If you’ve never conducted a fishbowl discussion in your classroom, you and your students are missing out. Similar to a Socratic Seminar, fishbowl discussions
A lesson plan! A lesson plan! My kingdom for a lesson plan!
Explore Antigone, a cornerstone of Greek tragedy, through StoryboardThat free summary & class study. Understand the characters & themes of this timeless play.
Regular Plural Nouns Definition | Rules with Examples, In this blog, You will learn about Regular Plural Nouns Rules with Examples
In today’s society, it is important that students can use their critical thinking skills in their everyday lives. The perfect place for students to learn how and to practice critical reading, writing, arguing, and even listening is the high school English classroom. Here are 10 critical high school English lessons and skills that teachers should be teaching their students!
A language arts freshmen curriculum outline, free for you to download & edit. Meet standards & engage high school students.
How is your seating chart working in your secondary classroom? Avoid these mistakes and make your seating chart more powerful.
Every sentence has to have a subject and a predicate to make a complete sentence. I have one daughter who loves math, but doesn't love anything to do with language arts or writing.
This past school year was a great one. With every school year that passes, I like to take a moment and reflect on activities that were successful in the
However, once my students are ready to make the jump from paragraphs to an essay, I still continue to break down my writing instruction. When I teach essay
Unit 1: Introduction to School of this middle school and high school newcomers curriculum hits the ground running with 36 new words or phrases, 5 important basic sentences or greetings, and an introduction to singular and plural nouns, pronouns, and the simple present tense.
Read about 6 ways to differentiate your writing instruction meaningfully - for any genre #highschoolela #differentiation
Whether your students are lethargic or super-charged, adding movement to your lesson plans will help to solve both issues. Not only is it healthy to move throughout the day, but it can also help students focus and become more engaged with the content they are trying to master. Due to the nature of English classes, ELA ... Read More about 10 Ways to Add Movement in the ELA Classroom
My favorite teaching units are my research and rhetorical analysis unit. I love teaching rhetorical analysis and assigning students a rhetorical analysis PAPA square. Read on to learn more about the rhetorical analysis PAPA square activity and to sign up to receive your own free copy! I love providing my students with the knowledge and resources they need to critically read and analyze text, know why it is powerful, and understand how the author crafted it. I feel that truly understanding the language and the text, primarily through rhetorical analysis, is something that makes all of my students critical thinkers.
Last week I shared my lesson idea for teaching prepositions and prepositional phrases. The follow up lesson is what I call the "Prepositio...
Hi kids! ¿Cómo estáis? ¡Seguro que todos estáis deseando de que lleguen las vacaciones de verano! Ir a la playa, bañaros en la piscina, pasar tiempo con la familia y amigos y disfrutar del buen tiempo. ¡Os lo merecéis!En esta última entrada del blog os voy a presentar vocabulario y actividades relacionadas con las vacaciones de verano. También nos podéis contar qué planes tenéis para estas vacaciones. Nos gustaría también agradecer y valorar vuestro trabajo constante durante todo el curso. ¡Esta
Making useful bulletin boards for high school students can be challenging. Incorporating ideas from television on bulletin boards? Students enjoy that.
Book reports and summaries are a thing of the past. Engage your middle and high school students with five book report alternatives that will leave them asking for more and, most importantly, building vital reading and analysis skills along the way. 1. Assign one pagers at the end of a novel. One pagers are engaging, allow for creativity, and lead to higher level thinking and analysis. Assigning a one pager is easy and works for any novel. Follow these simple guidelines: • Make it standards base
This technique puts five students in the hot seat to debate a question while the rest of the class watches and takes notes.
I was asking this question 4 years ago, so I'm writing the post I wish I'd had. 🥰A little background: Our family began officially homeschooling when our oldest son was entering kindergarten. I wasn't homeschooled and only knew a few homeschooling families, so I had a lot of questions (and trepidation) about choosing a curriculum.Here's what I've learned along the way:+ An open-and-go, boxed curriculum can be very helpful for your first year. We used Sonlight (with no regrets!) and I have many friends who love My Father's World. You go to their website, select your child's grade level, and order the materials. All you need for the year - the instructor's guide, books, and supplies - arrives at your doorstep. You're ready to homeschool! This helped me feel confident that yes, I was doing enough, and had advisors ready to help me if I needed it.+ A trusted homeschool mama in your community is an invaluable resource. If there's a homeschooling mom in your church whom you admire, ask her all your questions. How did she get started? What curriculum would she choose (or stay away from) if she could do it all again?+ Start simple, as it will take a while to find your rhythm. For example, all that a kindergartener *really needs* is a reading/phonics program, a math program, and (for Christian families) a morning Bible/devotional time. If that's all you do for your child's kindergarten year, great! You can add history, handwriting, science, and other electives as you grow more confident.+ Remember that you may not land on your favorite curriculum or educational philosophy your first year. And that's ok! If you're interested in finding your homeschool style, I've linked a helpful quiz in my profile.+ After you've narrowed it down to a handful of curriculums you're interested in, I love Cathy Duffy's review site (cathyduffyreviews.com). Her reviews are straightforward and very helpful.
Using in class discussion is a perfect way to foster critical thinking in high school English classes. Whether it is the Socratic Method...
I LOVE POETRY! I love to read it, write it, and teach it, and above all, I want my students to love it too! In order for them to love it, ho...
Whether you’re a brand new teacher or you’ve been at this for a while, the first week of school is a crazy, roller-coaster ride of a week. Students' emotions are intense this week, and so are yours as their teacher. Plus, a lot more administrative stuff is asked of you. It can be a tough week, to put it mildly. What you need to make that first week run smoothly is a strong plan that allows everyone to feel safe. So, I went ahead and planned that week for you. I’ve laid it all out here. It includes ways to connect with your students (on their terms); it also allows for you to begin equipping them with what they need to be successful in your class. Over the last two decades, here are a few things I've found to be the most important things to focus on that first week: That students get a sense of who you are--that you are knowledgeable and caring That you start building relationships and rapport with your students, but on their terms That you start establishing class norms, routines, and expectations That you start getting into the material of the course in a way that sets them up to do well in your class Everything you do that first week should have one or more of those elements in mind. I've got a lot of FREE LESSONS in this post. If you want to jump straight to those, click here. Without further ado, here's your first week of school, planned. Monday: Welcome and Writing When I was a brand-new teacher I did icebreakers that first day and then I would talk for a solid 30 minutes about my syllabus. Whatever you do, don’t do that. That was not a great plan because it threatened some students (icebreakers are hard), and then it bored all of them (syllabi are boring). Here’s a much better plan that I discovered over the years with help from colleagues: Save your syllabus for the second day of school. The first day of school is filled with so much listening for your students, and it’s exhausting for them. But when I say “listening,” I don’t really mean that they hear and register what the teacher is saying. It’s more like the listening that appears to be happening when a group of students is sitting at desks silently. They aren’t talking, but they aren’t listening. Because who could actually take all that information in when they’ve heard 5 other syllabi presentations that day? What’s more, why even bother listening if all that information is printed on the syllabus? They can just read it when they have questions. If you do your syllabus the first day of school, that's fine, but only spend 10-15 minutes on it. Instead of talking at length through your syllabus, have them do this first-day-of-school activity. This activity allows you to give your students either a set of questions geared toward their history as a reader and a writer or a creative writing opportunity to see what their writing style is like (which can work great for more advanced classes or creative writing classes). You can grab this lesson and over 100 more resources when you become a member of the English Teacher Vault! My History as a Reader and Writer Assignment One of the options in this activity asks students a set of questions about their history as a reader and as a writer. These questions are broad as well as specific and work great with 9th-11th graders. Have them write for a pretty big chunk of the class period. Then, over the next several days you can read through these and get a sense of who your students are in a way that did not require them to embarrass themselves or think of something clever that rhymes with their names. Having students create name plates on that first day of school that they then bring back all week is also incredibly helpful as you start learning names. I go into a lot more details about this lesson in this blog post “Want An Outstanding Activity For The First Day of School?” One added benefit of this activity for the first day of school is that it immediately gets students writing in your classroom, and they will start to relate your class with a place where meaningful writing is going to happen. It sets the tone. I like to start with a narrative writing unit early in the school year, and this first-day activity is narrative writing. Some students could later draw from what they’ve started here and develop it into a longer narrative writing piece. Tuesday: Syllabus, Accounts, and Norms Briefly, cover your syllabus. For Tuesday, hit the high points of your syllabus if you didn't go over it Monday, but do not read the syllabus to your students. I find it best to explain the late work policy, when you are available to respond to emails, and what your “office hours” are. Besides these things, students can read what’s on your syllabus. It’s also helpful to have your syllabus designed as an infographic that draws students’ attention to key places and lets them take the information in quickly and easily. We have an editable syllabus template in the English Teacher Vault that you can make your own when you become a member! Set up accounts. If students need to set up any type of account for your classroom, this is the day to do it. Set aside 10 minutes for students to do this and then move on. Establish classroom norms. The most important thing you will do on day two is to establish your classroom norms for the year. If you are not familiar with the concept of classroom norms, this will revolutionize how you handle classroom management, especially with secondary students. High school students are transitioning between childhood and adulthood, so it’s important they have some voice in what the expectations are for them at school. They have more ownership this way and more buy-in. If this is all totally new to you, please jump over to this blog post and take 5 minutes to read all about what classroom norms are and the benefits of using them in your secondary classroom. In this blog post, my former colleague, Sam Bradford breaks down what norms are and how you can set them up early in the school year. Essentially, norms are principles decided upon by all your students--they are not rules that the teacher created and imposes on students. They are short and easy to remember, and they should also be revisited frequently. You can have your students brainstorm individually, and then work in small groups to start developing the classroom norms. As a class, you will ultimately decide on a handful of norms that will be your guiding principles every day. These norms might change later in the school year, and that is totally fine. They are dynamic! Here is a great free resource that walks you through how to set up norms in your high school ELA classroom: Norms Construction – A Process of Negotiation – School Reform Initiative Wednesday: Get Into Grammar Now that you’ve set up your classroom norms, you can jump into the content of your class. It’s important to get to meaningful learning in that first week to set the tone that this is a place where purposeful learning will happen. A focus on grammar is a way that students can be successful that first week, get needed review, and have the essentials that they will need to do well in your class going forward. By teaching a few highly-engaging grammar lessons this first week of school, you will set your students up for a clear path toward powerful writing for the rest of the school year. Teach vivid verbs on third day of school. Verbs are familiar to your students, but most students don’t realize the power of using action verbs instead of linking verbs. This lesson gets them there. I’ve put together a free parts of speech unit that I’d love to give to you, so you have nothing to prep on this day at all (and for several other days those first few weeks). Each lesson includes: Direct instruction on the concepts of action and liking verbs, strong nouns, adjectives, and adverbs Amazing mentor sentences that showcase the power of each part of speech Sentence frames for students to start practicing using parts of speech well A video writing prompt that will further instruct students in using the concepts in their own writing Quick writes to follow up the lesson and to allow students to work with each part of speech The free lessons will give students a sense that they have a path to becoming better writers, and your classroom is the place where that will happen. Thursday: Build On Grammar For Writing Success For the fourth day of school, continue teaching grammar in a way that is engaging, purposeful, and with a clear purpose: for students to become better writers. From time to time, it’s good to start class with a very short hands-on game to review grammar concepts. These games should be low-stakes, and early in the school year they should not be competitive. Remember, you’re working hard to create a safe place that first week. This hands-on grammar game allows students to look at mentor sentences and then determine if each sentence has a linking verb or an action verb. Students can do this activity in pairs, or you can do it as a full class. There are several variations of how you could use this game depending on the size of your class. This activity comes with the free parts of speech unit! After this game, jump into a lesson on using strong nouns. I know what you are probably thinking, “My high school students know all about nouns.” And I hear you, and I get that. They do know a thing or two about nouns, but let me tell you what this lesson does and does not do: It does not: Require students write down the definition of nouns Require students do tedious worksheets finding nouns It does: Challenge students to think about how to use nouns intentionally Remind students of the difference between concrete and abstract nouns Immediately give students a chance to write meaningful prose using nouns intentionally Let students have a little fun thinking about and playing around with nouns If you’re worried that around this time (two grammar lessons in two days) your students will start to moan, whine, and complain that “grammar is boring,” or that they “know all this already,” or that “there’s no point in knowing grammar,” let me say this can be your response: Grammar is a tool for better writing. It is my strong belief that knowing grammar is indeed useless if you are only memorizing a bunch of terms (i.e. an adjective modifies a noun or pronoun). It's also useless if students are only working with grammar in isolation on worksheets or drills that don't affect their writing. The purpose of grammar is for students to understand how language works, so they can apply those concepts to their own writing, creating powerful pieces of writing that let their voices be heard and even effect change. That’s it in a nutshell, but if you want to read more so that you are ready for your students (totally valid) questions regarding the point of grammar, check out this blog post,
Do you struggle with finding interesting ways to teach ESL listening skills? Maybe you have an activity or two already but you want to be able to mix it up and keep things interesting. By the end of…
Writing instruction often fits into a small corner of the day. This makes it so challenging to find time to teach grammar, spelling, punctuation, and all the other foundational skills students need to be more effective writers. While working through the writing process is an important piece of writing instruction, many
Do your high school students struggle to find books they can’t put down? Here are 31 student-approved books to read for high school that won’t disappoint!
Looking for lessons for Romeo and Juliet? We have 13 Romeo and Juliet lesson ideas, including pre- and post-reading activities.
If your non-English speaking students aren't ready to do the regular class work, what should you have them do instead? This handy tool can help.
Are you looking for relevant activities, engaging lessons plans, and project ideas for teaching Animal Farm, this post has you covered!
A printable Jar template pattern is a handy tool for various DIY projects..
Activities, free resources, and ideas to teach how to write a thesis statement in middle school and high school English Language Arts!
