How To Teach Writing: My Top Ten List

I’ve recently created a resource that combines all of my writing lesson plans—prompts, creative assignments, units on persuasive essays and personal essays and some just weird fun stuff that I think is pretty innovative. So I have been thinking a little about my philosophies on teaching writing. I remember early on in my career as a teacher, when I realized that I was doing fine with the literature and books, but that I was really lagging behind with the writing

poem of the week let america be america again

Poem of the Week: American Dreams, Struggle, and Unity

I don’t think that I will ever be able to hear the words “great” and “America” together again without cringing. And yet, I want to continue the discussion about how we can all achieve the American Dream. I guess that what I most want my students to understand about the place they live is this: It’s complicated. It’s not really about whether America was or ever will be great—it’s about looking at what does work and looking even more closely

6 Tips for Teaching Fake News: Digital Literacy Do’s and Don’ts

If you have students over the age of 16, they’ll be eligible to vote in the next presidential election. Will they have the information to make the best decisions for themselves and their country? If they’re making their choices based on fake news—or misinformation and disinformation—the consequences of those choices could hurt us all. You know that you need to teach your students to be more savvy consumers of digital information who are equipped with the correct tools for evaluating

Classroom Management: Why I Love a Good Jigsaw

Students moving around the room, talking to each other, sharing information, and teaching their peers—it’s sort of a teacher’s dream, and it’s what happens when I do a jigsaw activity with my students. I use a jigsaw in three of my content-heavy resources: my Fake News and Digital Literacy Unit, my Growth Mindset Unit, and my Elements of Poetry Unit. The basic idea of a jigsaw is that students learn a piece of the content and then teach that to

Common Core: 3 Tips For Teaching Challenging Non-Fiction

Common Core: 3 Tips for Teaching With Challenging Non-Fiction

Whether I’m assigning an article about the relationship between a fixed mindset and the Enron scandal or I’m requiring students to read an essay about how basketball, race, and dreams are all intertwined, I have a few common goals when I choose challenging non-fiction to incorporate in my lesson plans. I want students to learn how to deal with difficult vocabulary, how to navigate complex sentence structure sentence structure, and most importantly, I want them to learn how to question

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

Poem of the Week: Shakespeare Death and Old Age

Poem Of The Week: Death and Old Age with Shakespeare

Not sure if it is the almost-bare trees outside the window or the dying embers of the warm winter fire in the fireplace that reminded me today of one of my favorite poems to teach. William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73, usually known as “[That Time of Year Thou Mayst In Me Behold],” has been a go-to poem for me for years. (You can find a ready-to-go lesson plan on this poem by clicking here.) It’s a typical Shakespeare sonnet in many ways: an

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