Students Break Through Writer’s Block
15 Ways to Integrate Student Choice into Middle School and High School ELA
Student choice is a cornerstone of student engagement. When students can take charge of their learning and can pursue topics of interest, they will be more engaged and more inclined to do the work, and their work will become more meaningful. We’ve all heard this time and again, but the practicality of doing this in today’s secondary public school classroom can be quite a challenge because of standardized testing. Depending on where you teach and how you’re evaluated for your teaching position, testing may be the most important evaluative component, or not matter at all.
Prompt Sticks Reflection Game: An Interactive Way to Reflect Back on the School Year
Tone Tunes: Using Music to Teach Tone in Poetry
The Art of the One-Pager
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."
