Creative Ideas. Innovative Resources. Successful Teachers.
Starting 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. Here’s everything you need to teach poetry as you begin a new year: several New Year’s poems, a teaching plan, a link to a complete lesson for the poem “Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye, and
Hello, Friends! It’s Christmas Eve, and my friend, Shelly, at Appletastic Learning has two $25 Teachers Pay Teachers gift cards to give away. She’s invited other TpT folks to share the news and hold a quick two-day Christmas sale. My store will be 20% off from 12/25-26, and other stores will be on sale as well. Be sure to enter; I hope you win!
GIVEAWAY UPDATE – WE HAVE WINNERS! The Rafflecopter has randomly selected two gift card winners! Congratulations to Renee Heinrich and Amy Roper Bourgeois! Look for an email coming soon with your TpT gift cards attached. As an added bonus, if you subscribed to this website during the giveaway, I’ll be sending a special gift your way! It will arrive in your inbox this by
I’m excited to join up with host Secondary Sara and a bunch of outstanding ELA teachers to bring you The Best of The Best of our teaching ideas and ELA resources. Thanks for stopping by! Bell ringers are a terrific way to start a class successfully, focusing your students on the day’s class content, giving you a few minutes to do some clerical work,
Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible has been a staple of nearly every high school American literature class for years. My American Lit students have read and studied the play for the past decade, but a few years ago, I decided that having them learn about Miller’s connection to the HUAC and completing the 4-Act study guide, wasn’t enough. I wanted them to experience the play
The bell rings–and students immediately start responding to the question on the board, the (ungraded) quiz on a handout, or the prompt on a PowerPoint slide. Bell Ringers have become an effective beginning-of-class routine, focusing and preparing students for the day’s lesson and activities. Some teachers use the information they garner as quick formative assessments while others are grateful to have the 5 minutes a bell ringer
Happy February and Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope that you are absolutely Feeling the Love! Here’s a bit about me: 1) Something you love about teaching: First, last, and always: teenagers. No, seriously, I love the fact that the people I hang out with every day are teenagers, and the people I work with are also love being around them. Teenagers are no longer children and are
During a month focused on love, let’s put Mother Teresa’s words to work and pledge to Commit Random Acts of Love! #randomactsoflove
Give students a chance to reflect on and repair problematic behaviors with this thought-provoking document. One of the things I enjoy most as a high school teacher is watching the looks on the faces of people when I tell them what I do for a living. Most people don’t hide their shock or disdain for teenagers and usually they ask me, incredulously, just how I
If you’d like to really get to know your students, just ask them about their history. Where are their roots? Where are their people? Where is their heart? Because while students are, obviously, where they are now, they are also, and probably more importantly, the journey that got them there. And the journey, the history, is often what they hold nearest to their soul. Students,
