The 2020-2021 school year was the year of the unexpected, the year of changes, the year of disappointments, the year of frustrations, and certainly the year of loss. It goes down in my book as the hardest year of my teaching career — that includes the first year I taught in middle school, the first year I was a lead in an inclusion classroom, the year I taught while building a house, the first year I was the new yearbook adviser, and the year I taught while having multiple surgeries for some serious medical issues. And let’s not forget that I actually contracted COVID-19 THE. FIRST. DAY. BACK of teacher in-service. However, I didn’t quit. I did survive, and I’m going back. That said, I am choosing to look at the positive — shall we say, “COVID Positive” — Bad pun. Anyway, despite all change that occurred this year — schedules, classrooms, assignments, students, and more, there were a few things that I’m thankful that the COVID-19 pandemic did not change about my classroom.

Whether you are teaching via full remote learning, on a hybrid schedule, or blending your in-person classes with virtual classrooms, you’ll need your lesson plans and materials ready for digital classrooms. The good news is — you can re-purpose lesson plans and materials for digital classrooms without reinventing the wheel or making all new activities, worksheets, files, etc. In this blog post, I hope to share some hacks you can use to easily convert, edit, and share what you have from your traditional classroom right into your digital classroom.

In my previous post on the Benefits of Using Paired Texts to Teach Reading, I discuss the advantages of this brain-based teaching method. It’s no secret that offering ways for students to making connections — text to text, text to self, and text to world — is an opportunity to exercise higher order thinking skills. Teaching shouldn’t happen in a vacuum, even though sometimes it does as we stress to move units along the conveyor belt, more acceptably known as pacing guides. Often and unfortunately, we teach one skill and move quickly onto the next. Confession: I don’t teach that way. Everything must build and connect from unit to unit, text to text, and skill to skill. That’s why paring texts is so important, and in this final post in the series, I want to share the practical, actionable ways that I select and use paired texts for teaching reading.

Paired passages or paired texts are texts that are connected in some way. When the Common Core State Standards rolled out years ago, the concept of teaching with paired texts surfaced. At first, English teachers were worried that the demand for more nonfiction and the requirements of CCSS, R.9 would limit the amount of fiction they could teach. Over time, it became evident that pairing texts and teaching students how to “analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take” (CCSS, R.9) actually has more advantages than disadvantages. Many states are moving away from CSCC (mine included), but the standard of pairing texts is still required. Not only does pairing texts meet this specific standard, but also it allows you to address several others at once. Once I began to see the benefits of paired texts for teaching reading, it stuck. This is one strategy that will be a permanent part of my teaching reading toolbox. In this blog

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.

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!

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

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 about being a new teacher. 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 in this interview with a first-year high school English teacher.