I fell in love with short constructed responses the moment I was introduced to them. Sounds weird, but when you’ve spent a hundred years scoring essays, these writings are a welcome relief because they can be quickly scored and written (a bonus for you and your students). And that’s not
If you think you don’t have time to teach grammar, then grammar warm-ups are your solution! The minute students walk into class, warm-ups set a productive tone for the period. Plus, they sharpen students’ language while hitting ELA standards. Keep reading to discover nine helpful hints to make teaching grammar
If you’re looking for a way to engage your students and get their minds warmed up for the day, these ELA warm-ups are the perfect solution! With seven quick and easy choices, you can vary your warm-ups and get your students thinking and ready to tackle their reading and writing
To write this advice-for-a-teacher blog post, I asked my amazing teacher friends for suggestions via Facebook, and they did not disappoint! Advice for teachers came from educators from AVID to social studies, from elementary to high school (although mostly middle), and from educators who have been teaching a few years
If you’re ready to help your students take their writing to the next level, then look no further than this be verbs lesson plan! By learning how to reduce these humdrum verbs, students can make their writing more dynamic and engaging! Teach the Be Verbs To reduce be verbs in
Bid farewell to boring summer reading assignments! This post offers practical activities for making reading assignments fun and engaging for all students, even middle schoolers! Allow Students Choice Whether students are choosing a topic to write about or a book to read, you’ll notice that choice fosters buy-in, ownership, and
It’s about time to hand out those summer reading lists for teens, and what better way to get them excited about this assignment than to introduce titles with book trailers? After all, kids do like their videos! Plus, if you’ve read the title, you can add your own book-talk commentary.
Your grades are in, your students are super excited, and you’re looking for some end-of-year English activities to keep them academically engaged for those last few days of school. I got you! I’ve been where you are, surfing the Internet, reviewing old lesson plans, remembering what worked and didn’t, and
Teaching grammar can seem challenging, but reading English teacher books can make it easy and fun for you and your students! A district ELA specialist (my unofficial, self-assigned mentor) blessed me with this knowledge by assigning department coordinators, including me, dozens of books to read (usually one a month, but
Imagine teaching lessons on apostrophes and scanning your classroom to see every student on task and engaged. I can’t promise this will happen when you’re covering the rules, but you will notice this when you gather students around you for a picture book reading, when students write sentences about family
What is a prepositional phrase? To answer that question, you first need to know what a preposition is, so let’s start there. Preposition Definition A preposition is the first word of a prepositional phrase. It is a word that connects a noun (a person, place, or thing) or a pronoun
You have just found the best persuasive essay graphic organizers! These organizers guide students through everything from choosing a topic to considering stakeholders to organizing the essay, and that’s not all! Persuasive Essay Graphic Organizers for Finding a Topic In Teaching Adolescent Writers, Kelly Gallagher states, “Choice generates a
What would Charles Dickens say if he could see the thousands of teachers sharing lessons for A Christmas Carol with students, celebrating his novella that was published over 175 years ago? If he can look down on us, I bet he’s beaming! When I began teaching A Christmas Carol, I
Oh what fun it is to see students engaged and learning, and with these activities on homophones, you will see both! Start with pretesting, move on to teaching and “gaming,” and end with students editing their writings. Activities on Homophones to Pre-Assess Commonly confused words such as homophones are on
If I had a million dollars, I’d still be teaching adverb clauses. Why? They’re fun (and not just for English teachers)! Plus, they add sentence variety to writing, and they’re in the TEKS and CCSS. These activities get students singing, cheering, laughing, reading, and writing, and I’m super excited to
Compound sentence activities can be engaging and interesting. In fact, I dare say that most of my students enjoy learning about commas and semicolons. It’s like I open a magical portal to the unknown, a place they heard of but don’t quite understand, and I can help them solve this
It’s time to publish student writing! Whether it’s the beginning of the school year or the end, introduce your students to the joys of publication today! Publish Student Writing on Your Walls Let’s begin with the easiest way to publish student writing–hang it on the walls. Display it on bulletin
When grading essays, especially before teaching students to edit, you’ll notice many students making the same mistakes, even with conventions. You know the ones–not capitalizing the word English, misspelling homophones, writing comma splices. A few times a year, perhaps a tad obsessive, I keep a tally of specific errors while
My very first Halloween lesson plan for “The Tell-Tale Heart” consisted of a reading-writing connection where students read the short story and participated in writing roulette, an activity where each student begins a story and group members continue it. Instead of candy, I gave them sticky glow-in-the-dark eyeballs, which looked
When revising for word choice, you can direct students to use thesauri to replace overused words, or you can use some activities for synonyms to hook and teach them. I guarantee the second way works better. (I can’t say I knew this at the beginning of my teaching career, but
Developing ideas in writing does not come naturally to middle school students, but it is a skill that can be taught. I know this because of the books I’ve read and the fifty million essays I’ve graded during my teaching career. At the beginning of the school year, idea development
“When writing a hook, never begin with a question that elicits a yes-no response.” That’s what I tell my students. I’m sure some readers will disagree with me, so allow me to explain my reasoning. First, think of the ads that open with questions such as “Have you ever
If you’re teaching students how to write personal narratives by taking them through the writing process, then you are doing what’s best for your writers! You know that great writing takes work–prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. For this reason, today’s blog post will focus on using graphic organizers to plan
I’m genuinely excited to show you how to set up a writer’s notebook because it is an EXCELLENT resource for students, one that will give them a place to store their writings, one that will help them quickly find information they need. Call it what you want–a writer’s notebook, a
I want you to begin the school year with a personal narrative, specifically these strategies for finding authentic topics for a personal narrative. Why? Well, to begin with, the personal narrative is autobiographical, and students like writing (and talking) about themselves. But that’s not all. You’ll also notice that these
Students know how to use the comma with dates, numbers, and salutations when they enter middle school, but they don’t know how to use it in a sentence. (I bet you’ve noticed the same thing!) This is one reason I focus on five main comma rules–commas with items in a
After teaching English then ELA to middle and high school students of various abilities for twenty-seven years, I retired in June of 2021. Now, I’m back in the classroom, but still blogging (to provide you with activities to tackle state standards) and creating ELA resources (to empower you to teach every one of your secondary-level students).
