Maintain Energy Before a Break by Doing Something New and Unfamiliar
In football, there is the two minute drill. In basketball, there is the fourth-quarter, full-court press. In a marathon there is the home stretch. In the classroom, there is the time before vacation....
View ArticleThe June Choice for the Summer Book Club
The votes are in and Sir Ken Robinson’s The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything is our non-fiction choice for June. Susan Jeffers, the bestselling author of Feel the Fear and Do It...
View ArticleA New Definition of Rigor
This post first appeared on Edutopia You would think that it would be more prevalent than it is. But it appears only four times in the Common Core State Standards. Why has a word that is mentioned so...
View ArticleGo Set a Watchman: The July Read
Harper Lee’s new novel Go Set a Watchman: A Novel is the Summer Book Club choice for July. It won by a five-vote margin over Stephen King’s 11/22/63. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a...
View ArticleIs Homework Helpful: 5 Question Every Teacher Should Ask
This post first appeared on edutopia.org The Common Core has asked teachers to increase rigor by diving deeper into the material. Consequently, everything has been ramped up, classwork and homework no...
View ArticleBooks on the Nightstand
By day I’m working my way through Go Set a Watchman. At night, I turn to professional books. Here’s my summer reading checklist as a teacher. What’s on your nightstand I’d love to read about it in the...
View Article#71 Michael Dunlea — Listening to Student Voices
Michael Dunlea became a teacher for the same reason most did, he wanted to make a difference. He decided to become a teacher via the alternate route after working in restaurant/hotel management for...
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August Choices
In July, there were over 100 threads on Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, totaling well over 700 comments. That’s what we do in the TWT Summer Book Club. We read, discuss, share, and learn. It is a...
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#72 — Penny Kittle: Engaging Readers and Building Better Writers
Penny Kittle is an English teacher, literacy coach, and director of new teacher mentoring at Kennett High School in North Conway, New Hampshire. She teaches 10th, 11th, and 12th graders each fall and...
View ArticleAugust Back-to-School Book
Ready for back-to-school? I’m slowly starting to think about my classroom, my plans, and my goals for the year. I’m also ready to read an education book to get me in that mindset. If you want to read...
View Article5 Non Fiction Articles to Pair with Classic High School Novels
Are you searching for new ways to inject some life into the teaching of your novels? Have the staples of your curriculum grown stale? I use the pocket app to save great pieces of non fiction that I...
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Three Troublesome Reading Statistics… And What We Can Do About Them
1. The Home-School Relationship “The substantial relationship between parent involvement for the school and reading comprehension levels of fourth-grade classrooms is obvious, according to the U.S....
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Best Year Yet
I want you to have your best year yet. I want you to share the amazing things that happen in your classroom. I want you to let others know that teaching is full of grace, accomplishment, and pride....
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Teaching with Hope: Fairness, Justice and Empathy
“What matters isn’t how a person’s inner life finally puts together the alphabet and numbers of his outer life. What really matters is whether he uses the alphabet for the declaration of a war or...
View Article4 Ways to Communicate High Expectations for Students
This is a guest post from Lori Carr, an AP English Literature and Composition teacher at Westside High School in Houston, Texas. This is her sixteenth year in the classroom. I grew up the daughter of a...
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Episode 73 with Terry Heick of Teach Thought
Listen on iTunes Terry Heick is the creator of Teach Thought. He is a former English teacher turned education dreamer who is interested in how learning is changing in a digital and connected world....
View ArticleEpisode #73 David Bosso
David Bosso, the 2012 Connecticut Teacher of the Year, has been teaching Social Studies at Berlin High School since 1998. He was recently named the 2012-2013 Outstanding Secondary Social Studies...
View ArticleNew Approaches to Literature
About a month into my student teaching I thought I had hit my stride. It was 2004 and my freshman English classes were reading To Kill a Mockingbird. We were a third of the way through the novel and...
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Pursue Your Passion
In this week’s podcast episode I talk about something I believe will help English develop amazing experiences for their students, The Best Lesson Series: Literature. The book contains 15 extraordinary...
View Article5 Non-Fiction Articles to Pair with High School Novels (November Edition)
1. Why I Bought a House in Detroit for $500 Written by: Drew Philp Published on: BuzzFeed News “I wanted something nobody wanted, something that was impossible. The city is filled with these...
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