Episode 7: How to Make an Old Text Relevant to Today’s Students
As English teachers, we are often quick to find the beauty or humor or nuance in the texts we read…
In the Classroom
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TV in the Classroom: 6 Episodes to Enrich Your ELA Curriculum
One of our favorite ways to grab students’ interest is through contemporary television shows and movies. Visual storytelling, whether as entertainment or on social media, is a big part of our students’ world, and using these other “texts” can be an easy yet powerful way to bring students into the world of a novel or introduce a skill in a way that is non threatening and high-interest.
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Episode 6: How to Make the Textbook Work for You
Are you teaching a course that’s left you thinking, this textbook is the best we could do? Curriculum improvement may…
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A Helpful Unit Plan Format for Secondary ELA Teachers
It can feel overwhelming to sort through the materials provided by your district or textbook publisher. This is exacerbated by looking at a pacing guide that seems to suggest other teachers are flying through every activity in a number of days that seems wildly unrealistic for your students (spoiler alert: those pacing guides are unrealistic for every classroom!).
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Episode 5: Helping Students Meet Your Expectations
You’ve been there before: “I’m setting clear expectations. Students know exactly what they need to do on this assignment/essay/test/project.” You’ve…
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Writing Good Questions: The One Trick You Need to Know
Most students (let’s be real, most humans) tend to exert the minimum level of effort needed to complete a task. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – we don’t have the time, energy, or resources to go above and beyond on every. single. task. This can become frustrating in our classrooms, however, when students turn in poor quality work on what we thought was a good assignment or earn low scores on a quiz we thought they were well-prepared for.
