This week my students are working on the diction analysis, which is an assignment requiring the students do the following: choose a section of text containing about 150 words, identify at least 6 literary devices, persuasive techniques, or logical fallacies, explain the effect of each device, compose a paragraph explaining the context of the ...

This week I’m going to introduce the term “impressionism” in my College in the High School class and will re-emphasize it later. I usually define the term in three different ways, show the students some art, and then use passages from The Red Badge of Courage to show the students the use of impressionism in literature. That ...

A simple method I use when teaching novels requires only an index card. I write a list of 8-12 themes on the board and have the students copy down the list with one theme per line on the index card. Then I have the students watch for examples of the listed themes and write down the page number only (not a full sentence or phrase) next to the ...

I had a great start to my week! I absolutely enjoy my classes, and my new collegaues seem to be adjusting and fitting in well. Here’s how my week went with some key lessons. College in the H.S. (American Lit.) I started the kids with a dozen literary terms. I created a chart with the following columns: literary term, definition, example ...

Two of my favorite teachers, both journalism instructors, are admittedly not the typical readers. One reads only non-fiction books, newspaper and magazine articles, and online list serves while the other contends he’s “not the typical English teacher” because he only reads online articles, list serves, and blogs. Even though they ...

One aspect of teaching, which can be quite difficult, is how to make what we teach relevant to students today. Kids seem to think they cannot possibly connect the writings of yesteryear with the hectic, technological, global lives led today; however, creating relevance need not be too difficult. I teach English and one of my favorite [...]

During my student teaching my mentor teacher asked a seemingly straight-forward and simple question: why did you give a test after reading that novel? My response, an obviously silly and meaningless one (even after some thought), was “because it ends the unit.” I thought that unit closure required a test. A test meant we are finished ...

I’m going to advocate that every teacher create (or have someone else create) a website for every class, especially those of you teaching in middle and high schools. I have one, though I won’t link to it because I like my anonymity, but I will say it has improved my communication with parents and students. [...]

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 [...]