Learning stations are no longer just found in elementary classrooms. They are a sound instructional strategy that can be found in many secondary classrooms as well. They provide student choice and a variety of ways to demonstrate understanding. Plus, they can be a great way to build in time for conferencing,
If you’ve been teaching AP Lit for a few years you know how much fun you can have with this class. And if you are teaching AP Lit for the first time, you’re in for a treat! It can be very challenging and you definitely have to stay on your toes
Independent reading allows students time to read whatever they want to every day. You might remember it as SSR or DEAR, catchy acronyms that originated in the elementary grades, but there are tremendous benefits to allowing students time to read books that they select themselves at the high school level. Here’s
Socratic seminars have been an effective teaching strategy for years – I’m guessing since the time of Socrates! The format is simple: the students lead a discussion with questions they have generated themselves. The teacher stays out of the way. They discuss a question until no one else has anything
For most students “Romeo and Juliet” is their first exposure to Shakespeare’s language. And if you don’t set them up properly, Shakespeare can seem too difficult and before you’ve gone too far, you’ve lost them. So what’s the best place to begin? It isn’t with Act One. Act One begins
In a previous post I discussed the reasons why you should add free choice reading to your English class – even if you teach upper level AP classes like I do. There’s a good chance that over the course of their high school careers they have lost a lot of
What does a piece of writing need to do in order to be called a poem? This is the question I asked my seniors at the beginning of class this week. We had just finished up a poetry unit on lyric poetry and to finish off I wanted them
Students love to write suspenseful stories, especially around Halloween. They can be a fun diversion in a secondary Language Arts classroom which can sometimes be dominated by essays. But if done properly, they can also teach students a great deal about how stories are constructed using suspense and imagery to
In my English classes I’m always looking for assessments that aren’t essays. Here’s why: Our district is really big on alternative assessments and allowing students more choice in how they display knowledge I like finding new ways for students to display their understanding. I don’t need another stack of essay
