Reading in Class: How to Teach Elie Wiesel’s Night When Students Won’t Read at Home
Reading in class used to be an occasional treat—something English teachers did to introduce a new novel or to fill…
Teaching Literature
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How to Teach Poetry Analysis in AP Literature: A Student-Centered Approach
For thirteen years, our primary strategy to teach poetry analysis in AP Literature was heavily discussion-based and teacher-focused. We focused…
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Game On: A Hunger Games Novel Unit Designed for Student Engagement
What if your next novel unit didn’t just keep students reading, but had them thinking, strategizing, and, best of all,…
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Short Stories for High School: Focus on Irony
Irony can be a lot of fun to teach, but it can also be really challenging for students to wrap their minds around. It’s important for all students to understand, though, because it forms the basis for large swaths of our popular culture, and unlike other literary devices, when we misunderstand (or miss altogether) an author’s use of irony, we run the risk of taking away the opposite meaning than the one the author intended.
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Teaching Setting? 12 High School Short Stories to Use
If we’re honest, we rarely prioritized setting when looking for high school short stories to use in our classrooms. This…
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Recommendations for Teaching Symbolism in Poetry or Short Stories
“Communism! The red means communism!” As we guided our AP Lit students through our Norman Rockwell interpretation activity one year,…
