Bell ringers are a staple in my high school English classroom. Even my yearbook students must complete a task at the start of the period. Without fail, each day my students have an assignment to do right after the bell rings -- every day! About my 2nd or 3rd year teaching, I implemented a system of top-of-the-period daily work, and I haven't looked back since. Along the way, I learned what didn't work and what did. Here I'm sharing everything you need to about bell ringers for class.What is a Bell Ringer?Also known as warm ups, … [Read more...]
Best Secondary Resources for Back-to-School
Planning for back-to-school just got easier with this carefully curated list of ideas, tips, suggestions, and resources for your secondary classroom - in any subject! 1) Teacher Planning and Organization: Calendars, planners, notes, Oh My! The list goes on and on for what the teacher needs to get organized and feel ready-to-go for the first days of school. For me, that's my planner and my high-level curriculum map. In the past it has been hard to find a planner perfectly suitable to the unique schedules of the secondary world, so I … [Read more...]
Setting Up a Classroom Book Club Meeting
You may have read my "Why I don't do literature circles and what I do instead" post, and now you want to try my classroom book clubs method. But you have some questions: What does it look like inside a "book club" meeting? What types of activities do you do? What questions do you ask students? What do you discuss and how? How do you keep it all organized? In this blog post, I hope to shed a little more light on the anatomy of my book club meetings. If you haven't already read my first blog post about the concept or structure in general, … [Read more...]
What I Learned about Teaching from My Summer Vacation at Disney World
My family and I traveled to Disney World several years ago, and I hadn’t been there even half a day before I started feeling inspired. For me, school is pretty much always on my brain, so it’s not surprising that it came to mind even when I was on vacation! But, truthfully, there is so much going on at Disney that I couldn’t help but learn from the best while enjoying my time at the happiest place on earth. Many of these things that I noticed at Disney reaffirmed what I’ve done in my classroom for years, but it’s nice to review, revisit, and … [Read more...]
Formula for Classroom Success Series Post #2: Modeling
Today we are continuing on in the Classroom Success Formula Series. I am excited to be sharing today one of my favorite teaching strategies - Modeling. It isn't new, but perhaps I can share a few new ideas that you might can use. How many of us would rather watch a youtube video of how to make chicken dumplings rather than reading the written directions? I know I certainly would. There are at least seven major learning styles, and while not everyone would prefer to see a video, the point is, working through a process to learn something … [Read more...]
