I love books. There is something about them. The smell, the heft, the feel. . .The way kids respond. Because for all their complaints, most kids, most high schoolers, like books. Books matter. So my classroom is filled with books. So filled with books, it has become the smallest regular classroom in the building. Two […]
reading
Using Banned Books to Teach Resistance
Guest Post By Elena Heglund What might The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, Anne Frank the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, all have in common? This […]
Close Reading and Deep Thinking = “Textploration”
My focus in this piece will be on inspiring truly close reading and deeper thinking as a facet of ELA instruction. When a reader can go beyond recall; go beyond simple inference and analysis, and go spelunking deep into reflection on and evaluation of story characters and elements (while using the text to support their […]
Encouraging Children to Read and Write
Originally posted in RealEdReform My own three daughters are insatiable readers, perpetual writers, and the oldest is our first state-level and national level prize winner for her writing. Number two has submitted this year, but she’s only in 10th grade and is just beginning to develop her formidable chops. How did I encourage my children to […]
NCTE and ALAN Conference Highlights
I spent the weekend before Thanksgiving in Atlanta, Georgia at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE (ALAN) conferences. As a first-timer, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I have been to local and state-level teacher conferences before as well as national blogging […]
What Do You Do With the Highly Advanced Reader?
As a teacher of gifted students, I’ve come to expect the unexpected. Most students demonstrate asynchronous development. Others are bright but underachieving. Still, other students are not truly gifted, but are bright “teacher pleasers,” with the sort of behaviors that make teachers lives easier. What I did not expect was to find three students in […]
Celebrating Banned Books in the Classroom
Even though Banned Books Week has officially passed, you don’t have to restrict talking about censorship to just one week of the school year. In fact, I would encourage you to discuss censorship and why books might be challenged throughout the school year, not just for a week in September. I actually like to keep banned […]
How to Integrate Literacy into the Non-ELA Classroom
If there is one message that I get when I examine the Common Core standards for reading and writing, it’s this: Share the load. I think that English teachers have often shouldered the burden of literacy. We have felt that it is simply our job to teach students to write and to read and to analyze […]