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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.

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 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.

Secondary ELA Book Club: A Menu of Options

Secondary ELA Book Club:  A Menu of Options

The first rule of Book Club is:  you do not talk about Book Club.  The second rule of Book Club is:  you DO NOT talk about Book Club!  Kidding.  The only rule of Book Club is: DO IT...