April is poetry month, and before what T.S. Eliot calls “the cruelest month” is over, I want to share an alternative way to getting your students excited about poetry. In my experience, students can tend to put their walls up when we reach the poetry unit. I think a lot of this reluctance comes from […]

Formula poems (such as haikus, acrostics, limericks, antonym diamantes, etc.) adhere to a set of formal guidelines. Although these types of poems can seem restrictive to creativity, their limitations can actually tend to have the opposite effect! This is especially true for students who are just starting out with poetry and might be overwhelmed with […]

Have you ever found it difficult to get all of your students to buy into your poetry unit? I know I’ve felt that way before. I think some of this reluctance comes from the perception of poetry being an outdated form of creative expression. This is not true, of course. Poetry is written, read, and […]

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, and there are more ways to celebrate than by just wearing green and shamrocks! For English Language Arts teachers, St Patrick’s Day presents the perfect opportunity for building classroom community while developing students’ ELA skills at the same time. Here are 4 holiday activities you can use […]

Teenagers are constantly consuming online content through videos, whether on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or elsewhere. For most of our students, videos are a natural part of their daily routine. There are plenty of ways that we as English Language Arts teachers can use this to our benefit. Bringing videos into your classroom is a […]

Let’s be honest. Book reports can tend to be a bit, well…boring. Although a book report is the traditional way to assess student reading comprehension, they bring to mind Chris Lehmann’s quote, “If you assign a project and get back 30 of the same thing, that’s not a project, that’s a recipe.” When we assign […]

Do your students have a strong understanding of irony?  In my experience, getting students to grasp the meaning of this literary device, particularly situational irony, can be a bit of a challenge. They tend to use the word loosely, often confusing irony with what is actually just coincidental. Over the years of teaching English, I […]