A significant component of the new Common Core Standards is the reading non-fiction informational texts across the curriculum.  Here are ideas to get you started incorporating non-fiction to support and expand your lessons in English Language Arts.  Use these books to help establish context for both fiction and non-fiction readings you plan to assign and [...]

Brooke, a student teacher in Middle School Science class finds useful strategies she adapts for use with  students 7th grade in Life Science class.   Hi Mrs. Roseboro, …The main teacher with whom I am working with was *** teacher of the year in 2008. The other teacher has been teaching for 37 years and [...]

Mark Mattison’s novel may be just what you’re looking for to recommend to your sci-fi buffs who may want to expand their reading beyond that about vampires and wizards. See movie trailer “After a young skateboarder named Chris is accidentally transformed by a lab experiment, he is warped to a distant galaxy and embroiled in [...]

Writers use various strategies to create suspense or to provide background information to round out the characterization or to increase the complications the in the rising action. Some of these strategies include irony (dramatic, situational, or verbal), foreshadowing, and flashback.  (Handout for students.)

What are you teaching next? Now is a fine time to plan an inter-disciplinary unit in which you invite students to draw on what they’re learning in other courses to connect with, supplement, expand and or explore the literature you’re studying in English.  Teaching historical fiction provides just such an opportunity, especially if you choose a [...]

A Day No Pigs Would Die – Vocabulary with Academic Words Starred

Myth Play – Nothing New under the Sun

First of all, there has to be a detective who is set apart from everybody else (including the reader) for eccentric habits/appearance (or by contrast total blandness) exceptional intelligence, the practice of making obscure statements instead of just revealing deductions and revelations  as they occur. The detective is meant to frustrate you.

A chart to take notes for summer reading oral report