Close reading is a key component of any successful literacy program. It’s the practice of breaking down texts and analyzing them in order to better understand the author’s meaning and purpose.
Five Ways to Infuse Humor into Your ELA Curriculum
Let’s face it, most great works of literature are heavy, and those are the ones we typically teach. Why is that? Probably because the moments of great pain and agony in life are the ones that have the most profound impact us. Ergo, we teach Hamlet or Macbeth over The Comedy of Errors. Or, we teach heart-wrenching memoirs such as A Long Walk to Water over Bossypants. I find that my students sometime ask me why all great literature is so dark and why we have to talk about death, violence, tragedy, and depression so often when there’s so much of that in the world already.
Grading Essays Online vs. Grading on Paper: Pros and Cons
I find myself dancing between grading essays online (via Google Spreadsheets and Doctopus/ Goobric) and printing out student essays to grade on paper. If you’d like more information on getting started with online grading using Google Spreadsheets, check out my YouTube tutorial for some helpful tips.
Three Necessary Lessons for the Beginning of the Year in ELA
The beginning of the school year is a time to reintroduce students to routine, classroom procedures, and the habits of homework and studying…. but I don’t need to tell you that! For us as English teachers, the beginning of the school year means reviewing and reteaching skills that our students will SWEAR they were NOT taught “last year.” We know the joke; we know that isn’t true!
Using an Exit Ticket Journal to Check Understanding
Exit tickets are not a new concept, but making them work for you can be time consuming and feel like a chore. Instead of a helpful tool to wrap up a class, they can be a hindrance of extra grading time. So, how can we make exit tickets work in an effective way that won’t take up more of our time than needed but will also give us valuable feedback to guide instruction?
The Junk Journal Novel Project for Secondary ELA
5 Ways to Use Jamboard in Secondary ELA
Jamboard through Google has become a cornerstone tool in my virtual ELA classes because one of my go-to strategies when we had students in class was to use sticky notes on the board. You can read more about the Board but NOT BORING: My Go-to Collaborative Activity for Secondary ELA strategy here.
How to Facilitate Online Discussion Boards
Literary Analysis Essay Boot Camp
Starting the School Year with the College Essay
If there is one writing assignment that has real life and real world purpose, it’s the college essay. I have never seen my students more motivated to write and more motivated to work on writing than with this particular assignment. And the reason is simple: this writing assignment truly matters to students.
AP Lit Exam Grading 2020: My Main Takeaways
As I graded 500+ essays for the 2020 exam, I created a skills list of roses and thorns (positives and negatives) to help inform our instruction in AP Lit for the upcoming school year using the new rubric. Please note that I am NOT divulging any specific information bout the exam itself in terms of the passages and prompts or any specifics about student essays.
How to Avoid the Summer Slide with Summer Reading Challenges & One-Pager Projects
Five End of the Year Activities for Google Slides
How to Make a Choice Board on Google Slides
Board but NOT BORING: My Go-to Collaborative Activity for Secondary ELA
Because this collaborative activity is so simple, it has become my go-to strategy throughout the school year to reinforce various skills and units. It’s an excellent tool to use for test-prep (see this post) and to scaffold reading, writing, and speaking skills.
The Pick Two Assessment: A Quick Strategy for Comprehension & Analysis
If you’re like me, reading checks and quizzes seem to sneak up every week, and I find that I am not always prepared with an assessment. Coming up with multiple-choice questions or quiz questions takes time, and sometimes, I just need something quick and easy to create. So, I created the “Pick Two Assessment Strategy” in order to cut down on prep time in creating reading checks and reading quizzes.
Five Test Review Strategies with Bulletin Boards
How to Build a Digital Escape Room Using Google Forms
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.
