English Education Articles for Teachers - Page 2

"No one cares what you say if you can't prove it." This is my mantra as an English teacher. Whenever a student whines about opening a book to look for evidence to back up his point, I just shrug and tell him that his words mean nothing unless they are backed up with reliable e...

"Censorship" conjures up mental images of Soviet Russia, Nazi book burnings, and vitriolic arguments over what is considered artistic vs. obscene. But the censorship of today is not black boxes and Parental Advisory stickers. Censorship online can be a more subtle filtering or blocking of certain...

What makes a teacher? Three parts patience and two parts flexibility. Don’t forget a cup of motivation with a heap of perseverance. Throw in thirty kids with their unique needs and backgrounds, and we have a recipe for an adventurous school year. Among the many individual needs of learners, ...

Look, I get it: The Hunger Games is awesome. So is whatever angel/vampire/dragon love triangle/supernatural thriller/ordinary-person-is-really-the-chosen-one series you are currently reading. I also really love doughnuts, but my wife tells me that the jelly in them does not constitute a full serv...

American literature, like most aspects of America, is a melting pot of cultural influences. But what happens when you take a bit of that melting pot and let it stew by itself, absorbing all of the local flavors? (Other than an elaborate cooking metaphor?) You get Southern literature—a delicious, ...

A good deal of the literature associated with Common Core explicitly states that the emphasis on nonfiction reading is NOT a departure from reading literature in language arts or English classes. Depending on what grade you currently teach, the percentage of nonfiction that each student is expect...

Years of standardized tests have conditioned our students to think that critical thinking means eliminating three out of four options in an effort to get the sacred "right answer."  How many times have you tried to have a meaningful discussion about a social issue, historical event, or ...

The Things They Carried is a deceptively simplistic book. At first glance, it seems like an anthology of random stories from author Tim O'Brien's experience during the Vietnam War. If you go beyond the face value of the book, you'll see the layers of complexity. The stories are told through the m...

When is the last time that you sat down and really examined the point or purpose behind giving that last assessment? An important aspect to the teaching profession is continuous self-examination of the teaching practice. With the rollout of Common Core, many teachers will be asked to re-examine t...

This past July, Walter Dean Myers—prolific author and inspiration to many—passed away. While publicly he will be remembered for authoring over 100 books and winning many awards, he will personally be remembered for the influence he had on the lives of children. As for me, I will remember him thro...

Awkward. All eyes are trained on me, but I have nothing left to say. Our day's work is finished, but we have ten more minutes of class. What should I do? How can I keep the learning process going when I have run out of material? As a new teacher, I would blunder through some type of time-filling ...

Is anyone out there learning? How many times do we contemplate that question while we are standing in the front of the classroom? I have discovered part of the answer is to be cognizant of the variety of learning styles present in my classroom when I am teaching. The ability to discern the types ...

When pondering worthwhile reading material for the summer, I perused my mind for reads that would be worthwhile, not only for the classroom, but for literary value as well. As far as genre goes, I try to avoid putting books into categories. Should a person recommend a romance novel to me, althoug...

The online world is suffocated with photos. We gave everyone an HD camera on their phones and instead of becoming the next photo journalists, people decided to Instagram their breakfast. Life now comes in Amaro, Lo-fi, and Inkwell filters. As teachers, we spend an incredible amount of time and en...

Last week, we posted an article called Frequent Assessments Guide Teaching: Part One where I discussed some different ways to check in with your kids and their learning. One of the ideas suggests using pre-assessments to make teaching time more valuable. Recently, I’ve started using a pre-assessm...