Wear your reading passion Note: This is the second of five daily posts on how to spark, reignite, and maintain your passion for ELA. Click here for yesterday’s post, Reignite Your Passion for ELA Part 1 of 5: Memorize and Recite Poetry. Other than my first year of teaching, the 2021-2022 school year was myContinue reading “How to Reignite Your Passion for ELA (Part 2 of 5)”
Tag Archives: High school
How to Reignite Your Passion for ELA (Part 1 of 5)
Memorize and recite poetry Other than my first year of teaching, the 2021-2022 school year was my most challenging. Out of eleven years of teaching both middle school and high school, students were more disengaged and more disinterested in literature, writing, and school in general, than ever before. It was tough. There’s nothing worse thanContinue reading “How to Reignite Your Passion for ELA (Part 1 of 5)”
The Great Gatsby: History Cross-Curricular Lesson
Great Gatsby Chapter 7 Activity: Teapot Dome Scandal Bring history and ELA together for a cross-curricular Gatsby reunion! If you’re like me, it’s easy to fall into the rabbit hole known as JSTOR, the digital library that contains, according to its website, more than “12 million journal articles, books, images and primary sources.” It’s evenContinue reading “The Great Gatsby: History Cross-Curricular Lesson”
The Great Gatsby: A Critical Thinking Reader’s Guide
The Jazz Age Journal The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is such a multilayered and evergreen text! I’ve read it myriad times, and — I’m sure you can relate — I discover a new idea or noticing every time I revisit it. It’s no wonder that this book is such a popular read forContinue reading “The Great Gatsby: A Critical Thinking Reader’s Guide”
What’s Up with Wolfsheim?
3 articles to explore Gatsby’s OG Even though I’ve taught The Great Gatsby only twice, I have done quite a lot of writing about Fitzgerald’s many-layered masterpiece. If you pull down to The Great Gatsby on my Blog menu at the top of this page, you’ll find upwards of fourteen posts related to what isContinue reading “What’s Up with Wolfsheim?”
3 Resources for Shakespeare in Love
3 Resources to Build Prior Knowledge and Background Last week, I published a post about the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love, one of my very favorite movies. That post recognized the fact that while the movie is indeed R-rated, it’s still one you can watch IF you know the parts to skip. In that post,Continue reading “3 Resources for Shakespeare in Love”
Shakespeare in Love: What Not to Watch
Despite its R rating, you can still teach with this film. Here’s how. If you need a good movie for your British Literature classes, but have always shied away from Shakespeare in Love due to its sexual content, shy away no longer. At the bottom of this post I’ve outlined the exact scenes to skipContinue reading “Shakespeare in Love: What Not to Watch”
Baz Luhrman’s Great Gatsby: Chapter 2 Problems
Use this post to decide for yourself what to skip and what to show your students from Ch. 2 of Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby.
True Crime Unit: Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos
Planning for next year? Check out these multi-media resources If your students are into True Crime as a reading genre, or if you’re needing a “ripped from the headlines” unit to breathe new life into your upper-level high school ELA classes, do I have an idea for you! And the best thing about this ideaContinue reading “True Crime Unit: Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos”
The Sonnet for High School (part 2)
Use these student-written mentor texts inspired by Terrance Hayes Two weeks ago, I posted about a unique sonnet writing exercise inspired by poet Terrance Hayes that I tried with my junior-senior poetry class. Click here to read that post. This new exercise took repetition to an extreme degree, and in so doing, demonstrated the literaryContinue reading “The Sonnet for High School (part 2)”