10th
Latest Content
Expanding Book Choices for Secondary Readers
Ruth Ayres challenges us to be more open to the books that live in our secondary classroom libraries. She contends that committing to supporting choice in independent reading means rethinking some of the restrictions we put on adolescent readers.
Reading Quiz
Gretchen Schroeder shares the way she adjusts her reading quizzes to assess students’ analysis and deep thinking about texts.
Learning to Notice and Analyze Complexities
Gretchen Schroeder supports her high school students to think deeply about the complexities around them, beginning with themselves and pop culture, and then moving to the texts they are reading.
Picture Books to Teach Conflict
Katherine Sokolowski shares a book list that inspires her to teach five different kinds of conflict.
Quick Take: Share Your Reading Struggles
Instructional coach Staci Revere reminds us of the importance of modeling our own reading lives for students, especially the parts where we struggle as readers.
Three Meaningful Ways to Incorporate Drawing into English Class
Gretchen Schroeder shares three meaningful ways to incorporate drawing into her high school English classes, and the purpose behind each strategy.
Combining Personal Narratives and Comics
Katherine Sokolowski combines personal narratives and comics to encourage students to go deeper in their storytelling.
Teaching Students How to Email
Katherine Sokolowski outlines the nitty-gritty on how to teach students to organize, manage, and compose email.
Crafting Argumentative Essays
Gretchen Schroeder shares a summative assessment inspired by Song Exploder in which her high school students craft an argumentative essay defending a choice of a great song.
Writers’ Club
In her high school writing workshop, Julie Cox noticed that students wrote eagerly, but struggled to give and accept feedback. To increase student ownership and trust, she started Writers’ Club, and it affected transfer of learning in big ways!
Finding the Purpose in Antiracist Literature Instruction
Gretchen Schroeder shares her failures in preparing for antiracist literature instruction, and the principles she uses to empower meaningful conversations about race.
Making Connections with Sociograms
Gretchen Schroeder taps into the connections between characters by creating sociograms with her high school students.
Online Writing Notebooks
Gretchen Schroeder makes the leap to digital notebooks and finds new life in a tried-and-true practice.
What Do Readers Need?
Christy Rush-Levine offers a close look into the needs of readers by considering engagement, enrichment, and nourishment. She offers three examples of reading conferences with students.
Honoring Student Identity
Christy Rush-Levine considers how to communicate to all students that their presence and their identities are valued and appreciated.
A Student Book of Awesome
Gretchen Schroeder’s high school students build community by creating a shared text of things they love.
Using Picture Books for Rhetorical Analysis
Gretchen Schroeder finds that picture books are the perfect tool for rhetorical analysis with her high school students.
Fostering Cultural Awareness Through Book Clubs
Gretchen Schroeder’s students are almost all white and live in a rural community. She finds book clubs are a wonderful tool for expanding cultural awareness.
Flipping Literature Discussions
Gretchen Schroeder realizes her experiences from decades ago as a student are clouding her perspective on “flipped” literature discussions. Once she gets over her biases, she finds that online discussion of literature is a powerful equalizer for student voices.
Picture Books for Persona Poems
Gretchen Schroeder uses picture books to help her high school students understand and write persona poems.
Dealing with Lists in Style
Polysyndeton, asyndeton—if you are a writer and a word nerd, you will love Gretchen Schroeder’s suggestions for helping your students create lists with style in their writing.
Appointment Clocks
Gretchen Schroeder uses “appointment clocks” to ensure her students meet with a variety of peers for partner work.
Speed Reading
Adolescent learners can face daunting reading loads in high school that they need to tackle at home. Jen Schwanke has tips for how teachers and parents can work together to help teens develop strategies for dealing with a lot of complex reading quickly.
Forgetting and Remembering
In the end classroom management often comes down to students valuing the same things we do. Jen Schwanke has tips for how high school teachers can create a culture where there is better communication and more shared values.
Key Elements of Short Stories
Gretchen Schroeder finds her students’ enthusiasm for writing short stories flags quickly without some instruction and guidance.
Writer’s Notebook Tweaks
Gretchen Schroeder analyzes the use of writing notebooks in her classroom, focusing on what’s confusing or frustrating for students. She makes some small changes that yield big results.
The Power of Similes
If you want stronger poetry from students, a good starting point might be to explore how to write a powerful simile. Gretchen Schroeder explains how she helps her high school students play with and create better similes.
The Third (or More) Time Is the Charm
Gretchen Schroeder finds helping her students see the value in rereading poems is all about helping them pay close attention to imagery.
Hunting for Textual Evidence
Gretchen Schroeder finds just telling her high school class to include textual evidence when making points and arming them with sticky notes leaves many students bewildered. She regroups and comes up with activities to scaffold their understanding of what makes for valid evidence.
Teaching Tone: Deal Me In
Gretchen Schroeder’s high school students are surprised to see a deck of cards on their supply list. The cards are a tool for teaching the vocabulary of tone in creative ways.
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