secondary ELA Archives - Faulkner's Fast Five

Tips for Distance Learning Book Club Meetings

Hosting a book club meeting with my high school English students is generally the highlight of my week. There is the possibility, however, that for some reason — sickness, school cancellations, breaks, etc. — that your regular in-class book club meeting might not take place within the four walls of your classroom. (If you want to read more about what my traditional books clubs are, check out this post first.) That doesn’t mean, though, that you and your students have to miss your book activities and discussions. Here are five tips, ideas, and strategies for making your online distance learning book club meetings a success.

Reading Schedule

A reading schedule is always part of my traditional classroom book club process, but when students are tackling it on their own, they will need a more defined reading regiment. When students are learning to juggle their own schedule and they have multiple assignments to complete, “rolling deadlines” might be a detriment to your book club. So the book club meeting can go as planned, we want students on the same page, quite literally. Flexibility is important in understanding not all students can and will work/read at the same pace, but just giving a day-by-day guide for pages that need to be read is a simple fix. Normally, I assign a certain set of pages to be read each week, and that works pretty well. In this distance learning environment, a calendar for daily pacing would be more beneficial.

Extra Support

While students are working through the reading and assignments alone, they will face a different set of challenges than they would in class. For book clubs, my students are always reading a book out-of-class, but they have more access to things they need such as dictionaries, art supplies, enthusiasm from the teacher and their classmates, classroom decor, hearing the text read aloud, and quick answers to their questions.

For difficult vocabulary, consider providing a list of words and their definitions up front.
If you are going to be assigning artsy tasks, be sure to offer students the opportunity to come pick up supplies.
Build excitement by sending encouraging messages, posting fun quotes from the book, sharing funny memes, or linking in video clips from the movie or of the author speaking.
With every novel/book club I start, I do just a little bit to decorate my classroom. With distance learning book clubs, I still want to do that. If you have posters that match your text, snap a picture of them and post on the wall of your online learning platform. If you are using Google Classroom, join my Teaching English Facebook Group, and get a set of “Love Reading” Google Classroom headers free!
Whether I am in school or at home teaching a book, I always link in the audio of the text. Providing students with audio for a text is controversial, but in this case for sure, we need to offer students as much support as possible. Audio will provide, at the very least, extra support for your struggling readers.
To answer as many questions as possible while students read, you might offer short summaries of the chapters or “reading points” to guide them along. Posing a daily question can also guide reading and lead to better comprehension.

Tips for Distance Learning Book Club Meetings

Creative Activities

During my book club meetings, we always do some kind of activity that makes the text come alive and helps us do a deep dive into text: body biographies, “Twidder” summaries, paired poetry with guided annotations, making letter boards, etc. This is the time when students are reviewing what they’ve read, re-reading the text to formulate responses and cite, and just having a good time! During an online classroom situation, you don’t have to skip this; it just takes a little bit of re-thinking. What can students do at home that they would normally do in class, and how? Instead of cutting out magazine pieces for a character collage, have them make a meme. In place of acting out a readers’ theater script in class, have students create a video on their device and post it to their favorite social media app. Many paper-based tasks can also easily be uploaded or converted to digital. Check out my Creative Activities for Any Text Pack, which includes BOTH printable and digital activities (ready-made for Google). These often aren’t long activities — just enough to get the creative, critical thinking juices flowing. My friend Melissa over at Reading and Writing Haven also has some really practical tips for ways to create digital one-pagers over at her new blog post (here.)

Discussions

I always enjoy seeing what students create during the activity portion of the book club meeting, but getting to TALK with students about a book is my favorite part. During the discussion, I am usually playing a facilitator role, but I do jump in every now and then to clarify, keep things going, pose an opposite viewpoint, or hold students accountable to the text. Click over to watch a free video tutorial where I explain more about classroom discussions. So, how can we host these beautiful discussions in a remote learning environment? Video chats using your chosen platform (Zoom, Google Meet, Social Media Groups etc.) is probably the go-to method. You could also start a group Google Doc, and students can have a conversation that way. Google Classroom has a feature where students can comment and respond to a stream post, if you allow open commenting. Within these platforms, though, you might face some challenges:

To support shy students, consider having every student come prepared with one thing they are wondering and one comment.
To support struggling readers, consider what their challenges are. Perhaps, struggling readers may not really be able to formulate a question, but they could write a favorite line/passage or something about a character that they like. I often find those topics spark a ton of discussion. You can also provide questions or small tasks for students. My Response to Literature Task Cards Bundle (Printable and Digital) would make that super easy for you.
To support students with limited or no Internet and/or limited access to a device, consider having them email or text you their comments questions prior to the virtual meet up. You can be their voice. Most online platforms will allow you to record the meeting, but again, if students have limited to no Internet access, they likely wouldn’t be able to view it. In that case, take notes during the discussion, so you could post those for students to read later.
My friend Lauralee at The Language Arts Classroom discusses use “live streaming” meetings to bring her virtual students into literacy time. Check out her method and more ideas over at her new blog post (here.)

Assessment

My book club meetings always end with some sort of “formal” assessment; usually a short quiz or set of questions if we are at the end of a major section. The same will be true for my distance learning book club meetings. Google Forms will work wonders in this case, but you can also use digital worksheets, too. Members of my Teaching English Facebook group have access to a free Google Forms Quiz Template. If you are concerned about cheating or too much parental help, try long answers instead of short or multiple choice answers. These are often more involved and require more originality. Websites like Grammarly or TurnItIn have plagiarism checkers. There are also online quiz platforms that have timers, etc. to help prevent cheating. In assigning graded work while learning virtually, it’s important to have reasonable expectations.

In fact, in a virtual setting, whether you teach in an online school regularly or if you are teaching remotely due to school closures, setting reasonable expectations is key. Perhaps, the most important piece of keeping book club meetings going during distance learning is continuing to foster reading — and not just reading because we have to, but reading because we LOVE to. In everything I do to teach reading, I want students to enjoy it… to be transported on a journey to a place they’ve never been. Mason Cooley said, “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” After all, reading has always been about going the distance – while distance learning or not.

Find links to the Top 100 public domain books at Project Gutenberg, if your students don’t have a hard copy and you are looking for free, online materials. Openlibrary.org is also a free place for obtaining books online. Finally, Librivox offers full audio versions of public domain books.

Love this content? Join a group! There are already tons of ideas, freebies, and fabulous teachers in my new groups, and joining is simple. Just click over to the following links, answer a few questions, and voila! Thanks again for following along my classroom stories and small-business journey. I really do hope you to see you over in my new “backyards” where we can chat and share all things English and Yearbook.

End-of-Year Reflection: Top Five Classroom Success Stories of 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, 2018), and choosing only five memorable teaching moments is always so hard, but here goes: My top five classroom success stories of 2019!

This year in review…

Teaching Gatsby for the first time in forever and writing the unit plan for it. A little bit Disney Frozen on the brain here, but it works. In the past, I had taught The Great Gatsby mainly in parts or just as a movie-viewing experience. So this time around when I was able to teach the novel as a whole to my group of junior honors, I was very excited to unpack everything it has to offer. Most students love the idea of the 1920s and the mystery of Gatsby, so I just played off of that enthusiasm. I started the unit with problem-solving questions and station rotations that introduced the time period and the novel. Once we began reading, I loved having students track the colors, do guided close reading exercises, and analyze the characters. We closed with a “My American Dream” project, and it was really incredible to see what students aspire to become. I was very pleased with the way the unit turned out. Check out my complete unit, my movie-viewing guide, and my escape game here.

Island challenges for Lord of the Flies. I cannot even begin to tell you how much fun teaching The Lord of the Flies was after I decided to create the challenges. I had wanted to do something like this for a while with Flies, but never got up my nerve. Finally, I just dove in and did it. I am SO glad I did. Read more about all the challenges on this post. Get my entire unit plan here.

Vacation Bible School. It seems like VBS makes my greatest hits list every year, and that is fine with me. I enjoy the themes, the decorating, projects, crafts, and energy created by a week of studying the Word with kids. This year’s theme was The Incredible RACE. We traveled all around the world learning about different cultures and God’s love for us. We decorated our hallways like an airport and our classrooms like the inside of an airplane and the country we traveled to each night. What an awesome trip!

First Chapter Fridays. As soon as I saw this idea from my friend Lauralee over at The Language Arts Classroom, I knew I had to work it in somehow. Each Friday, I would start class with one chapter, or a piece of a chapter, from a book that I thought my students would be interested in. I related the books to holidays as well. See all the books I shared over on my Instagram, and I also took it up a notch by including pictures of our weekly destinations because my classroom library theme is “Books are an Adventure.” See the video of me explaining my weekly process here, my classroom library set up here, and get my classroom library materials free here.

Christmas Nativity bible escape games with the younger students. If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you know how much I love escape games for the classroom. I create them every chance I get, and my high school students love them. This year, I was working with the PreK-4th grade students on Wednesday nights at church, and we were planning to study Paul’s escape from prison. I was in charge of the activity rotation, so of course, I thought – escape game! Since it was December, it only made perfect sense to do an escape game for the Christmas Nativity story. I ended up creating two games: one for the PreK-K level and one for the 1st-4th grade level. It was completely worth it. I always enjoy it when my high school students are playing, but I can’t even tell you how much fun it was playing the break out games with my “littles.” None of them had ever played one before, but they figured it out quickly and ran with it. Grab these two games here.

I would love to hear about your greatest teaching moments and classroom success stories this year. Share below!

Love this content? Join a group! There are already tons of ideas, freebies, and fabulous teachers in my new groups, and joining is simple. Just click over to the following links, answer a few questions, and voila! Thanks again for following along my classroom stories and small-business journey, and I really do hope you to see you over in my new “backyards” where we can chat and share all things English and Yearbook.

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What Not to Miss When Teaching Fahrenheit 451

There is so much to teach and learn when reading Ray Bradbury’s magnum opus: Fahrenheit 451. I’m compiling this list of not-to-miss points when teaching Fahrenheit 451 after having taught it for years and years, but also with the disclaimer that every time I teach it, I see something new. However, these five aspects of the book surface each time through as the topics that spark the most learning and enjoyment.

1. The Language & Allusions: I suppose this wouldn’t be a proper English-teacher approved blog post, if I didn’t include the beautiful word choice, figurative language, and carefully chosen allusions throughout. One criticism or challenge students might face with this novel is Bradbury’s “overuse” of figurative language; it can often be difficult for readers to wade through. Thus, I provide students with a list of the figurative language from each section, and they identify what type of figurative language that is used. Sometimes students do that alone for a grade or in the form of my beautiful Fahrenheit 451 coloring sheets. Other times, we do it as a game in groups: I set a timer and they identify as many as they can before the timer goes off. (Use a song about fire as a timer for thematic fun!). Even though identifying the types of figurative language is not an “application” level task, it teaches students to notice the language as they read. In turn, that creates reading with a more critical eye and allows them to see patterns, themes, symbols, and more – which is a higher level skill. In this book, that is really important as Bradbury uses the figurative language to illuminate major themes and concepts such as in the way he describes the book pages as feathers early in the novel, which connects to the Phoenix allusion later on, for example. The allusions in the novel also add layers of meaning. Of all the books and mythology mentioned, Bradbury chose each one carefully, I believe. In my Complete Unit Guide for Fahrenheit 451, I provided tools for figurative language and allusions.

2. The Predictions: In the early 1950s when Fahrenheit 451 was published, it was considered a science-fiction novel, and it typically still is considered as such. Bradbury stated in interviews that his primary motivation for writing Fahrenheit 451 was concern for “how television destroys interest in reading literature.” With that fear as the guiding conflict, he traced the implications of too much television on a society… but not just television. I picture him wondering “Where could this talking box take us? and What else could possibly be invented?” What we got was the picture of a dystopian society that is frighteningly all too familiar to us less than 100 years from then. These “predictions” of technological advancements and the state of humanity ultimately serve as warnings to our culture and our students’ generation. That’s not to be missed. In fact, it’s so important to me that I close my unit by having students investigate those predictions (earbuds, robot dogs, smart homes, etc.) to determine if they are really predictions or not. That short research project is included in my Complete Literature Guide for teaching Fahrenheit 451. By completing the project students note how the “predictions” really do come true and that they weren’t really all that far-fetched to begin with. We discuss, then, how that allows us to truly connect with the text, and it really does become the mirror that Bradbury intended.

3. The Motif of Fire: I am a fan of tracking while reading novels. Just ask my students — insert eye roll from them here. But now, every time we start a new text, they ask me “What are we tracking this time?” Truthfully, even though they may not enjoy the discipline of the tracking process, they do enjoy seeing how a motif, symbol, or character can be developed throughout the course of the novel. It keeps them tied to the novel in a meaningful way and keeps them alert while reading. I also like that it teaches the practice of annotation and since it’s so specific, it’s perfect for struggling readers. Advanced readers also excel with this type of practice because they begin to see the connections quickly. With Fahrenheit 451, we track the motif of fire, flames, burn, burning, heat, sparks, and the like. It may seem “typical” or “obvious” to track fire, but Bradbury is both implicit and explicit in his use of this motif, and I want my students to pick up what he is putting down. Throughout the course of the novel, students begin to see how the use of fire changes from something destructive in nature to an entity that provides warmth and new beginnings. Through tracking, students will also be able to see how each of the sections in the book end in fire, and in that, they’ll really begin to appreciate the writer’s craft. I also have students note Bradbury’s choice of section titles as part of this exercise. A fire tracker along with prompts about fire are included in my Complete Literature Guide for teaching Fahrenheit 451, or just have students grab a sheet of paper and make a list as they read.

4. The Themes of Emptiness and Happiness: A case could certainly be made for many more themes than just emptiness and happiness, but I think these two concepts bookend the novel. As a pre-reading exercise, I have students write in response to a quick journal prompt: The word empty is mentioned forty-three times in the text of the novel. It is safe to say that Bradbury intended this emptiness to be a theme throughout the text. So, how do we get to this place? How do we get so empty? Write about a time when you felt empty. What filled your bucket back up? Students make text-to-self connections right away as well as tuning into this theme right away and what causes this internal conflict in the characters. About half way through the novel, I have students do another prompt on happiness: When Montag first met Clarisse McClellan she asked Montag is he happy. Now that you’ve seen the plot and conflict develop, is it happiness that Montag needs or something else? Explain. (This prompt and others are included in my Complete Literature Guide for teaching Fahrenheit 451.) Despite the heavy warnings fused throughout the text, I don’t think Bradbury wanted to write a tragedy; I believe he wanted to show the causes and effects of darkness in order to inspire the light. It was Faber who gave us the recipe for happiness: choose quality books and take time to actually read them.

5. Censorship: I can’t imagine a world where people don’t want books, but I don’t live under a rock, either. As an English teacher, I regularly face resistance to reading from my students, and I see them moving further and further away from choosing to read. Books introduce ideas; they enable to us to travel to new places and meet new people; they give us education; they move us; they make us think; they make us look more closely at ourselves, which is what I think this book does so well. Bradbury’s gift was being able to look at the world around him and wonder… “what if?” and “why?” Ultimately, controlling books through censorship removes a sense of wonder from the world, and if nothing else, I want students to walk away from a unit on Fahrenheit thinking critically and knowing it’s ok – and encouraged – to wonder. After all, “There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house.” I love doing my banned book project around Banned Book Week that asks students to research why certain books have been banned throughout history. This project is included in my Complete Literature Guide for teaching Fahrenheit 451.

There’s so much within the pages of this beautiful novel that it was really hard to narrow it down. One important thing to remember, though, when planning a novel unit is to ask yourself “Why?” What really do you want to accomplish with the novel, and go from there. It’s easy to want to include it all, but that is only frustrating for you and your students. While it was Bradbury that said, “Quantity produces quality,” it isn’t necessary to cover all the things with everything you read, it’s just necessary to cover everything with all the things you read. So, read all the things. 🙂

Love this content? Join a group! There are already tons of ideas, freebies, and fabulous teachers in my new groups, and joining is simple. Just click over to the following links, answer a few questions, and voila! Thanks again for following along my classroom stories and small-business journey, and I really do hope you to see you over in my new “backyards” where we can chat and share all things English and Yearbook.

Title Photo by Fred Kearney on Unsplash

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 made some. And then I made some more! Now I have a fun line of different themes tailored specifically to the various schedules in a middle or high school – in traditional and digital formats.

Choose a planner that works for you, and get comfortable with it. I like a planner that is only for planning because it helps me keep focused. Watch a quick Facebook live video where I explain how I set mine up, and I also wrote a blog post explaining how to get the most out of your planner. Read that post here.

My friend Lauralee over at Language Arts Classroom wrote about her process for classroom organization over on her beautiful blog. You can read her ideas here. And her back-to-school pack of goodies will establish consistency in your secondary classroom from the first day of school with this organizational bundle. Included are an editable presentation covering routines, procedures, and expectations; hallway passes; a parent letter; Google Classroom Backgrounds, and syllabus. The design is clean and simple and made with older students in mind. So pretty!

2) Classroom Decor: Decorating and organizing my classroom is probably one of my favorite things to do to get me in the mood for back-to-school. I don’t always do a lot with decor each year, but I always try to bring in one or two things new. I’ll pause here to address the camp of people that say, “It’s not about the room. The kids just want to meet you, the teacher.” That’s true… to some degree. However, I think the room needs to be as clean and organized as possible to create a welcoming environment, but I think the aforementioned sentiment comes from the place where teachers go regarding overspending and unhealthy comparing. To read more on that topic, swing by this blog post: How my trip to Magnolia Market helped me prepare for back-to-school. With that said, I’d love to share some cute student-centered and student-created classroom decor supplies and ideas. If an activity can double as classroom door (AKA – the kids create it and I don’t have to), then that is perfect to me. For all my secondary math friends out there, take quick trip over to Math in the Middle’s blog and read her post on setting up your middle school math classroom. She has tons of practical ideas and pictures! Scaffolded Math and Science does just that for her middle school math classroom with her back-to-school math pennants. Some pennants ask students to fill in information about themselves (name, birthday, favorite color, favorite class), some have numbers of the Fibonacci Sequence within the Spiral, and others are more open-ended for coloring or adding what you’d like to see on the pennants. Super cute!

O Some Great Stuff for English Teachers has her students create “Share Your World” globes that reveal their true identities. Perfect classroom decor and icebreaker all in one! I typically have my freshmen do a Soundtrack of their Life, but I think I’ll add this activity in as well!

The growth mindset trend continues to grow, and I think that’s because it’s actually something that makes sense and works! Chalk Dust Diva has a no-prep set of posters she made for any subject at the secondary level that you could use a million different ways! Promoting growth mindset is also an excellent way establish a positive classroom climate, and Chalk Dust Diva has a creative presentation and reading lesson that will teach your student what it means to have a “growth mindset” and how the views and beliefs they have about themselves impacts the decisions they make and the lives they lead.

Sometimes just putting a few posters around the room will help spruce things up a little, too, and I love reminding students that how we treat each other is so important. Grab my free anti-bullying awareness posters here. They are super easy to print and go!

3) Housekeeping: We all have to satisfy requirements from admin, ensure communication with parents, track data, make sub plans, keep attendance, and more. Here are a few resources to help make all that easier. Math by the Mountain keeps office hours, and she posts them for students and parents. This idea really helps students respect boundaries and take ownership. Elly Thorsen fixed up a parent and student survey in English and Spanish, which I think is awesome to already have that done! It provides information about how to contact family members, the strengths and areas of need of the student, and other helpful information to know as a teacher.

Unfortunately, a major issue we have to plan for is absenteeism. Free to Discover created a cute set of absentee slips to help students stay organized if they have been out. They are free; grab them here. I also write weekly assignments on the board each week and post the list on the Google Classroom stream. Having a method for tracking data is another item on our back-to-school list, and I like to set up a way for that to be student-centered. Take a quick look at a blog post I wrote about how I track data. It’s super simple, and best of all — it’s authentic and collected by students! Read that post here. Grab my data pack here… or get it in a money-saving bundle of other great back-to-school goodies for any subject at the secondary level here.

Sub plans are another item on my back-to-school to-do list as well. I usually grab the matching Sub Plans label (from the planners I make) and fix up a new 3-ring binder with the daily schedule, class rosters, seating charts, and school emergency plan. Then, I’ll add a few emergency lessons in another section just in case of an unexpected absence. In my high school English classroom, I typically use my Hot Topics Info Text lessons because they are no prep and have the substitute instructions sheet included.

4) Classroom Climate: From the moment students step foot in the classroom, they need to feel welcomed. Even though, we may not as secondary teachers do a hug or high five with each student who enters, we can set a positive and inviting tone. Icebreakers and team building games play a role in creating a welcoming environment for students. Teens love to talk, but they are pretty insecure when it comes to speaking up and out in class. These conversation starters from Pathway 2 Success are a flexible way to get kids chatting. The 170 task cards are the ideal mix of questions regarding self, home, friends, school, family, and beliefs. They would be awesome to help students share information, open up, and begin to form positive relationships.

Escape games are still really hot right now, and I know my kids would love to participate in one as an icebreaker on the first day of school. Presto Plans won’t let her middle school students zone out on the first days of school! Her back-to-school zombie escape game is highly engaging! It can be used in English class as it incorporates some ELA skills, but can also work for any other subject.

Lit with Lynns created one that will work with any class. Her game includes a crossword puzzle, a completely EDITABLE syllabus accompanied by a syllabus scavenger hunt, and a get to know other students activity. I love that it’s a quick 3-puzzle game, so it doesn’t take up too much time, but lets kids have a little fun! Barraug Books and Curriculum goes old school for her back-to-school team building game: Cup Towers. While students are racing against the clock to build the tallest cup tower, you are evaluating their strengths and interpersonal skills. It’s a win-win!

Since I’m not a science teacher, it didn’t even occur to me that part of setting up a classroom climate should include safety measures until I saw this science lab for teaching science lab safety from Strawberry Shake! This resource contains everything you need to get your students started safely in your lab or science classroom, and I think your middle school science kids would love it.

Andrea from Right Down the Middle has a cool idea for incentives, which an excellent tool for positive classroom management. Students are able to earn reward incentives through their kind deeds, actions, and performance in class, then they cash them in at various times during the year.

Bell ringers are probably the #1 activity teachers need in their toolbox to set the stage for class right from the beginning of the year. Part of classroom climate, to me, is structure and order. Bell ringers say to students: We are going to be serious about work and have purpose in this class. Content-specific bell ringers are meaningful for your subject matter, and they teach students to get busy and orderly right from the start of class. Spanish teachers can also set things up for each day of school with Angie Torre’s Spanish Bell Ringers. They are packed full of tasks to challenge your high school students. I love use to grammar bell ringers with my high school English classes. Ten minutes each day covers a lot of ground in grammar, and my students are working from bell to bell.

Last but not least, are the classroom rules… but going over classroom rules doesn’t have to be boring! I created these fun emoji puppets that I use every year with my high school students on the first day of school.

If setting up station rotations is more your idea of fun for addressing classroom rules and procedures, check out of a few of these ideas: With Tween Spirit’s back to school stations, students search the syllabus, take selfies, and more. Room 213 sets up stations, too, and she has students setting goals, meeting classmates, and learning rules.

5) Activities and Lessons: A teacher can never have too many back-to-school activities, in my opinion. It’s like a girl with her shoes – something to match each outfit and/or situation. If you are like me, once you do a few icebreakers and go over classroom rules, you are ready to get to work. A good place to start is with review. Real Lessons for the Teenage Mind has a bundle of review activities for English skills that would be perfect for your middle school students because they combine authenticity, movement, competition, and collaboration to make sure your students stay engaged and build a positive classroom culture in the first week. I like to use my 100 Words Every High School English Student Should Know list as a pre-test to see where students are with their Tier 3 Vocabulary. Science teachers can review key terms and even lab safety with The Lab’s Back to School Science Color by Number Activity Bundle.

If you teach middle or high school Spanish, you are going to love The Stress Free Spanish Teacher’s Spanish Llama Mystery Pictures. We all have that crazy picture day right at the beginning of school, and these are so clever. I laughed out loud when I saw them!

Once the first few days are over, then what? Start looking at long-term units and units that build on each other through the year. OCBeach Teacher has her students working on writing prompts that encourage students to think critically about situations requiring problem solving. Teacher of any high school subject who want to get in more reading and writing this year could take a look at my no prep Article of the Week Resource. Reading pedagogy suggests that students are most successful with a text when they revisit it more than once with a different and meaningful purpose each time. The “article of the week” approach does that. Get ready for standardized reading assessments and improve your students’ reading and comprehension skills a little at a time week over week!

I also love this email etiquette mini unit from Reading and Writing Haven. She said, “You might be surprised to learn that 91% of people check their email daily. It’s a real-life skill. Email is the #1 app used on a smart phone. In short, email matters. We need to teach students how to represent themselves well when communicating in this genre.” Melissa is passionate about helping teachers help kids gain the skills they need to function in the real-world, and this mini unit is the perfect way to set kids up for success during those first days of the year.

Luke Rosa from Students of History says, “As all teachers know, it is [going to be] a long school year. Over the course of [the next] 180 school days, there are bound to be point where both you as a teacher, and the students, are burned out, bored, or just otherwise not excited about the curriculum.” Bookmark his blog post, “6 Awesome Insta-Worthy Classroom Activities.” I plan to visit it throughout the year to give myself a little boost when the activity idea bank starts running low.

Here’s to a great school year. Please feel free to link up in the comments what you use and do successfully for back-to-school!

Love this content? Join a group! There are already tons of ideas, freebies, and fabulous teachers in my new groups, and joining is simple. Just click over to the following links, answer a few questions, and voila! Thanks again for following along my classroom stories and small-business journey, and I really do hope you to see you over in my new “backyards” where we can chat and share all things English and Yearbook.

Written 7/2019

Cover Photo Matt Raglan

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 we use GC for posting video tutorials and audio links to books. I still print worksheets for grammar each week, but I can use GC to send home virtual practice quizzes. I still lecture live in class with my PPT slides and students take notes, but with GC I can post key slides for review. Presentation days are streamlined now as students turn in their projects to the Assignment tab, but I still grade using a hard-copy rubric. In that way, GC as allowed me to enhance and improve instruction, organization, more. Here are five ways a blended traditional and digital classroom benefit my students and me in my secondary classroom.

1) Easy Set Up – I set up my virtual classrooms as soon as I know my teaching assignments. Navigate to your Google Apps, and find the Classroom Tab. Once inside, just click the + sign by your picture to add a class. You can customize those pictures at the top as well using the free pictures included! GC will automatically generate a code for each class (find it in settings); all you need to do is copy it or project it and go. I like to put that code on my syllabus, and on the first day of school, I have my students join my Google Classroom. If students don’t already have the GC and email apps installed on their phones, I have them do that then, too.

2) Communication – This piece is critical for me as GC allows me to communicate with my students easily and creatively, and it offers another channel for communication with parents – automatically. With GC, I can enter parents’ email addresses for each student (or your school might already have them entered), flip the parent/guardian switch to “ON,” and GC will automatically send email summaries to my students’ families…I don’t have to do a thing! If you don’t see this feature, be sure to ask your school admin to turn it on. Word of caution: If you are entering parent/guardian emails, make sure you are sending info to the correct legal guardian. The emails aren’t two-way, but I still love that families get a snapshot of what we’ve done each week.

Communication with my students through GC is the ticket. I can post to the stream reminders, notes, pictures, videos, weekly schedule/calendar, etc. and they get a notification when I’ve done so. I also like that with the students the communication can be two-way, if you set your classroom up like that. I do leave it open for students to post and comment on the stream, but you can decide what works best for you. I also use GC as an extension of my classroom for discussions. Using the Question feature or just by posting on the stream, students can have virtual discussions beyond the walls of my traditional classroom. They can ask me and each other questions, and since students are very responsive to notifications on their devices, they often get immediate answers.

3) Snazzy Features – I’m not really a gadget-lover type person, but I think of the features in GC as cool gadgets! The first snazzy feature in GC that I like – probably the most – is the scheduling feature. I am crazy, crazy busy during the day (shocking for a teacher to say that, right?), so being able to schedule several posts and/or assignments at once when I finally get (or make) some time makes my life so much easier. For example, I like to send home a “Flipped Classroom” grammar video on Tuesday nights for students to watch in prep for the worksheet on Wednesday. I already have a list of the videos I want to use, so with the scheduling feature, I can post several of those at once.

Another cool tool I like inside of GC is what I call the “Student at a Glance” sorting feature. When you click on the “People” tab, you see all of your students in a class. From there, you are able to click students one at a time, and all of the assignments, completion, grades, etc. show up. It’s perfect for conferencing, make up work, etc.

GC has made the movement to more digital/virtual resources a snap with the “Make a Copy for Each Student” switch. While most of my classwork is still traditional paper and pencil, GC has allowed me to move to a few virtual assignments. For example, when my students are researching for a major writing assignment, I have the computer cart booked, so the logistics work out for GC classroom to play a larger role during that unit. Since students are researching online, I created digital note cards on which they can collect their info. It’s easy to pull the file from my drive and “Make a Copy for Each Student.” That way we aren’t all making changes to the original, and I don’t have to change any URLs. The same is true for my yearbook bell ringer workbooks. I’ll schedule several weeks’ worth in advance, make a copy, and students will have them right in their own drive ready-to-go when class starts!

4) Organization – Keeping up with late work and dues dates is so easy with GC because you set all that when you create an assignment. I also love that all student work is submitted and stored in the assignment you create, so grading, responding, and presenting is so easy. GC also automatically makes folders in the Drive for each assignment, too. A new feature I love is the “Create a Topic” option, which takes the organization to a whole new level. Not to mention – the differentiation options that opens up: Create topics for varied levels of readers (with cute names/colors, etc.), post certain assignments in that topic, let them know what topic they are to click on, and set students on their individualized way.

5) Feedback – As a writing teacher, feedback is critical. However, with 75-minute periods and often 25+ students in a class, I can’t conference with all of them as in depth as I’d like – or as often as I’d like. With GC, I create an assignment for their draft, and then I can use the Suggestion feature in Docs or Slides to make comments. This is also a two-way feature, so students can respond and reply to me there. Of course, virtual feedback doesn’t replace traditional face-time, but it does help get the conversation going and allows me to provide very personalized instruction. You can read more about my feedback process on writing here.

PS: If you haven’t ever used the Comment Bank via Docs or Slides, run – hurry – use it! You can save your most-used comments, and I took that to the next level by adding links to videos and tutorials on the most common grammar and writing mistakes I see. Doesn’t that sound amazing? If you’d like to automate that process even more, take a look at my Essay Grading Annotations for Feedback in Printable and Digital format so all you have to do is copy and paste!

We are a Google school, so all of our teachers and students have a Google email address, and we had access to Google suite, classroom, etc. for a while before I was “ready” to give it a try. (I’m a little slow to jump on a bandwagon.) Once I did, though, #gamechanger. Share your best GC tips below!

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Written 7/2019
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Lord of the Flies Island Challenges for Each Chapter

Each time I teach a novel, I try something different. I love teaching Lord of the Flies, and this past year I decided to give island challenges a try. Let me tell you… best decision I made for teaching this novel! I taught the novel out of class and hosted book clubs each Friday. (See more about my book clubs here.) Fridays, then, were when we did our challenges, discussions, and quizzes. I’m so excited to be sharing these chapter-by-chapter island challenges with you. I worked really hard to find or design challenges that would connect either with the theme or conflict of the chapters, so they wouldn’t just be “random” fun things to do. I really wanted the challenges to be both meaningful and fun. They are also a blend of mental and physical challenges, which we found to be perfect for a mixture of winners due to so many different abilities in the class. Because there are 12 chapters in Lord of the Flies, I’ll be breaking my traditional “Fast Five” format to share them all with you. Excited yet? Ready to get lost on an island adventure? Come and get your feet wet and your toes in the sand!

Pre-Challenge: Have your students get in groups. These will be their island factions for the rest of the reading. I let them pick, but I was teaching this novel to older students with specific friends groups, and I liked letting them work with people with whom they felt comfortable. Plus, it added to the tension in competitions among groups. No group was more than 4 students. Then, they picked a name for their group, a symbol, and a motto. On the first day of the unit before I even handed out books, we did this and they made their group “flags” or posters. I hung these “flags” on the board, and this is where I would put their stars when they won challenges. I usually had a first and second place, but everyone always had to finish the challenges.

Also on this first day, we did a pre-reading challenge, which is a survivor game that comes in my Lord of the Flies Teaching Unit.

Chapter 1 Island Challenge: Frequently Confused Words Maze

I absolutely loved this interactive maze challenge. The boys in the novel go out searching the island in the first chapter, and the creepy vines only add to their confusion and fright in trying to find their way around, so having my own students participate in a maze made perfect sense. I found this activity from EoLA Ruth, and it’s brilliant. In this commonly confused words maze, students are challenged to find the answers to the worksheet by searching around the room (and in the hallway) for the hidden clues. EoLA Ruth has everything done; it really was print and go, and it challenged even my older students. Get it here.

Chapter 2 Island Challenge: Build a 3D Map of the Island

For this challenge, students had to use textual evidence to build a 3D map of the island. By this chapter, the boys on the island have begun to figure their way around a little better, and Golding has given us some very specific descriptions. I set a timer and awarded first place to the group who finished their map first and correct. This 3D map activity is no prep, and it’s included in my Lord of the Flies complete teaching unit.

Chapter 3 Island Challenge: Building a Hut STEM Challenge

To coincide with the boys’ island experience, I challenged my students with a fun STEM-oriented tent-building activity. Everyone received the same supplies: a plate, piece of construction paper cut in half, 4 tooth picks, four straws, one fruit roll up, 6 mini pretzel sticks, a long piece of plain tape, and I used jelly beans as people. I don’t think I’d do people again. The three categories were Most Aesthetic, Most Functional, Most Creative/Thoughtful Intent. The tents had to fit on the plate and be only one tent. I had a few other teachers come in and judge.

Chapter 4 Island Challenge: Figurative Language Throw-down

I used the figurative language worksheets in my Lord of the Flies teaching pack for this challenge and had kids race against the clock and each other to get the most correct. You can’t miss Golding’s beautiful use of language, and this was a good, quick challenge.

Chapter 5/6 Island Challenge: Building a Parachute STEM Challenge

This chapter introduces the fallen parachute soldier, so I went with another STEM challenge. For this activity, students had to use certain supplies and build a parachute that would float the longest. If I do it again, I’ll also add a prize for one that goes the farthest. Supplies: plastic bag, piece of felt, piece of aluminum foil, pieces of string, a long piece of tape, and a unicorn that had to be secured to it. We went to the bleachers to drop them off, and I can’t even tell you how much fun this was!

Chapter 7 Island Challenge: Worm Dig

By this point the novel, things are getting messy… nasty and dirty are taking over – the island is transforming and so are the boys. For this challenge, I bought extra large cups of chocolate pudding and sour gummy worms. I ran it kinda like a minute-to-win-it came. One student per group volunteered, and without any hands, they had to remove all the worms from the “dirt.” They also had to clean up the worms, so no dumping out the bowl and winning. The group with the most – and cleanest – worms out in a minute won.

Chapter 8/9 Island Challenge: Pin the Tail on the Piggy

At the climax of the novel, it was only fitting for students to experience a pig hunt, of course! So, I went classic with this one, and we played pin the tail on the piggy. Each group got one tail, one minute, and one try to get the tail as close to the marked spot as possible. I had one person per group and each person went one at a time, and their group could help, but other groups were yelling out to make chaos. Oh, and we did create hurdles for them to tackle as they crossed the room. It couldn’t be too easy, right? We did have a tie, sort of, so I had those groups go all at once for the win. Let me just say, they did battle it out.

Chapter 10 Island Challenge: Quiz Scores

During each book club, we would also take a quick quiz, and I used an average of the groups’ scores. Quizzes can be found in my Lord of the Flies teaching unit.

Chapter 11 Island Challenge: Theme/Quote Sort

This challenge is again geared toward testing the students’ understanding of the content of the novel now that we’ve almost made it through to the end. For this challenge, I chose to use my theme and quote sorting activity. They raced against the clock and each other to get the most card matched correctly. Each group got one set of cards. They can be found in my Lord of the Flies teaching unit.

Chapter 12 Island Challenge: Escape Game

What’s an island survival novel without an “escape off the island” game? I wanted so badly to create a quick mini escape game of my own, but time was running thin. So, luckily I found an awesome digital game from English Bulldog that worked very well. I hadn’t ever used a digital escape game before, but I was really impressed with the clues and content. My students enjoyed it, and it was the perfect way to end the island challenges.

For each set of three chapters, I did prizes (extra points) for the people in that group. I used different colored stars to track the wins. Then, I did an overall winner at the end, and they got a more festive prize. I really enjoyed creating and conducting the island challenges, and my students enjoyed participating. I think the videos and pictures show that, but when one of my class-clown athletes said, “What do you have for us today? You’ve really made me be excited to come to class,” it took my breath. It was a lot of work, but if a few little games can get kids wanting to read and come to class, I’ll do it every day, all day. #worthit

Grab my full complete Lord of the Flies teaching unit!

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Written 6/2019

Interview with a First-Year High School English Teacher

This past semester I had the honor of meeting Megan Ryan, who began her teaching journey in the school where I teach. My first year was a long time ago 😉 — another place and another time. So, when the year came to a close, I really wanted to pick her brain. Learning from each other’s experiences — successes and struggles — is what makes us grow as teachers. For this blog post, I’m breaking my traditional “fast five” format to bring you Ms. Ryan’s responses in her own words; I loved her candor and detail.

Meet Ms. Ryan:

1) Describe your teacher-education experience.

I went to a private Christian school (Lee University). They have a fantastic education department, although there are many things I wish they had better explained to me before becoming a teacher. For example, I began teaching with very little knowledge concerning practical things that may come up in the classroom. I think a lot of things you just have learn from experience, though. Student teaching was very helpful, as it gave me a better idea of what to expect as a licensed teacher. By “practical things” I just mean things like how much contact I should have with parents, how differently (if any) I should grade work that is turned in by students with learning needs/disabilities, how harsh consequences should be depending on the rules broken… smaller things of that nature. Most of those things are up to me to decide about, but I didn’t think about many of these smaller details until the time came where I was faced with making a decision about them.

2) What are your thoughts about teaching in a rural school district?

I attended a relatively large suburban high school, but I really enjoyed my experience teaching in a rural school. There are, of course, pros and cons to teaching in a rural school. A rural school district means less funding, and that can be difficult. I loved having smaller class sizes because I felt that I was able to better get to know my students. I think that teaching in a rural school my very first semester of teaching was a bit less intimidating than a city school would have been, mainly because of the smaller setting.

3) Were there things you needed/wanted and didn’t have?

For the most part, I had everything I needed. There were several times when the copy room was out of paper, or something of that nature, but it was always a situation where I could just improvise my instruction. I did an independent reading unit with my students, and this was a little difficult because the library didn’t have as wide a variety as I would have liked. I ended up bringing all of the young adult books I own so that my students had a wider selection to choose from.

4) Most useful “teaching tools” to you as a first-year teacher.

A few resources I found useful were the Remind app and Google Classroom.

5) What did you feel prepared for… and not prepared for?

I felt prepared for the amount of grading and lesson planning–student teaching prepared me for that. I felt less prepared for managing my classroom. As a student teacher, my cooperating teachers handled most of the management because they chose the rules, procedures, and consequences.

6) Describe and explain one lesson that worked… and one that didn’t.

One lesson that worked: poetry stations! First, I modeled how to annotate and analyze a poem. Then, I had stations set up for students to annotate and analyze a poem that was inspired by the poem that we had read together. Each station had thorough instructions. Each student had a poetry packet with one page for each station. I had 5 stations: reading and analyzing, rhyme scheme and format, figurative language, vocab and word choice, and poetry comparisons (comparing the poem we read as a class to the poem they read that day). I was amazed at how engaged the students were during each station. I think they were able to make sense of the poem because of the way it was broken down into smaller tasks.

A lesson that didn’t work: argumentative speed debating (on Valentine’s Day). I was so excited about this lesson during our argumentative writing unit, but it just… flopped. I had two rows of desks set up so that students would be paired with a partner who was sitting across from them. I read a topic out and they had one minute to “argue.” They would then rotate so that they were with a different partner for each topic. During my first class, I realized that students were NOT as excited as I was about moving around and arguing their opinions. No matter how enthusiastic I was, they just would not debate with each other.

7) What did you learn about classroom management?

I learned–quickly–that in order to successfully manage a classroom, there must be specific rules and consequences. I’m an easygoing person, but this will not always work as a teacher. Once I realized that I was having problems because of the lack of specific rules and consequences, I went over more specific regulations with my classes. I saw a drastic change in behavior.

8) What did you teach?

I taught three regular English 9 classes. My largest class was 26 students.

9) What will you change…. not change next year?

I would like to continue having at least one unit where students are able to choose their own reading material. I believe that giving them a choice about what they read is the best way to plant a love of reading in students. I had several students who claimed to hate reading find books that they fell in love with. This only happened because I allowed them to choose their own books. I definitely want to change the way I handled classroom management. I learned that it is crucial to set clear rules and consequences the very first week. Kids need structure and guidelines just as much, if not more, than we do.

10) What else can you add to help new (and other) teachers?

My advice for other new teachers is to ask for help and advice from experienced teachers. I wish that I had asked more questions in the beginning because it would have saved me from making a few mistakes. However, know that it is okay to make mistakes. There is much knowledge in the world of teaching that you’ll only gain from experience. I still have so much to learn!

It is my hope that first-year teachers and veteran teachers alike will enjoy reading about this experience. As I reflect on what Ms. Ryan said, it helped me realize a few things about my own experience as an educator. It’s not always easy to say what doesn’t work, but admitting it is the only way to repair it. On the flip side, we often don’t give ourselves much credit either when things go well. Last, teachers need to work together: I have so much to learn from new teachers coming into the profession, and we veteran teachers need to do more to ensure first-year teachers are mentored, encouraged, and supported. Thanks again, Megan, for sharing your experience. Best of luck to you and all first-year teachers!

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Written June 2019

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 a list of fabulous Internet-free ideas and resources for middle-high school in any subject that can be used in a pinch – or with some planning – when Ralph, or whoever, breaks the Internet.

1) Get Crafty or Build Something:

Collage projects are pretty much my go-to, hands-on activity when I need to grab something fast, plan for a sub, or fill some time. Even my high school students love to cut and paste and create, and I think it’s even a fun way to sneak in a little reading. I always catch them actually reading the magazines we use. Plus, reusing those old magazines is the best way to recycle them. In English class, I have students make character poems, character personality collages, book covers, social media posts, and the list goes on and on.

Theme collage after studying “Brave” and Malala Yousafzai

America dream collage after watching The Great Gatsby

Character collages for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

Character collages for The Great Gatsby

Coloring never goes out of style, and crayons have been around way before the Internet was born. Draw a scene from a book, illustrate a favorite quote, draw the plot, or draw a diagram of the solar system or various other subject-based topics that need to be reviewed through the year. I’ve been using these color-by-grammar or color-by-figurative language worksheets in a pinch forever, and they are always a big hit with my secondary English students.

If you teach secondary math, the Math Stop has a fun coloring-based activity that would be awesome in a no-Internet setting. Students develop their knowledge of graphing coordinate pairs, quadrants, and reflections about the x and y-axis with this fun and engaging art activity. Then, they make it personal by using the letters of their name to decode them into arbitrary numbers from a decoder box. In the end everyone has a cool and colorful design that represents his/her own name.

$Name Symmetry Art Math Activity$

2) Play Games or Conduct Experiments:

Old-fashioned board games can be very educational whether you are playing them purely for the logic or teamwork of it, or if you are putting your subject-area twist on it. That’s pretty much how I do it; everything has to be English-related. (Wink) When I found these ready-made game cards with an extensive bank of 144 CCSS-aligned grammar and literature terms and definitions by The Littlest Teacher, I thought I had hit the jackpot! If you teach middle or high school English, you are going to want these!

I don’t know a student who doesn’t love a good game of Trashketball! You can set up a trashketball review game for any subject with little to no prep at all, and you’ll be set. For all things trashketball, I turn to the OCBeach Teacher. She’s the coach on this topic, and she has ready-to-go ELA games set up, so I don’t have to do anything but enjoy the game! She has full instructions and links to her no prep ELA review games here!

Mazes, Puzzles, and Escape Games. Oh My! These are all the rage now. I think I write about them in almost every blog post I do with resource-related tips and ideas because they are SO much fun! I recently used one of EoLA Ruth’s kinesthetic mazes to review frequently confused words, and we had a blast. The kids skirted around the room as fast as they could to figure out the puzzles AND answer the challenges! She has a free one for Independent vs. Dependent clauses. Other teachers are raving about Carol Miller’s The Growth Mindset Escape Game. Every now and then kids need a little reminder to get back into that positive thinking routine. Her Growth Mindset Escape Room is the perfect challenge for middle and high school students to both teach the concepts of a growth mindset and to have fun. Students are given a scenario where their school is taken over by the evil Dr. Dread and only way out is to use their brain power before it turns to mush! If you teach secondary ELA, my collection of escape games is growing like crazy! Check out the entire catalog here.

Other ideas include taking time to have students get to know their classmates better like with this fun Spanish speaking activity that gets them up and out of their seats to “Find Someone Who” can answer questions about classmates’ families, pets, favorite classes, sports and food. Download it for free! Truth or Dare would also pique your students’ interest, and I love how Reading and Writing Have uses this game – and others – to help students review vocabulary words! Whether you’ve chosen words from literature, from test prep lists, from a vocabulary book, or hand-selected words you think your students should know, the exercises in this bundle will complement them perfectly. Designed to work with any Tier 2 vocabulary list, these activities, games, and practice worksheets will get your students thinking creatively… without the Internet!
Experiments and STEM projects always catch my attention. I think it’s because I secretly wish I were a scientist! That’s definitely not in my future, but I love seeing what other teachers are preparing for their students. When I saw this Pirate Coding activity created by Curiosity and the Hungry Mind, I knew it was a treasure. (The puns are always intended.) Plus, I have a major soft spot for Pirates. (Again, what I wish I could be when I grow up.) You’ll be able keep upper elementary and middle school students engaged in unplugged coding and STEM challenges with these cool activities!

This STEM project from Professor Doubter piqued my interest immediately, and I think your upper elementary or middle school students will want to dive right in, too. This lab activity challenges students to prove there is REAL IRON in cereal by designing and conducting their own experiments to prove magnetic fields exist between objects! The only materials you’ll need are a strong magnet, hand lens, ½ cup of dry breakfast cereal (Total® brand) in a small plastic baggie, and small beaker/container of water. Grab the instructions and files here, and let your little scientists get busy!

Last but not least, how about just going outside to play? From your middle school students to your high school students, everyone will be participating. Have students toss a ball around and review a point from the lesson. Write vocab words on the sidewalk with chalk. Misty Miller has her students go outside and play tag with math integers. Integers Math Tag Relay is a great way to practice solving problems with integers while having fun.

$Integers Math Tag Relay$

3) Write:

If you are in the middle of a writing unit, and the Internet goes out, you don’t have to stop what you were doing entirely. With every unit, my students benefit from analyzing sample papers. You probably have a few lurking in your file cabinets, and if you can plan ahead, I have several available in any mode, too. I like to put students in groups or set up stations and use task cards to guide their analysis. (See another post here or a video via Facebook for how I do that.) Peer reviewing and/or revising are also super important in the writing process, and if students have been drafting on paper or have old papers that have already been graded, you can have them pull out those copies and review. I use self-evaluation forms, task cards, and “sticky notes” to get kids reading, reviewing, and revising their writing.

Writing is such a big part of the educational process, and it’s really important in any subject. Just something as simple as having students write a fun narrative about “The Day Without the Internet,” or an expository essay explaining the effects of no Internet in school, or an argumentative letter to local legislatures persuading them to bring better Internet into the county – would be perfect. Have students read them aloud, and that will help with your grading! Science classes could write explanations of their most recent science experiment, and history classes could write summaries of an important event they just studied.

4) Read and Role Play:

I’m pretty certain every school has an old-fashioned library stocked with beautiful books just waiting to have their spines cracked. Take a visit! Also, our local newspaper delivers free copies of the weekly paper to our school. It came to my attention not too long ago that my freshmen hadn’t really ever read or picked up an actual newspaper. It’s hard to believe, but if you stop and think about it, that’s probably true. If you can get access to some newspapers, have students do a scavenger hunt looking for text features, main idea sentences, use of dialogue, etc.
Nothing makes reading come alive more than acting it out. Every unit I teach must include some kind of readers’ theater or role playing scenes because my students beg me for them. We either act out some scenes I’ve abridged or created, they create the scene by responding to a role playing prompt, or we just throw on some costumes and read the text we are studying!

Students responded to a role playing prompt and wrote “scenes” here for the play Trifles.

Here students got dressed up to complete a second reading of Patrick Henry’s speech.

Students reenact the famous scene from Act 4 of Macbeth.

5) Listen to a Podcast or Watch a Movie:

While podcasts do require the Internet, you can play them right from your phone and use a Bluetooth speaker to project them for your class. I love podcasts, too, because they are mobile. Grab your phone, speaker, blankets, chairs, hammocks, worksheets, and go! Get my ready-to-go podcast worksheets for any podcast any subject here, and take a look at my growing list of podcast suggestions here!

Movies never go out of style, and they are perfect in a pinch. You can find so many ready-to-guides for tons of movies, so you can just press play!

All this made me think about back in the day when we didn’t have Internet, at least not so readily available and at such high speeds. What did we ever do? Also, there are other times of the year when using the Internet might not be an option, perhaps if you are in a testing window at the end-of-the year, or if you are displaced from your classroom for various reasons. Teaching and learning must continue, even if it’s going to look a little different or if your main lesson is going to be on pause for a little while. Sometimes you can plan ahead, and other times, it’s unexpected. Basically, the show must go on, and we teachers know how to make that happen.

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3/2019, Photos Taken by Julie Faulkner or used with permission

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 hallmark – the cornerstone – of any English classroom, but let’s face it: In today’s time, even reading can sometimes take a backseat to everything else we cover. And with our teens walking around with tiny TVs in their hands at all times streaming the latest Netflix Original or watching the newest Youtube sensation, there isn’t much reading going on. I started the second semester (Jan 2018) with a focus on reading and having my juniors make a reading resolution or “read-o-lution” after studying an article about the importance of reading. If you are a Common Core state, you can use the reading passage from Appendix A to discuss the importance and value of reading. If not or if you just want something ready-to-go for the new year, I have this super simple informational hot topics lesson on how Reading Is Good For Your Brain. Throughout the year, I implemented my Article of the Week program, too (another blog post to come on that this year but you can get the materials for it here now). We also read more full-length short fiction texts in class, and my honors students read an out-of-class novel for book clubs. (See more about my book clubs here). I also set up a mini classroom library, and students checked out books all year long that way. I left their poster up the rest of the semester, and many students truly did make efforts to take reading more seriously and achieve their reading resolution.

2) Podcasts: I love introducing students to something new, and surprisingly Podcasts were actually kinda new to my students. They had, of course, heard of them, but they never really listened to them. Again… why would they when they could just watch something on the tube? I actually used Podcasts two ways this year. First, with my yearbook staff, we listened to a Podcast crime series when we finished our book. Up and Vanished (Season 1 carefully edited) was the perfect way to get my staff engaged. They completed a casebook to keep track of their listening and crime solving. That casebook is free in my TeachersPayTeachers store. Second, in my English class, we did some spooky Podcasts from Lore during Halloween, and students took notes on a podcast worksheet I created. (Get those here.) Then, they wrote their own spooky stories. My students wrote some really amazing stories: We had many laughs and many spooky cold chills, too! Readers of my email newsletter Teaching Tidbits with Julie Faulkner got that activity for free back in October. Be sure to sign up for that email at the bottom of the page, so you don’t miss anymore goodies. You can also see some of my Podcast suggestions via this link over to my Facebook page at Julie’s Classroom Stories.

3) Victorian Tea Party: Another focus I had this past year was on careers. Whether students were going straight to a career or college after senior year, I still wanted them to be focused on their futures in terms of where will they work when it’s all said and done. I’ve found that this year especially, my students are so uncertain about what they want to do, and they don’t even really have any idea what’s out there. I’m going to be adding a few more career-based lessons in the new year to possibly help students get a better idea of what their options are and what might be a good fit for them. But this project was an interesting way for students to really think about who they are as a person and what they’d like to become — just like our gal pal Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady. Hats are a huge symbol in this text, and I wanted students to not only understand and recognize that symbol and it’s role in the characterization, but I also wanted them to make text-to-self connections as well. I loved seeing how their hats turned out, and it was a fun way to make a class party text-based. See this activity and all the instructions here in my TpT store.

4) Sieve and the Sand Experiment: I’ve lost count how many times I’ve taught Fahrenheit 451 over the years, but this year I did something new that I’d never done before: a science experiment. No we didn’t burn anything… though it alarms me how many people want to burn books as part of teaching this unit. (Insert “I dunno” emoji here.) This was actually an experiment that brought the text to life and helped students get hands-on with Bradbury’s choices. I hid a few “surprises” in the sand for students to find, but ultimately, my goal of them being able to use the experiment as a jumping off point for discussion during book club meeting was super successful. I was really proud of how they went back to the text to see what Bradbury said and truly analyzed Montag’s memory. Get my 451 unit here.

5) Character Stockings: About once a year I can get it together to make a huge reading display outside my classroom door. I wish I could do it more often, but quality over quantity, right? This year, we were inspired by Fahrenheit 451 to design a hearth and decorate it for Christmas. I drew the outline for the hearth and printed up the stockings using clip art. Several of my students drew the fire and bricks and put on the finishing touches with paint. Each student then chose one character from the novel and designed a stocking for that character using text-based details. I LOVE the way it turned out!! I’m so proud of it, I’ll probably be “one of those people” who leave their Christmas decorations up year-round. LOL!

As you can probably see, this year was about all about a focus on reading — fiction and nonfiction. I wanted students to see the value in reading and truly immerse themselves in it. Making text-to-text connections, text-to-world connections, and text-to-self connections really taught students to dig in and read closely. I think the reading focus paid off: Just seeing students doing more guided reading in class and independent reading out was fulfillment enough, but we also saw major improvements in ACT reading scores with students making gains of 5-6 points on the reading section and some students scoring 30+. That sounds like a great year to me! Share your best moments of 2018 below, and here’s to having your own classroom success stories in 2019!

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A Movie Review of HBO’s Fahrenheit 451 from a High School English Teacher

Finally… the moment my students and I have been wishing and waiting for – an updated movie remake of one of our favorite novels: Fahrenheit 451. We always have a little fun playing the role of director, choosing which of our favorite actors and actresses should play Montag, Beatty, Mildred, Clarisse, and all the other memorable characters. However, we do always wonder… would Bradbury actually approve of any screen adaptation of his magnum opus? I had so many questions before watching HBO’s hot, new adaptation: Who would play Montag? Would it capture the theme accurately? What would be removed or added? And most importantly… would it be a good fit for using in class? Keep reading for the answers. WARNING: There are spoilers.

1) Characters/Characterization: Not everything about the characters was 100% spot on, but that is to be expected, I suppose. So what works and what doesn’t?

Beatty – Captain Beatty is our resident manipulative, maniacal manager of the fire. He’s the villain through and through, loving to control the narrative and burn anything that gets in his way. Right. Right? Well, maybe not. Beatty’s ambiguity is what makes him so compelling, confusing, and complex. In my opinion, the film does a nice job of painting a picture of Beatty of which Bradbury would approve.

Faber/Granger – These fiction-loving fellas aren’t named characters in the film, but their archetype is certainly present. In fact, they play a huge role in the film in terms of propelling the conflict. In the novel, the bulk of the conflict is driven by Montag’s internal struggle, but the film really hinges on both the person v. person and person v. society conflict with the “Eels” to move the plot. I suppose that’s a pretty decent substitution.
Montag – I’m not sure anybody can really live up to our Guy Montag. He’s always the hardest one to pinpoint and agree upon when we do our exercise in class of picking the actors/actresses. Everyone just always has a different idea of who he should be. He fumbles through most of the book trying to figure himself out, so maybe that’s why he is so hard to pinpoint. HBO’s Montag experiences a similar struggle, but I am still not quite satisfied for some reason. Montag the confused – yes, I can get on board with that. Montag the superstar – nah, I’ll pass on that interpretation. Maybe my hopes were too high. That said, I would give Michael B. Jordan a B+.
Ms. Blake – What a powerful scene. Glad she – and it – was included. Enough said.

Mildred – Initially, I was bothered by the fact that Mildred wasn’t included. The more I think on it, though, I can accept the choice. In the movie, she wasn’t just an obsessed robotic tv watcher, she WAS the robot. Clever. In the text, Bradbury needed a vessel to paint the picture society’s bad behaviors, etc. On the big screen and with today’s special effects, it is possible to just make it evident in other ways. Figuratively, too, it speaks to the whole idea of how little she actually contributed anything to Montag or society at all and how truly forgettable she was. Gone like a freight train (puns are intended), gone like yesterday. Wait, who was Millie again?
Clarisse – Clarisse provides the most mystery in the book, and the kids always love her. Bradbury is even quoted as saying he is Clarisse in the book: full of wonder and curiosity. It’s with Clarisse that the film falls of the wagon in the characters/characterization category. Clarisse is supposed to be light and airy and a picture of innocence, but in the film, she is too dark and brooding for my liking. And then there’s the whole spark between Montag and Clarisse. Not. My. Favorite. My students always think they’ve “picked up” on something between Montag and Clarisse when they read the scenes with her, and I always stress how incorrect that reading is. Clarisse is a catalyst for Montag’s path toward the truth. In that that way – and only in that way – might she serve as a femme fatale, luring him to the light. Am I surprised “Hollywood” used her character as a way to provide some on-screen romance? No, but it’s just textually inaccurate. As an aside here: My students didn’t like her in the film either.

2) Setting: So much of what Bradbury penned was futuristic – and dare I say prophetic – in the 1950s. Today, though, just about every bit of it has come to fruition, and what hasn’t can be computer generated for the movies. I was pleased to see the infusion of the large screens; they are, in fact, everywhere: in homes, in streets, and even on the skyscrapers. Bradbury’s biggest fear was the detrimental effects of people’s over consumption of and obsession with television. The TVs are ever present and “large and in charge.” However, I’m not so certain the intended dystopian city that Bradbury envisioned really seemed “all that bad” in HBO’s version. The setting, for me, kinda fizzled out.

3) OMNIS: This is a massive change from the book, but it may just be this detail that shows us – 2018 watchers of the film – how close we might actually be to Bradbury’s dystopian future. OMNIS holds every piece of literature, art, and history in a DNA strand, preserving the long forgotten culture that the firemen tried to erase. While there are underground members of society, like Granger and his “railroad” crew that memorize entire books in order to preserve them, it is this OMNIS that they work to protect and preserve. Once the OMNIS is introduced into the plot, it becomes the major source of the conflict, as it is the focus of the firemen’s revenge. The twist is that this DNA strand has been implanted in a bird. After some thought, I decided I might be satisfied with this change as I see connections with it and the prominent role of the Phoenix in the novel. OMNIS becomes a symbol of hope in a bleak, literature-loathing society that hints at the emergence of a better future. It’s a reminder that it doesn’t matter how much “graffiti” (books) the firemen decide to burn, there’s still hope out there for a free-thinking future — much like the Phoenix that is burned but rises again.

4) Theme: Ultimately, Bradbury wants readers to put themselves in the characters’ shoes: What role would you have played in this dystopian universe: perpetuator, bystander, fighter? Would you see the truth like Montag, or continue to fumble your way through the pursuit for ~~emptiness~~ happiness like Mildred. Would you fight to manipulate and cover the truth like Beatty or use truth to lead others to it like Faber or Granger? It is the growth from within that he wants – that really can bring the change that this culture needs. Truth, knowledge, morality — all erased and replaced with what people see rather than what they think. The movie does a good job of making that clear — maybe a little too clear (some points didn’t leave much to the imagination), but in order to bridge the gap to “modern audiences,” I can see the need. Maybe that’s a tad ironic, and telling, in and of itself. Nonetheless, tons of lines from the book are woven throughout, and I enjoyed hearing Bradbury’s voice.

5) The Ending: Bradbury’s ending is open, or so many of my students say, and most really do hate that. I always pose the question to them, though, Is it really open ended? Throughout the entire book, Bradbury wants readers to realize that the value of books is to provide information, but more importantly to make people think. On one hand, the open ending forces readers to do that. On the other hand, maybe the ending so open at all. Montag did figure out his purpose, and if you read it that way, then what else was there? Either way, the movie definitely provides us with Bahrani’s idea of what he thought should be Montag’s purpose: keep the “books” alive. But die? I could see a case for his death in the book, but die at the hand of Beatty. That idea should be torched. In the movie, the books “rise from the ashes” to live on and that offers some hope, but having Beatty kill Montag gives the villain way too much power, and erases hope that the books — and future — will really be safe. To link in another once “hot” film, President Snow said, “Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.” (Sidebar: Does anybody else see the HG connections? I can’t unsee it.) If Bahrani intended to remove that hope, that’s dark and maybe it’s a little too dark. But perhaps that’s just me trying to look on the bright side.

Final thoughts: Is it appropriate for class? HBO rated the film TV-MA for violence and language. That said, just about any novel we pick up is going to have violence and language or worse. I am not a fan of it either, and I don’t want to convey that at all. Otherwise, it’s pretty benign. All in all, I did think it was time well spent showing it to my students. It brought up so many conversations; and we really did decide that the book is better. It doesn’t get much better for my little English-teacher heart. In my school, anytime we show a film, we have to get our principal to approve it. So, I did that, and I wrote a parent letter and created a set of questions student would answer during the viewing. He was fine with that, and I had zero parents ask for an alternative assignment. I do have older students, but if you cover your bases this way you should be fine. (See my Teacher Talk Video on Facebook here about dealing with novels with difficult content.)

Get the letter I drafted and the questions HERE for free!

If you teach Fahrenheit 451 as a novel unit, stop over to my teacherspayteachers store and take a look at my complete unit plan. Also, did you enjoy the memes above? I have to brag on my students. Those were all their original work, and I have to admit, I laughed out loud at most of them.

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End-of-Year Reflection: Top Five Classroom Success Stories of 2019

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End-of-Year Reflection: Top Five Classroom Success Stories of 2018

A Movie Review of HBO’s Fahrenheit 451 from a High School English Teacher

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