High School English and TPT Seller Resources
Teaching strategies you can use in the classroom to up your education game
So when I walked into an incredibly diverse Title 1 school on my first day of teaching, I was completely unprepared. This job has forced me to really look inward, examine my own biases and prejudices, and learn to do better. In this post, I want to share 5 tips for other white teachers who also want to do better for our students of color.
Read MoreIf your experiences are at all like mine, you might have some students who just will not write creatively. They'll create essays compliantly, but ask them to use their imagination and they freeze. In this post, I'll teach you how to host a figurative language tasting activity--a lesson that gets kids writing every time!
Read MoreHow do you teach poetry analysis without overwhelming or boring students to death? After years of puzzling through this, I have an answer: use poetry analysis as a daily warm-up!
Read MoreYou’ve probably heard a million times that you should be using differentiated instruction in your classroom. If you’re in a stricter building, it may even be required that you document your differentiation strategies. But how, exactly, are we supposed to differentiate writing instruction for our advanced, gifted, special education, trauma-sensitive, and ELL learners in a single class period!? It seems impossible! At least it does until you consider scaffolding writing instruction.
Read MoreNow, when I attend conferences and professional development, using mentor texts and sentences seems like a prerequisite for every quality unit. In this post, I hope to answer any and all questions you might have about mentor texts. I’ll try to include plenty of examples, links, helpful resources, activities, and lesson ideas.
Read MoreEveryone should have a classroom library, whether you teach English or another content area. Classroom libraries offer all kinds of benefits: increased student reading achievement, greater access to print material, greater levels of volume of student reading, and more. But starting a classroom library is a daunting task. How do you afford it? Organize it? Maintain it?
Read MoreHave you been told that you need to start using a claim, evidence, and reasoning (or C-E-R) framework for writing in your classroom? Maybe you need to closely adhere to the Common Core State Standards but aren’t quite sure where to begin. If you’re like me, you may have been told by administration-on-high that the whole school would be using C-E-R language in their classes to build consistency and teacher equity for students. Regardless, here you are wondering, what the heck is claim, evidence, and reasoning anyway? In this post, I aim to break it down for you.
Read MoreThe curriculum decrees an essay must be written, but your students can barely write a sentence. How can you teach when your students are years behind?
Read MoreYou have a boring novel unit, now what? Connect a movie to it! Luckily for you, I’m going to save you the blood sweat, and hangovers, and give you my process. I know. I’m awesome.
Read MoreWhen I read Dear Martin by Nic Stone, I knew it would be a fantastic whole class novel. In this post, I will help you determine if it’s right for your class, point out the perks of teaching it, and also hopefully help steer you away from some pitfalls.
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