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 ...

At last, I will be able to prepare for my classes today! The last three weeks have been nothing but department and building issues; “putting out fires” is what I tell people I’ve been doing. We have one English position to fill, which will be filled with a substitute until the five day hiring window closes. I think all of the ...

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 [...]

While I assess diction analysis papers, personal essay, and literary analysis essays this week in the evening, I have scheduled enrichment films for my students. Here they are: Reading A Gathering of Old Men Malcolm X Separate But Equal Mississippi Burning Reading Frankenstein Edward Scissorhands Frankenstein Reading The Iliad Troy 300 Any ...

Here is a list of my favorite literary works of length to teach: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare The Crucible by Arthur Miller A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens What are your favorite pieces of literature to teach? [...]

I love using film clips or outside of class movies to enrich my students’ learning experiences, and the kids respond enthusiastically when I do use the cinema to enhance units. Any suggestions? I have the following novels to teach this semester: To Kill A Mockingbird, Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, A Gathering of Old Men, and Beowulf. I ...

I turned the movie evening with my students into a hot dog feed. While they watched the movie (Minority Report because of reading Julius Caesar), I barbecued hot dogs and provided chips and pop. It was great! The best part was watching the kids figure out why I showed them this Tom Cruise action flick. Suddenly [...]

What do Brutus (from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar) and John Anderton (from Minority Report) have in common? The answer is: pre-crime, preemptive action. And this is why my Sophomores will have the opportunity to watch Minority Report after school with popcorn and pop. I don’t tell the kids why they are watching the film, and [...]

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 ...