I have been thinking for the last few days (sad, I know, during vacation time) about how I want to conclude the first semester with my Sophomores. We will be reading The Princess Bride during the final two weeks of the semester before finals begin, so I wanted one more writing assignment to finish off the first half of the class. Now, I have ...

During the Holocaust unit with the Butterfly Project I discussed yesterday, I also do the following: show Schindler’s List after school, have the students compose a diction analysis with The Chosen, show (in a period) the Oprah episode with Eli Wiesel revisiting Buchenwald, have the students write a reaction to Night to their parents (and ...

When handing back papers, especially among my honors students, I often run into some emotion. I tend to be a tough grader. fair but tough. My students realize this after their first writings are returned to them. For many students it’s the first time they haven’t “aced” a paper; this, of course, creates anxiety for [...]

I’m such a geek when it comes to teaching. Two weeks after the school year concludes, I’m ready to start again. Since I can’t have a classroom full of students to teach, I go back and revise and adapt my curriculum lessons during July and August. This year I have some more revisions to make, [...]

Two novels I taught this year were To Kill A Mockingbird and A Gathering of Old Men. Prior to and during reading these novels, I had the kids look at some songs, poems, and historical context. Here are a few of my favorite things concerning the race relations in the novels. Prior to reading To Kill [...]

I took a few pictures of projects for the end of The Great Gatsby unit. Each pair of students had to create an artistic rendition based on a quotation (Eckleburg’s eyes were popular) with an explanation, a sonnet connecting three characters, three essay question answers, and everything compiled into a display of some sort. Here are a few ...

A while ago I mentioned that I had my students research topics for the era in which our novels take place. We then used their findings to create visually pleasing bulletin boards. The requirements were: to include at least one image for each researched item, to type up a 6-8 sentence description or history for each selected item, to cite each ...

Is it possible to create a culture of failure? My school is currently being asked to discover why the Freshman failure rate is so high. 1/3 of the Freshmen failed a class during their first semester in high school, and statistically speaking 30% of Freshmen who fail a course in their first high school year do [...]

The other day I posted about allowing my students to choose their final projects for The Princess Bride, and it looks to be a success. Once I gave the students the option of another thesis paper or their own project, they immediately jumped into groups (I gave them the option of 1-3 in a group) [...]

I’m thinking about giving my students a choice with their final novel projects. The students may compose a second literary analysis paper, or they may create an alternative project which incorporates an analysis and a visual. They will have to decide on the option and what they will create by Monday and get my [...]