Write Right Away
Get' em Writing about Themselves Looking for ways to get to know your students while having them do authentic writing that builds on works you've read? Here are three ideas to consider that can serve as a beginning of the year formative assessments of reading and writing. No need to…
REFRESHING IDEAS FOR READING AND WRITING
READING AND WRITING POSTERS Periodically, I find interesting graphics that can be posted in classroom or projected during reading or writing assignments, just to remind students of what they've been taught and now are being asked to use as they read or write. USEFUL in opening weeks of school or…
ADD TO YOUR 2017-2018 TEACHING TOOLBOX
Fresh Strategies to Consider Teachers are generous colleagues and share what works for them in hopes that you'll see it try ideas that you can adapt, engage, and reach more students. Having taught middle school through graduate school students, I find that many of the strategies are interchangeable, especially those that…
Ready for New School Year?
New School Year - Are you ready? “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.” (Hale, 1870) For many educators, the beginning of…
Writing to Learn
Informal Informative Writing Admit Slip Hand out 3 x 5 cards, or slips of scratch paper as students enter the classroom. Ask students to write, anonymously, one or two sentences indicating the particular kind(s) of problem(s) they experienced while doing the recent homework assignment. Collect, then quickly read these slips,…
GRAMPOPPA – Poem with Pictures Project
Grandparents hold a special place in many families and we all have our favorite stories about them. This book, in free verse, shares some of those stories. Vibrant drawings help bring alive the relationship between family members and then, the book ends the invitation to write a poem about a…
Emotion Words for Tone and Mood
Do you find it tough trying to get yours students to be more precise and use just the right word to express their observations about the author's tone in piece of writing , director's tone in film, or the student's personal response to that work? Here's a list of terms…
POETRY Notebook – Product and Performance
Poetry Notebook Looking for a way to engage students to create a POETRY-Notebook that showcases their learning about poetry and other English Language Arts skills and completing a product/performance assignment that reflects your instruction to meet COMMON CORE STANDARDS. Here's a link to student handout to show how they can use Poetry T.I.M.E.…
Summer Reading Challenge
Summer Reading - Expand Lists Have you seen the READING BINGO challenges posted by Scholastic ? Using the cards may be just what will inspire students to broaden their independent reading choices. Could offer a modest prize...enough to entice to read, but not to cheat. Click here for book…
Managing Grades
It's Not Too Late to Modify Grading Guidelines Four approaches to grading revolutionized my planning and grading for teaching middle, high school and college students. The first occurred after I spent a summer studying and then implementing National Writing Project strategies that include process writing and rubrics, which I customized…