I’m starting a new novel with my students on Monday, and I like to give out a reading schedule for each book. Instead of a typical placeholder, I like to do two things with the bookmark. First, I print out a daily schedule of readings with the date and the pages to be read for that day. This means the students enter class having read those pages, ...

Every high school student knows his ABCs, and that’s a good thing since those very ABCs are a good tool in allowing kids to learn in fun ways. A number of assignments I use require the basics of the English language, and here are a few I’ve used recently. 1) I had one of my classes choose a Greek/Roman myth to read outside of class while we read ...

Well, I’m neck-deep in paperwork, meetings, and planning, but everything is working out well. Still, I want to accomplish three goals this week: to have the students write in a different (and more fun) mode, to force the students to review a literary work, and to encourage my students to write with more sentence variety. I am giving my students ...

We and our students are immersed in media today. Look at the numbers: 80% of children under six watch at least two hours of TV or other screen media a day. The average American is inundated with 11.8 hours of information a day. 57% of an American’s information time is spent on the TV and on the internet. The average American is exposed to 560 ...

With the focus of education reform seemingly centered primarily on STEM content areas, I am often confronted with the statements, “Why do we teach the classics?” or “Why do we need humanities taught in schools?” Of course, my instant reaction–being an English teacher–is to rebuff these statements with some anger, but in a base sense it is a valid ...

Using taboo cards from the actual game like the one pictured here, I divide my class into three teams and have them group together. Once in the groups I begin the game, but not by using the actual game rules. I read the first word on the card, which in the normal game is a word that cannot be said when trying to get a player to guess the pink ...

I'm an established children's writer, based in the UK. I visit dozens of schools, libraries and literary events every year to talk about my work and to generate enthusiasm in young readers for books and all things literary. You can find more info at my website www.simoncheshire.co.uk or at the Skype An Author Network.I have a couple of new ...

For those of you teaching Antigone by Sophocles this year, this article could be a valuable one for showing the students how art is more true to life (than reality TV even!). Apparently, students at Jamaica High School in New York City adapted Antigone to parallel their school district’s unequal treatment of students within their own school and ...

I’ve been on vacation and upon returning I had a full inbox of questions about how to integrate multiple language arts elements into a single assignment. I thought I would use an example from my own curriculum to illustrate the idea of integration. One novel we teach during the Sophomore year is Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, and we also ...

I just thought I’d throw out into cyberspace what I like to do when teaching Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. First, we read Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” and talk about Bradbury’s views. I begin the next few days by sharing a number of statistics about television and media in general. Each day I provide 5-8 stats or statements by researchers about ...