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
If you’re a high school English teacher – especially of the AP variety – it’s easy to get smug about books. We believe that some books are better than others and that every student should believe that Hemingway is a better author than Sparks or Rowling. We may not believe
This summer I had two wonderful experiences reading books. The first was reading War and Peace, which took me the better part of the summer, but was one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I have ever had. The second was The Importance of Being Earnest, which I read in an afternoon, laughing
There is a lot of information out there about what to do on the first day of school. But what should you do on the second day of school to get students engaged in the subject matter of English classes? In previous posts I did a post on using the
There are a lot of suggestions floating around out there about what to do on the first day of school. But what should you do on the second day in Language Arts? I already did a post on using a short story to establish how you approach the task of
There are a lot of posts out there on what to do on the first day of school: set expectations, go over the syllabus, do some icebreakers, go get textbooks, cry that your summer is officially over. But what do you do on the second day when it’s time to
Is there anything more fun than teaching the balcony scene? We get to expose students to some of the best writing that’s ever been produced in the English language as well as an easily accessible scene with understandable conflict and a little romance. In fact, I find the balcony scene
I’m teaching Romeo and Juliet for the first time in eight years and it’s been a lot of fun to get back into the text with freshmen. One of the great benefits of teaching is getting to know a text really well, and I know Romeo and Juliet well enough
I have never seen a girl wearing a hijab in any educational clip art. The results of a search for “Muslim children clip art” and “Muslim children reading” were entirely religious in nature. Since I have so many Muslim students, I felt like they needed to be represented doing regular
