Middle and High School English Lessons

It’s getting to be that time of year when things get a little crazy – a little sideways. Students – and teachers – are starting to tune out! Join me for a fun recap of some ways to keep students tuned in this time of year. I’m sharing tips for secondary English classrooms, and since that’s where my experience stops, I’ve enlisted the help of other secondary teachers in all subjects to link up great ideas below!

In a middle or high school English classroom, this is an excellent time of year to start that novel you’ve been wanting to teach or to try a new project. So hopefully, these few ideas will make those even more creative for you! Plus, they are all student-centered and standards-based, so the kiddos stay engaged, and your job is easy!

Make It Real – When the CCSS started to roll out and there was so much emphasis placed on nonfiction, I’ll be honest – like many other “old English teachers” – I was nervous about giving up so much class time to that over my beloved classic fiction texts. Now, I’ve changed my tune completely. I love finding nonfiction texts that stand alone and/or that pair with my fiction. And, honestly, the kids LOVE it when they know it’s real. Sometimes I have them go searching on their own for real information – like in my mini research project on banned books in my Fahrenheit unit. Or other times, I’ll pair the info for them and have them dig into the material in class like in my lesson on the LeRoy HS outbreak after we read Act 1 of The Crucible.
Make It Personal – We all know that secondary students can be ah hem… self-centered. So anytime they get to talk about themselves, there’s pretty good buy-in. My seniors just completed my Generational Interview project as part of their reading tasks for the last section of my Fahrenheit unit. They – and their grandparents – really enjoyed the projects and the kids learned so much about their families and themselves. This was an out-of-class assignment, but they did share in class. Now that’s an easy prep! Another way to make it personal and keep kids tuned in is with poetry that speaks to them. In my treating senioritis poetry pack, I’ve selected several poems that draw on students’ personal experiences and the follow up activities ask students to reflect on their past, present, and future.
Make It Interactive – I have to admit that I’d never used puppets in the classroom before with high school students, but now that I have, I can’t stop. I also have to admit that it was partly my students’ idea to conduct the first puppet show. When my seniors read The Canterbury Tales, I had made little cards with the characters on them. I wanted each student to read and research about that character to share with the class. One student was holding up her card and thought she was being funny when she said, “We should do this as a puppet show.” I said, “Actually, that’s a great idea. Yes, we should.” That night I glued Popsicle sticks on the cards and borrowed a puppet curtain my mom had made for my nieces. Voila! The next day we had a puppet show! After that, I let my emoji addiction get a little more out of control, and I made emoji puppets for accountable talk, review, point of view, and more! See my Facebook post about them!
Make It Project-Based – Projects don’t have to be a lot of work for you. Nor should they be a lot of work to prep. One year I wanted something new and fun for Earth Day, so I rummaged through my junk drawers at the house and had student create uses for the various items. The skills we covered? Propaganda, Info-Text Analysis; Speaking and Listening, Presenting. That project is for sale here! This time of year, my yearbook students also work on projects to keep them busy until the books come back. They would be excellent for a yearbook class, business, art, or technology class.
Make It a Movie Day – Let’s be real for a minute. We can’t always show a movie, but if we are talking about getting tuned in, well, we can’t ignore the obvious. If you missed my post about how to incorporate media effectively, click here to go check that out. I will say that my seniors are going to be watching The Hunger Games next week. Why in the world, right? It was their idea – and it wasn’t because they just wanted to watch it randomly. In fact, they’ve been asking me all along our 451 unit if there’s a sequel to Bradbury’s magnum opus. (Can we pause to just say how awesome it is that they want to read MORE 451?!?!?) Then one day, it dawned on a student that there was quite a bit of intertextuality between 451 and THG. I had noticed the parallels before because I love THG! He made a pretty good case for it, and since I don’t show the 451 movie because it’s so old and not even worth the time, I thought this would be a fun way to end the unit. They’ll have to write something showing those parallels, of course!

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Ideas and Lessons for Middle and High School Subjects

As 2015 comes to a close and I think about the new crop of
students I’ll get in January, I like to spend some time reflecting on what
lessons and activities worked really well over the year. Those lessons, for
sure, I want to repeat. I’m sharing 5 lessons
that I tried in my junior English class this year, and at the bottom, you can
find lessons, activities, and blog posts from other fabulous secondary teachers
who have linked up what worked for them as well! Happy New Year from Faulkner’s
Fast Five!

1) The Writing on the Wall Poetry Analysis: This is a
very low-prep strategy that works really well for poetry. It was late one Thursday afternoon, and I needed
something for Friday’s book club lesson.
I wanted to bring in Poe’s poem “Alone” with my novel unit, but I didn’t
have time to make a cute graphic organizer or really even make copies. My goal was to use the poem to point out the
poet’s word choices and then relate the character in the poem to a character in
the book. So, it hit me. I decided to
take loaded words from the poem and write each one a blue piece of paper. I
taped them up around the room, and I was set for Friday! When the students came
in, they were curious! Yes! I put them in small groups, and they had a few
seconds to brainstorm any words, ideas, images, etc. associated with that word.
I was short on time that day, and I really just wanted this activity to be a
lead-in. So, we just shared out, and they were able to begin formulating ideas
on the poem’s mood and even subject matter.
Then we started to dig into annotating the poem. It was an excellent way for me to draw their
attention to WORDS in a text, and how those words play a large role.

Faulkner's Fast Five New Year 2015 Reflection Linky

2) Tear and Share Test Prep: I’ve actually used this
strategy several times this year, and I love it! The kids love it! I had a sub
once, and she loved it! And, I was even evaluated once while doing it, and my
principal loved it! So— what is it? Again,
a super-low prep strategy that makes test prep game-like and truly promotes collaboration
among students. Step 1: Use any test
prep booklet or material. This year I used FREE materials from
achievethecore.org. We aren’t a CC state
anymore, but these materials are still spot on for our tests. Step 2: Students create “hot dog” paper and
label both sides the same way. They will be writing their answers twice. Step
3: Students work through their test prep alone. After they write their answers
twice, they tear the paper in half and turn in the left side. That is the side
I grade. Step 4: Students take their
other half to a group and work through the problems again to create a group
answer sheet. Step 5: Trade the group answer sheet to peer score, and take this
time to go over each problem and its solution. The group with the most correct
wins candy, points, etc. You will be
amazed by the depth of the conversations about the material your students will
be having!

3) Sentence Variety Writing Workshop – Back in September
Commissioner of Education, Candace McQueen, came to visit my classroom. My
students were in the process of revising their first argumentative essay. I had
identified syntactic variety as a point we needed to work on. I wanted Dr. McQueen to see a snapshot of the
student-centered learning and engagement that takes place in my classroom. For this lesson, I just used a couple of
tools: #1: Video clip from Whose Line where the actors play the 90 second alphabet
game. Each line of the scene they act
out must start with a different letter. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHImgoOq024. #2: Prints from the story The Mysteries of Harris Burdock. One for
each group. After watching the video
clip to bring in a real-world connection and to set up the activity, students
were tasked with writing a story that solved the mystery of their picture, but
each sentence had to start with a different letter of the alphabet in
consecutive order. Dr. McQueen and all
the VIPs in my class that loved it, and so did my students. I followed this
activity with a short workshop on sentence variety complete with examples and a
practice worksheet. From that point on,
I was truly impressed with my students’ concerted effort to use syntactic variety
in their essays.

4) Four Square Poetry Analysis: “True Blue American” is
a poem that I’ve taught many times, and you can actually read an entire blog
post about it here and get the complete teaching
pack for it here. This time around,
though, I only had one day to do a close reading of the poem and then focus in
on the irony. So, we have another
super-low-prep strategy I called Four Squares.
Students folded their papers into four squares and labeled them Author’s
Purpose, Tone, Organization/Structure, and Figurative Language/Word
Choice. For this poetry analysis after a
quick close read alone, I put students in groups. I’ve done this where each group is
responsible for only one square or they do them all. It’s a good idea to have
them do just one square as a group the first time you ever do it, then move to
having them do them all on different texts later on for scaffolding purposes. Then, we always share out with the large group
and have discussion. I had time to go
around and prompt some groups to dig more deeply and encourage others to keep
going on the right track. I was so impressed with how this simple FREE strategy
allowed my students to dig deeply into a text.

Poetry Close Reading Lesson: "True-Blue American" w/ Video

5) Guest Speaker – On Fridays my junior honors
class turns our attention to the novel we’ve been reading for our book club. One Friday, I asked a local psychology professional
to come speak to the class on teen suicide, which is a poignant topic central
to the book we were reading at the time.
I gave the students a sheet with some questions to complete before and
after the speaker came. What I liked
most about this was that the students were able to hear about this topic and
ask questions with a professional, and we were able to use the information he
shared throughout the remainder of the book study. Get
the sheet I used here for FREE.

Do you have a lesson or activity that worked really well for you this year? Link up below with the product, website, or blog post, and leave a comment below sharing why and how it worked so well! Be sure to share the linky on social media!

An InLinkz Link-up

Keeping Kids Tuned in at the End of the Year: A Secondary Linky

Greatest Hits of 2015: A Linky of Middle and High School Lessons

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