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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

A while back I wanted my students to write more, but I knew I didn’t have the time to assess more. So, like Miniver Cheevy, I “thought, and thought, and thought/ and thought about it…scratched [my] head and kept on thinking…/coughed, and called it fate,/ And kept on drinking.” Ok, not really, but that’s a great poem for allusions and the ...

I just finished planning for January, and I’m going to be teaching the following this month. American Literature: First, we’ll review the Edgar Allan Poe writings (“The Raven” and “Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell Tale Heart”) as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.” I actually used an excerpt of Stephen King’s Danse ...

Previously, I posted about a diction analysis assignment I use in class. While I designed it originally for my honors students, I have modified it to use with my mainstream students as well. I thought I would present an example of this here. The first key idea that the kids have to understand is that a diction device is not the same as a ...

Last week I tried something called The Wagon Wheel. I numbered off my students 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, etc. and then had the ones form a circle shoulder to shoulder facing outward while the twos faced the inner circle. If an odd number of students are in class, you can jump into the outer circle. Then, I asked the entire class a question and the inner ...

In a previous post I discussed how I combine skills when assigning work in my classroom. One poster responded, “that though this seems like a lot of work on my part, I do think and hope that it will pay off for me to try with my students.” However, I have actually reduced my workload and gotten more success out of my students. I ...