Whether we are distance learning or learning in a traditional classroom, we are battling with engaging distractions more than ever before. Nearly all students carry with them a handheld computer that is often far more engaging than our lecture on thesis writing. So, how do we compete? How do we create interest and engagement while still pushing student minds to do the very hard work of learning? This is one of the biggest questions and challenges teachers face today.
Read moreEngaging Poetry Activities for Every Learning Style
The other day, I was so excited. I had an awesome activity planned. Students were going to be moving around and wholly engaged. This was going to be the best lesson ever. Except it wasn't. Why is it that teenagers can suck the fun out of everything? Here I was putting all of this creativity and work into this activity, and several of them would have been perfectly content just taking notes instead.
The more I reflect on the activity I created, the more apparent my faux pas. I, as many of us do, tend to think that all students feel like me. That we all have the same likes and dislikes, the same learning styles, but that just simply isn't true. Learning styles vary from student to student, and as much as I enjoy getting up, running around, and interacting with others, some of my students not only dread those activities, but they don't even learn in that environment.
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 moreTeaching Tone and Mood with Blackout Poetry
A few years ago, I had a truly game-changing ‘aha’ moment I had several struggling students in my class. The ones that never seemed interested in my content. They often missed assignments and needed re-direction, after school sessions, the concerned phone calls home… you’ve been there. I tried everything I could to engage their interest. I opened up book choice, forgoing a whole class novel. I let them write an argument on any topic of their choice, played interactive grammar games, but my bag of tricks didn’t work with this particular group of students. Then, one day I introduced blackout poetry.
I walked by this group of friends, sitting together as they worked on their poems, pausing quickly to check on their status just like any other day. I stopped dead in my tracks. I was floored. My mouth agape. Their work could have been displayed in an art museum instead of the cement walls of my classroom it was destined for.
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Avoid 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 more3 Unique, Creative, and Collaborative Mini-Lessons for Teaching Characterization
Over the past several years, I have been looking for methods, lessons, activities, games, etc… that will truly engage my students in their learning. I have been working to become the ‘guide on the side’ rather than the ‘sage on the stage’ as they say. Through this blog, I share that journey and the ideas and lessons gained with you. From voice and choice to meaningful learning games, my hope is to share out the methods that are truly working to engage students in an ever distracting world of instant gratification and low motivation.
Read moreTheme Tracking - an Engaging and Scaffolded Method to Help Students Analyze Theme!
If you are anything like me, the first question I generally ask students after we finish reading a text is, ‘what was the theme?’ I find that students need some support at the middle/high school level with crafting a great theme statement as they tend to want to identify the theme topic, instead of the message that goes with that topic. They might suggest that the theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is social injustice, but what I am looking for is that full sentence message about social injustice.
Where my students really struggled, however, was in the analysis of that theme statement. The found it very difficult to trace the development of the theme over the course of a text. Discussing how the author developed that theme stumped many of my students. They searched endlessly and haphazardly to find meaningful evidence from the text. It was through their challenges that my approach to teaching theme changed. Instead of finishing the text and then asking this question, I began asking this question before we even started reading.
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Paired Passages: The What, Why and How to Get You Started!
The What
I love using paired passages in my classroom. Whenever I ask students to read a longer text, a book or a memoir, for example, I bring in multiple paired passages to meet multiple power standards within that unit. I might bring in poetry to my To Kill a Mockingbird unit, or nonfiction to pair with my short story unit. I can add in a one or two-day lesson to have students compare similar themes shared with a variety of mediums.
Read moreBook Chats: A Silent Discussion Technique You Will Love!
When I teach a whole class novel, one of my favorite ways to get students to chat about that book is through a book chat notebook. Through this notebook, students will conduct silent discussions with students from my other class periods.
Read moreWe Read the Book- So What? Meaningful Activities That Help Students Answer this Question
Regardless of our years of experience in the classroom, we have all likely experienced the student who finishes that book you assigned and proceeds to slam it down on the desk in a flourish of drama, shouting loudly to the rest of the class that they have finally finished. This is generally associated with as much distraction inducing noise as humanly possible, with an eye roll so severe that you fear their eyeballs may pop right from their heads.
Read moreClose Reading Strategies: When Writing Directly ON the Text Isn't Possible
When I start teaching close reading strategies, I ask students to "talk to the text." Which means, I ask them to write their metacognitive thoughts all over the text. (Learn more about "talking to the text" HERE). I had students practice with poems and short stories, allowing them to put pencil to paper to share their thinking. But what do we do when students cannot write on the text?
Read more"Talking to the Text" - A Close Reading Strategy That Works!
What is talking to the text? Simply stated, it is asking students to have a conversation with the text. They will be giving their thoughts right back to the words on the page, leaving their thoughts, ideas, questions, comments, and light bulb moments all over the passage. This is very similar to text annotations and is an integral part of teaching those close reading strategies.
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