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,…
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 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…
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…
Teaching Text Structure I haven’t always focused on teaching text structure as a reading comprehension and writing skill, but now I will never not teach it. Teaching text structure allows me to teach writing skills and then transfer them directly to reading texts to see how published authors use the skills we are learning while…
Literary Examples It’s time to return my classroom to the literary. The literary examples of teaching are the ones I fell in love with first as a student, and then a teacher. Getting lost in a book. Stunning discussions. Laboring in love through drafts of my writing to get every word just right. Right now,…
Teaching Sentence Writing Teaching sentence writing is a powerful and under-utilized tool in the secondary classroom. While it won’t cook your dinner for you, teaching sentence writing can help in a variety of ways. Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com 1. Students can apply grammar and vocabulary knowledge to sentence writing. Grammar and vocabulary are…
High School ELA Classroom Setup We’ve all “crashed out” during high school ELA classroom setup at the start of the year. Instead, let’s do what’s worth our precious time. Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com What is classroom setup? Classroom setup essentials include the physical space as well as key materials that you’ll use…
English Project Ideas Some English project ideas are better than others. They are fun and authentic while students learn important critical thinking skills. They are also easy (and able) to be taught and graded. Project Based Writing My best experience with English project ideas is through Project Based Writing by Liz Prather. I’m proud to…
How to Do Literary Analysis When I became an English teacher, I don’t think I realized how much of my time would be spent on teaching how to “do” literary analysis. For me, it was something I just did–not necessarily because I was super talented, but because I wasn’t afraid to read something, have an…
