When it comes to reading nonfiction, my students tend to get bleary-eyed and hard-of-hearing. It’s like they instantly think of their history textbooks and informational articles and they decide before they even know the topic that they aren’t going to like it. For many students, nonfiction is like the vegetable of literature, but it doesn’t have to be this way. This is why I work hard to make sure I have a variety of activities to engage my students. Read about some of my favorites below. 1. Fact vs Opinion This super easy activity simply involves you presenting the topic of study and having students create a class list of information. Students share what they know (or think) they know about the subject. You can then assign a pre-reading activity separating fact from fiction, or have students revisit the list after reading. 2. Learn to Annotate Annotating is such an important skill because your students learn to engage with the text. It also has shown to improve retention, and helps i...

The age-old five-paragraph essay elicits many things from students: mostly, a creative variety of groans and eye-rolls. An exasperated student might inquire: “Haven’t we done this before, like, a million times? Why do we have to keep on doing this?” Don’t let them catch you off guard. Here are five reasons why the five-paragraph essay is still a critical tool for students' development as writers and thinkers. 1. Its function and form can be applied to anything and everything. The five-paragraph essay is something that stretches beyond the mere walls of the English classroom - it is a way of thinking, as much as it is a way of writing. Learning how to write the five-paragraph essay is equivalent to learning how to express one’s thoughts in a cogent, organized manner - all through the efficiency of the essay’s stellar form. So, it really doesn’t matter what the contents of these thoughts maybe - they can be about A Clockwork Orange, or Euclidean geometry, or the Scopes Monkey trial ...

Whether you are teaching literature or writing, it is important to include lessons that include instruction and practice in your classroom. Here is a look at five amazing teaching resources that combine direct instruction and student practice that will help your students succeed. Elements of Literature Teaching Bundle This Elements of Literature Teaching Bundle includes ten different mini-units that each focus on a different literary element: characterization, conflict, foreshadowing, mood, motif, plot, setting, suspense, theme, and tone. Each unit includes an instructional presentation, task cards, and sketch notes. You can use the resources in this bundle over and over again and with any piece of fiction. Elements of Literature Teaching Bundle Sticky Note Poetry Analysis Teaching Unit This is the one-stop, engaging, hands-on poetry unit that you’ve been looking for. I use this sticky note poetry analysis teaching unit in my English classroom every year for my poetry unit, and it re...

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, it is time to start planning engaging ELA activities for your middle school and high school classroom. Here is a look at several Valentine’s Day-themed activities and resources for the secondary ELA classroom. 1. Valentine’s Day Sentence Combining Beginning on February 1, you can incorporate Valentine’s Day themes in your classroom with these Valentine’s Day Sentence Combining Bell Ringers . I love using sentence combining as a bell-ringer activity because this exercise provides students with an opportunity to think critically about their writing. Students will craft complex and compound-complex sentences from a series of Valentine’s Day-themes simple sentences. To make this activity more engaging, I like to have little challenges in my classroom. I’ll ask students to include all of the provided information, but be as concise as possible. Or, I will ask them to begin their sentence with an adjective phrase to focus on that skill. Valentine’...

In all my years of teaching in the secondary ELA classroom, I’ve discovered that one of the most polarizing teaching components has been grammar. Students either seem to love it or hate it with every fiber of their being. I always take a growth mindset approach when it comes to helping my kids navigate grammatical rules—they might make errors in convention, but that doesn’t define their capability to learn the subject. Their attitude does. However, it always helps to make teaching and learning grammar as engaging as possible for everyone involved. So, without further ado, here are five fun ways to incorporate grammar in the ELA classroom. Give Grammar a Theme One aspect of teaching grammar that I’ve come to love is how easy it is to incorporate grammatical review into different holiday-themed lessons and activities. Review parts of speech with a Halloween Mad Lib. Have students correct punctuation errors in well-known love song lyrics for Valentine’s Day. The possibilities are endless...

One thing many students, teachers, and even professional authors forget is the fact that writing is just a form of communication. Even though students may not see it this way at first, the more we write like we speak, the better our writing becomes. That’s not to say that writing for essays or assignments should be informal; it just means that any writer should utilize grammatical tools in order to achieve a better flow in their work and to guide readers through their thoughts. That’s what punctuation is for! Without it, writing can be confusing or messy. (Let us all remember the “let’s eat Grandma” fiasco.) Who knew a couple of dots and dashes could wreak so much havoc? When I teach punctuation in my classroom, I use this Punctuation Teaching Unit .   Punctuation Teaching Unit Adjusting Apostrophes It’s vs. its It seems a tad ridiculous to make so much fuss over a few three-letter words. However, in this case, one apostrophe quite literally makes all the difference. Contrary to popula...