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...]
Benefits of Google Classroom
A second title to this blog post could have been: Benefits of Blending Google Classroom with a Traditional Classroom. To elaborate, I teach high school English in a rural school district in the south. Every student doesn't have his/her own iPad or Chromebook, but most have smart devices, and we have department sets of Chromebooks we can check out. We also have several labs throughout the school. So, when I use Google Classroom, it's as an extension of my own traditional, four-walls classroom. That means my students still have textbooks, but … [Read more...]
Internet-Free Activities for Middle and High School Classrooms, Any Subject
Recently, we experienced a school-wide Internet outage where I teach, and being without access to the World Wide Web really threw my students and me (along with everyone else in the building) for a loop. The days we were out of Internet, I had planned for students to make presentations that were stored in Google classroom, print papers to turn in, among other things that required Internet. It's not the first time the Internet has gone down in our rural school, but going without really kicked my Plan B mindset into gear. So, I've put together … [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...]
End-of-Year Reflection: Top Five Classroom Success Stories of 2018
It seems to me that 2018 has been quite the long year... but then again it does feel like I was just rounding the corner of 2018 not too long ago, and here we are already at 2019. One of the most important things we can do as teachers is reflect, and so that's why I love this annual blog post. It's been my new year tradition for the past several years (2015, 2016, 2017), and choosing only five moments is always so hard, but here goes: My top five classroom success stories of 2018! This year in review... 1) Read-o-Lution: Reading is the … [Read more...]
Tips for Grading Essays to Save Time
Aaaaah. The grading essays burden of the English teacher. It's a very real struggle for sure. A little while back I did a series on teaching writing, so I'd like to think of this post as an encore to those ideas. (Get started reading that series here at the first post.) Below I'm sharing five practical tips for managing the load.- Working Those Deadlines:First is planning time in the writing process to have check points that students submit via Google classroom - or whatever method works for you. Students submit thesis statements, … [Read more...]
What My Trip to the Magnolia Silos Taught Me About Teaching
My husband and I visited Waco to tour all things Magnolia back in June. It was an amazing trip -- I love going on trips to new places because I can let my brain relax, and I feel so inspired. Magnolia was no exception - inspiration is everywhere. So, I said I can let my brain relax, but what really happens is that it just gets filled up with all kinds of new ideas at every turn because of all the awesomeness around me. Chip and Jo have truly built an empire that personifies their greeting "Welcome Home." If you read my previous blog post … [Read more...]
A Formula for Teaching Writing with Success, Series: #1 Planning
A couple of years ago I did a series on my formula for classroom success. It entailed topics like classroom management, planning, organization, etc. You can check all those topics out here. In those years since, I have been developing a resource and a series that defines my formula for a different topic: writing instruction. I get asked all the time for help and tips for how to teach writing, and I never really knew how to answer my colleagues who asked me to pinpoint what I did. I've seen success with my students' writing in my classroom … [Read more...]
The Power of “I Don’t Know” – As a Teacher
We’ve all been in that situation where we had something come up and we didn’t know the answer. Or we’ve had the nightmare of feeling like we weren’t prepared with all the answers. It all feels awkward, uncomfortable, or embarrassing. When I first started teaching, I would have nearly died when I had to admit to students that I didn’t know the answer to something. I’d like to say that I handled those situations with grace instead of stuttering around – or worse, making something up. But, I can’t be certain. I just know I didn’t want to say, “I … [Read more...]
