This week is my last one before returning to the classroom on Monday.  I have to be honest, thinking about the first day of school still makes me really queasy even after eleven years.  Of course, I do plan to continue this series of posts about the Common Core through the fall.  This week we begin with “Craft and Structure.” 4. Determine the ...

This week we look at the last of three standards under “Key Ideas and Details” in the “Reading” section of the Common Core: Standard 3:  Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme. For students to ...

Summer has finally arrived here in Maine.  I hope many of you, like me, have finished up the school year and can now take some time to recuperate.  Looking forward to a productive summer, I am planning a series of blog posts focusing on the Common Core State Standards Initiative.  My plan is to post regular articles with a simple goal: each blog ...

Ok, so the days are finally getting longer here in New England and the end of the school year is within sight…but I still feel like there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done and the students are growing restless by the day.  So, as usual, I’ve been digging about on the web, looking for resources to keep my students busy ...

Last week I wrote a post about using online comic creator applications to create comic strips based on scenes from Homer’s Odyssey.  Today I’ve published a lesson plan based on this idea.  This plan explores Epic / Homeric Similes, vivid word choices, and tone in the Odyssey based on Common Core Standards for Literature–Craft and Structure.  I ...

Gearing up for my Odyssey unit, I’ve been searching the Internet for a creative way to engage my students using technology while tackling a challenging read. While looking, I stumbled across Spore Comic Creator, a free online application that you can use to bring Homer’s rich language alive by creating custom comic books. With this online ...

Jack London died of kidney disease when he was only 40, but during his short life he was an unusually prolific writer.  When he died in 1916, he left behind everything from the adventure novels for which he is most known, to journalism, essays, and letters.  The Sonoma State University Library has gathered and organized much about this important ...

For teachers introducing Mark Twain to their students, the Mark Twain Interactive Scrapbook is a website with a useful variety of multimedia resources from video and audio to images of primary documents and quotes from the author.  The site is produced by PBS and has five classroom activities ready to use with your middle or high school students.  ...

When recently looking for electronic resources to add to my short story unit, I came across LearnOutLoud.com where hundreds of recorded works are available free for download.  Learn Out Loud doesn’t just have audio recordings of books and stories (though there are plenty of those); they also have podcasts and videos. Some of the resources cost ...

From Coca-Cola ads to Beat Poetry and Haiku, the “Poetry through the Ages” website offers a remarkable depth of information as well as fun, engaging ways to explore those depths.  The site is produced by a group of talented poets, researchers, curators, and web developers and it is loaded with dynamic content to introduce students to the history ...