As welcome as spring is, it never fails to throw me off my routines. One habit I have gotten away from lately, is finding time for a read aloud. To reenergize my zeal for sharing new books with my students, I browsed the shelves of my local bookstore and found several titles worthy of making...
There are those of us who get a thrill from going to the local library. The idea of having access to rows and rows of books; all of them free, is too good to be true. Not everyone, however, taps into this community pleasure. As part of National Library Week, April 14th-20th, teachers can help the...
When my daughter was in first grade, her teacher rallied the entire teaching team to put on a play for the kids. They dressed up and performed Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat; it was brilliant! On Dr. Seuss’s birthday, the whole student body got to watch their favorite teachers bring a...
As a high school teacher, my freshmen barely remember the events of September 11th, 2001. It's important in all content areas to make sure that our students understand how that tragedy shaped our nation's foreign policy. In a similar way, we should never forget the influence of the Challenge...
How would you celebrate Edgar Allen Poe's birthday? A tuberculosis-themed party? Entertaining stories about people being buried alive? Recurring themes of guilt and insanity?
Poe is undoubtedly a master of the short story, and he plumbs the disturbing depths of the human psyche like few oth...
Rubrics make life easier. They take most of the subjectivity out of grading, and they give more feedback than just a number or check mark could. Unfortunately, not all rubrics are created equal. Rubrics are a communication tool between teachers and learners, which means they need to be writt...
Even at a young age, I was admittedly a nerd. My idea of a good time at the age of eight was cross-referencing the characters in Greek myths in an old set of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. I was always a little surprised when people didn't enjoy mythology the way I did.
However, the...
Friday, December 14th, marks the premiere of the first part of an adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic, The Hobbit. The Hobbit trilogy (being released one year apart over three years) is being adapted by the same team that worked on the Lord of the Rings adaptations. Us...
A frustrating factor in English education is not that our students are unfamiliar with persuasion, or lack persuasive skills themselves; it is that they are not able to identify reasonable persuasion from propaganda. Young children can average 28-32 hours a week in front of the TV, which means th...
Telling, reading, and hearing stories is such an important way to pass cultural ideals from one generation to the next. For instance, the story of Paul Bunyan provides mountains of cultural detail from our nation's past. You can use this story to introduce an oral tradition unit, folk tales, or t...
Reviewing for assessments can honestly be worse than taking the actual test. Often middle and high schoolers aren’t familiar with good study strategies, and spend a few minutes reading over notes or skimming a study guide that you spent more time putting together than they spent studying. A...
Just last week, I lived one of a teacher’s recurring nightmares. I came into work to find that every single copier in the building was broken. As our building went through social turmoil equivalent to the fall of the Roman Empire, I wondered how my students were going to receive the benefit...
October is National Book Month! Sponsored by the National Book Foundation, students, families, and teachers are urged to get into the literary spirit by promoting books, storytelling, and everything reading-related! During October, encourage participation in a variety of activities revolving arou...
The Outsiders is one of those books that will change the lives of its readers. In a world of sparkly vampires and too many shades of grey, it's good to read a book that confronts the struggles of adolescence in a meaningful way that is just as relevant now as it was in the sixties. The Outsi...
My education background and career choice have a tenuous and somewhat ironic relationship. I was homeschooled K-12 before I went to a four-year liberal arts college, and I am now a teacher at a Title 1 public high school, even though I never attended a high school.
There is no need for me to def...
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