Research Note Taking Graphic Organizer Teaching research is often anything but effortless, but I was honestly stunned by the results of my research note taking graphic organizer. I was dealing with a group of students more reluctant than ever to work independently with the persistence demanded of research. I taught research in a January and…
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This Debate Activity Will Have Your Students Requesting More Opportunities
Debate Activity When I perfected this debate activity, the English Learners in my classes begged me to do more debates! More speaking and listening about complex topics? Yes, please! This process took me years to perfect, and I am so happy that I didn’t quit. Classroom Debate Guidelines There are many pitfalls on the road…
Basics of Comedy: Introducing a Comedic Play in the Classroom
Basics of Comedy Honestly, most of what is taught in English class is pretty depressing. Why not liven things up with the basics of comedy? There are so many important comedies out there to explore with students. What makes comedy…comedy? There is a series of comedic structures and devices that recur throughout the form. Technically,…
You’re Missing Out On Formative Assessment for Writing Skills
Formative Assessment for Writing Skills Hate it when students don’t read your feedback on the final paper–or even the draft?! Formative assessment for writing skills can bring peace to your world. Are rubrics formative or summative? They can be either, so it’s all about use. Because a rubric breaks down multiple skills in one chart,…
Discussion Sentence Frames for Targeted Skill Work
Discussion Sentence Frames Discussion sentence frames risk making your students sound like AI. With the right discussion sentence frames, they can practice skills through language. Let’s look at how to get all you possibly can out of your sentence frames. Group Discussion Evaluation The ELA Common Core discussion standard (SL 1) contains a lot of…
Literacy Assessment: How To Evaluate All The Things
Literacy Assessment Literacy assessment can get overwhelming fast. How do you assess what you need to assess? Where’s that sweet spot between authentic work and easy to grade? Literacy Performance Assessment My favorite literacy performance assessments are portfolios and discussions. They help me see students’s depth of knowledge, but they are also real. Use portfolios…
Literacy For All Is The Hill I’ll Die On
Literacy for All How do we create an inclusive world with literacy for all? 54% of U.S. adults read at or below the sixth grade level. These adults (and you know them) can experience anxiety, confusion, and embarrassment with adult-level reading tasks. They can miss opportunities for advancement. They can become easy targets for those…
6 Tips for Argumentative Writing in the Classroom
Tips for Argumentative Writing Argumentative writing is one of the most difficult kinds of writing to teach. Students get stuck with the content, the writing, or both. Here are 6 tips for argumentative writing to keep everyone unstuck. Separate content from writing. Make sure students understand and gather most of their evidence and ideas before…
Why Goal-Setting Is Important For Students
Why Goal-Setting Is Important For Students Most teachers have a general sense of why goal-setting is important for students, but the truth goes far beyond “it’s good to have a goal.” Learn about students’s greatest passions and dreams. The goals students have shared with me are so far beyond anything I would’ve predicted for them.…
Narrative Structure: It’s Not Just a Plot Diagram
Narrative Structure How would Gustav Freytag, a 19th century playwright, feel about the proliferation of triangles modeled after his narrative structure analysis of the five-act play? I don’t know, but there are a lot of products for it on TpT. Ah, the legacy of Freytag! The theory itself, that narrative structure consists of 5 parts…
