Do you ever feel like you’ve got a one-track mind? As an English teacher, I feel like I tend to focus on just one thing at a time. If we are teaching sentence patterns, I’m all in on sentence patterns, or if we are learning citations, I am laser-focused on citations. Some people may praise my dedication and focus, but I’m not sure my one-track mind is always a good thing because while I may understand the why and how about the lesson or rule I’m teaching on, but sometimes students need to be taught the why and how explicitly.
Read moreArgument Writing through Distance Learning - the Why and How.
his has been one of the most interesting, surprising, and downright challenging spring seasons I have ever experienced. My students are home learning online while I try to teach them from my own home. My own children are home, learning from their teachers who are also at home. Never in my life did I think I would write those two sentences (or use the word home so darn much) but here we are. We officially start distance learning on Monday, so I have been working on a distance learning unit for my students. Though we are a 1:1 school, I will need to plan for a few students who will have limited internet access during this time. We have decided to continue learning digitally, and provide packets (mailed home) as well. With all of this in mind, I am moving forward with my digital argumentative writing unit with several of my groups.
Read moreTeaching Students to Counterargue Effectively
Students are terrific and energetic arguers. Even the non-confrontational ones tend to pick a side of an argument and latch on to it with complete conviction and excitement. Units like debate and mock trial feed a teenager’s argumentative side, and students often thrive in these environments.
Not too long ago, a few students of mine were creating a sports podcast as part of a choice project. The first segment of their podcast was to highlight and discuss who each boy believed was the best quarterback of all time. One chose Tom Brady, and the other chose Peyton Manning. As they were researching (and boy did they research!), the boys became fixed on a particular fact that they found. They found a good, citable point, and I saw an opportunity to practice creating counterarguments as a class.
Read moreCreative and Engaging Lessons for Teaching Logical Fallacies
Anyone who has ever taught high school or middle school students knows that their creativity and excitement can be infectious. When I have a particularly creative group, I like to adjust some of my units to give them more opportunities to play. One way that I enjoy adding some "play" into my units is through acting. My students love creating silly stories and acting out their ideas. They enjoy playing other characters, getting creative with their ideas and scripts, and performing their well-developed ideas for their peers. When I have a group that seems particularly eager to get on their feet and do a little acting, I adapt my activities to give them more opportunities for these types of performances.
Sometimes, as teachers, we shy away from performance-based activities to reduce stress. However, despite the concerns and anxiety that some students have for performing in front of peers, I find that my students are wildly successful with acting presentations, so acting pieces and scripts prove to be excellent forms of assessment (summative or formative). The audience provides accountability that leads to more in-depth discussion and development of the scripts, more focused rehearsal, and I also find that my students are more likely to seek out feedback before presentations (yay!). These are all skills that I value, and I love that these activities inspire so much attention from them.
Read moreAvoid These Common Pitfalls with One Pagers
Recently, I found a new love… a new teaching strategy that became a game changer for me and my students. The One Pager. Have you heard of these? One pager activities allow students to show what they know about a specific topic all on one singular page. The key element that separates these one pagers from any other assignment, is the combination of their written reflections/understandings and art. Students creatively display their knowledge with text, drawings, color, and any other elements that showcase their knowledge.
I love how these display a combination of their artistic talent, symbols from the texts, and their written interpretations and understandings. They are still completing a rhetorical analysis or a literary analysis, but they also get to showcase their creativity. Engagement soars! My students have not gotten excited for their rhetorical analysis assessments. And… that excites me!
That said, with all this love for one pager activities, I will share the two pitfalls that I, myself, fell into when I started using one pagers.
Read moreRhetorical Analysis - a Fun Acronym and 5 Mini-Lessons to Get You Started!
Teachers are professional acronym and mnemonic device creators. Love them or leave them, acronyms and mnemonic devices are important, well-supported learning strategies, and I have found them to be particularly useful when teaching students about arguments and persuasion.
When I introduce the many pieces of rhetorical analysis to my students, I use the term SMELL to focus their learning. It is not a surprise that teenagers find my SMELL-y mnemonic device entertaining, and several snickers are shared as I introduce it, but it's memorable, and that is what matters. I tell my students we are going to SMELL out an author's argument (complete with a slide with a large nose on it). In my class, we use SMELL to analyze and evaluate an author's argument, the logic of their reasoning, and the relevance of their evidence. In case you were wondering what the letters mean, let me enlighten you.
Read moreOffering Voice and Choice in Assessments – A Guide for Letting Go
A few years ago, I began making a concerted effort to focus on student engagement in my classroom. Offering voice and choice in activities and assessments became an integral part of this process. As I began to offer voice and choice with learning activities, I found that student engagement increased dramatically. I was so inspired that I decided to try and allow for voice and choice in summative assessments as well.
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