Category: Tips For New Teachers

  • Book Clubs for Challenging Topics

    Check out my post on Edutopia!

  • Peer Feedback Strategies

    Peer Feedback Strategies

    Ask any ELA teacher to tell you some of the main challenges of the job, and a likely answer is keeping up with responding to student writing.  It’s a laborious task, yet we know it’s a significant part of helping student writers.  In fact, no writer improves without two things: lots and lots of practice,…

  • Teaching Flash Fiction — Lesson 4 Fleshing Out the Story

    Teaching Flash Fiction — Lesson 4 Fleshing Out the Story

    Now that students have ideas, it’s time to flesh out the stories. With any piece of writing, two parts are critical for students:  ideas and organization.  Both of these, known to many teachers as traits of writing, can be difficult for any writer.  Who hasn’t labored over a first rough draft, trying hard to find…

  • Preparation, not Anxiety

    Preparation, not Anxiety

    It’s that time of year — the dreaded preparation time for state assessments! Over my career, many folks told me “Just don’t worry about it.”  The reality for a classroom teacher is we have an obligation to our students, to their parents/guardians, and to the other stakeholders of our communities to do what we can…

  • Teaching Flash Fiction – Lesson 3 (Quickwrites)

    Follow my blog with Bloglovin “It must be a piece of writing which, even if someone else reads it, doesn’t send any ripples back to you. It is like writing something and putting it in a bottle in the sea. . . . Freewritings help you by providing no feedback at all. ” Peter Elbow,…

  • Beginning Again

    Beginning Again

    A few years ago, my best friend Penny gave me Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes. Penny and I have been faithful followers of Grey’s Anatomy since it first aired, so she knew I would enjoy learning a bit of Shonda’s…

  • Find Your Tribe

    Find Your Tribe

    Remember assistant principal Richard Vernon from The Breakfast Club?  Who could forget his hostile approach to supervising adolescents during a Saturday detention!  We would like to think his character is more caricature than realistic, but versions of Richard Vernon seem to haunt most schools, and of course, as a new teacher, you will want to…

  • Teaching Flash Fiction — Lesson 2

    Teaching Flash Fiction — Lesson 2

    After students practice reading like a writer to create anchor charts for elements of flash fiction,  it’s time to apply their learning to new texts.  Again, I like providing several text selections so students have choice, but this time, I give students a very brief text chat, a shorter version of a book talk, and let…

  • Teaching Flash Fiction Series – Part 1 – Intro Lesson

    Teaching Flash Fiction Series – Part 1 – Intro Lesson

    A few years ago, our state standards added fiction (Why fiction?) under the narrative mode strands, and in my roles as ELA teacher and instructional coach, I began a hunt for lesson ideas, resources, and research to share with my ELA team.  After all, for most of my career, teaching students to write fiction was…