Creative Ideas. Innovative Resources. Successful Teachers.
John Steinbeck loved his hometown of Salinas, a hub of California agriculture that sits at the northern tip of the Salinas Valley, 100 miles south of San Francisco and 20 miles inland from the coastal town of Pacific Grove where the Steinbeck’s had a quaint summer cottage. Exploring Steinbeck’s Salinas requires adhering to a tight time schedule if you want to see it all
A Painless Poetry Introduction Say the word “poetry” and your students cringe (and admit it – some of you do too.) Teaching a successful poetry unit begins with a solid introduction, but here’s the good news: there are many ways to start, and none of them are any better than the others. What you’ll find below are several of the most successful ways to ease
Poetry. Love. February. Valentine’s Day. Teenagers. An interesting mix, wouldn’t you say? If you teach high school students in February, all of these collide right around the middle of the month. Most students I teach know all about the holiday, but some are (recently) single, indifferent, hurting, or even jaded, so mushy love poems are not for them. The five poems that I’ve collected here
Start off a new year with poetry; there’s nothing better! Poetry is rigorous, interesting, and easily adaptable to the time you have to teach it. For its flexibility and for the multitude of lessons it allows us to teach, poetry is, hands down, my favorite type of literature. What you’ll find below are five poems that are ideal for jumpstarting the new year,
I don’t know about you, but I can just about count on my fingers and toes the number of school days that remain in the school year. While I’m ALWAYS excited about summer, I’m also excited to share that Teachers Pay Teachers is having a much anticipated Teacher Appreciation sale from May 9 – 10th. Here’s some exciting news: I’ve got a $10 TpT gift
Have you ever had to convince a room full of 15-year-olds that poetry is cool? Or that, with your help, they’ll be able to understand it? Or maybe (if the planets align just so) that they’ll like it? If so, then you know all too well the poetry sales pitch every ELA teacher has had to make to those skeptical, unforgiving disbelievers. Fortunately, videos of
Click on the image for your copy of this FREE poster! Laughter and Tears In the few chaotic minutes between classes, the hallways of most high schools are filled with teens who talk and laugh as they hustle themselves from one class to another, from lunch to the library, or from their lockers to the bus. At a glance, students appear happy, jovial, and sometimes,
This giveaway has ended but stay tuned for future giveaways and freebies! Congratulations to Susan and Tina! This post will be short and sweet so that you can click on the link below and get started ASAP on our MEGA Giveaway! I’ve teamed up with some wonderful teachers for this giveaway of one $300 Amazon gift card and one $100 TpT gift card! Just
At the secondary level, Valentine’s Day is often overlooked. There’s no exchanging of Valentines and there’s no heart-shaped red and pink classroom decor. With emotions and hormones running high through high school hallways, love can be a touchy subject. What I like to do is share a poem that is the opposite of what my students might expect–“This Year’s Valentine” by Philip Appleman. It’s a
#kindnessnation #weholdthesetruths I’m teaming up with http://www.elabuffet.com/ & http://desktoplearningadventures.blogspot.com/ and many other educators as we bring you free resources this inaugural weekend celebrating compassion, kindness, acceptance, patriotism, and more! Our students are diverse, wildly varied, and unique, and we, as their teachers, accept them exactly as they are. But do our students know unequivocally that we do? How can we make it clear to them that no
