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
Sometimes when I teach poetry I get caught up in getting my students to understand what a poem means and neglect how poetic devices help create that meaning. Diction, syntax, rhyme – all of these are tools poets use in their writing. But how can we get students to understand how
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
Sociograms are visual representations of the interaction of characters in a novel. They are a wonderfully flexible assessment tool and can be used in all grade levels. Best of all, they require the same sort of critical analysis that you would use in writing an essay. If you’re looking for
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
Today one of my students had a college essay that he wanted me to take a look at. I told him we could look at it during our free choice reading time. “I don’t want to do it then,” he said. “I want to read. Can we do it later?” Who
Annotation is a common reading strategy used to promote active reading. Annotation is a skill that helps students comprehend what they are reading and leaves a trail of “bread crumbs” for students to follow if they have to respond to the text in writing. Ideally, it will help students
Teachers have been using online discussions for a while, way before the “flipped classroom” was even an idea. They can be a valuable tool for extending learning and allowing kids to interact outside the classroom. But how do you get the most out of online discussions? Here are some ideas.
