How To teach a Gatsby Unit Your Students Will Remember

Just about every American Literature class in the country will read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel on the American Dream, but that doesn’t mean that your unit on Gatsby should be like all the others. It’s one thing to fulfill a requirement or simply “cover” the book and it’s quite another to teach an impactful unit on The Great Gatsby that will really make a difference in the way your students view their world. I’ve been teaching this classic

These are my do’s and don’ts of teaching Shakespeare.

6 Tips For Teaching Shakespeare

Teaching Shakespeare is truly the highlight of the school year for me. And it’s not only because I love the Bard so much that I have tattooed a favorite quote on my arm. It’s also because whether I’m teaching my beloved unit on Twelfth Night or any other play, the Shakespeare unit is a highlight for my students as well. It wasn’t always that way, and I have learned a lot over the years about how not to teach

What Your Students Should Learn From The Crucible

When you think about what you want students to learn from a powerful unit on The Crucible , think about five years from now. In other words, if you were to run into these kids in five years what would you want them to remember? Would you really care if they remember that Mary’s last name is Warren or how many people were accused of witchcraft or if the residents of Salem owned cows or sheep? If you’re going to spend

4 Units to Achieve Back-To-School Goals

As a teacher, you might have just a few goals for the beginning of the school year: set the tone for your classroom; inspire students to work harder; establish rigor and expectations; teach students to think independently. Oh, and don’t forget win over students by showing them how much fun they’ll be having this year, and, when you teach high school, getting to know over 100 new people as fast as possible. Seems simple, right? Every year, I have tried

Why Do Teachers Look For Writing Prompts? (And What They Should Be Looking For Instead)

In doing a little keyword research for my Teachers Pay Teachers products and the guest blog posts that I write in hopes that people will find and buy those products, I have found that an often searched for term is “writing prompts.” I continue to be almost shocked that people just look for writing prompts, without any tie to content or units of study or texts. I don’t think, though, that they are simply looking for someone to give them

Classroom Management: Why We Freewrite

It’s kind of funny that as a teacher I can relearn the same lessons over and over again—I’ll forget how affective a strategy is or how crucial one step is—until I am brutally reminded when a lesson falls flat or an assignment turns out terribly. One of the lessons that I learn over and over is how important the freewrite is. Last year I was grading the midterm exams from my junior honors American Literature class, and there was one message that

Poem Of The Week: Opium Dreams and Author’s Intent

You know you have a good poetry lesson when it grabs students in the first days of school. One of my favorite and most effective poetry lessons of all time is my two-day lesson on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment.” It’s a great lesson because I get to employ some of my favorite comprehension strategies, and because I get students writing and thinking about big questions early on. (You can

Classroom Management: The Perfect Bellringer

Those first few minutes of a class are always hectic. Someone needs to go to the bathroom, someone else needs to get their missing work, and someone else needs to show me their newest poem about a fight they had with their mom this weekend and how they incorporated an extended metaphor to explain their pain. I’m expected to take attendance and submit it electronically ASAP. Not to mention checking homework, reviewing due dates and upcoming projects and tests.

Troubleshooting Writing Workshop: Three Common Questions

I have recently created a comprehensive resource to help teachers who would like to start doing writing workshop with their classes–or for teachers who’d like a little more structure and guidance with the workshops that they have already conducted in class. It includes 30 pages of handouts, how-to’s, and tips including 11 common writing workshop problems and solutions. One of the greatest things about creating resources for other teachers is that I can help them to learn from my (many many) mistakes