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English teacher, write found poetry in the classroom

How to Write Found Poetry in the Classroom

Found poetry can be a beautiful thing, and sometimes, it can be eerily on point. What do I mean? Imagine finding 100 sticky notes in your mom’s home office after she passes, and you use those to construct a found poem. The crazy, fun thing is that the poem ends…
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high school study skills question

Study Skills for High School Students: Who is Responsible?

When I began teaching high school English (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), we spent a lot of time playing the blame game. If those middle school teachers would just teach (fill in the blank), then we wouldn’t have this problem. Then I got involved with a vertical teaming project and…
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3 ways to teach line of reasoning in AP Language

3 Ways to Teach Line of Reasoning

Let’s not complicate things. Line of reasoning standards in most curricula ask students to do two things: “Line of Reasoning” Isn’t New Because the AP® Language rubric now includes this wording, we’re paying more attention to it, but we’ve always required students to defend one idea. What we haven’t always…
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American Literature and AP Language: Merging the Two

How in the nation are we supposed to squeeze an American Literature survey into AP Language? In North Carolina, it’s a requirement. In fact, my district’s scheduling label for AP English Language & Composition is AP English 11 because the course has to hit two things—AP standards AND the NC…
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The AP English Language Exam Review Boot Camp

How much review for the AP Language Exam is TOO much? On a skill-based assessment like this one, students are already at a position of not-quite-there, proficiency, or mastery of a complex web of interrelated skills and processes. Like I said in a recent refresher review post, there is no…
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Junior studying for the AP Enlgish Language exam

AP English Language Exam Refresher Review

We’re coming up on crunch time for the AP exams, and the AP English exams in language and literature are outliers. They are 100% skill based, so review doesn’t look like cramming terms, memorizing formulas, or staying up all night with a study group. It’s more of a refresher on…
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Effective Ways to Use Anchor Papers in the Classroom

Anchor papers. Example essays. Guide papers. Exemplars. Sample essays. Whatever you call them, they are designed to make slightly more objective a subjective process—the evaluation of student writing. Whom Sample Essays Are For Anchor sets are designed for the paid readers who are scoring the essays; they are not designed…
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classroom spending

How to Spend Someone Else’s Money on Your Classroom

When I was teaching, I spent around $1000 of my own money every year on my classroom. That’s insane. Those dollars went to everything from hygiene products I kept in my desk to the breakfast I served on test day to the kids who would otherwise have jacked themselves up…
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things fall apart lesson plans

How to Approach Things Fall Apart in Your Lesson Plans

I miss Chinua Achebe’s voice. When he passed in 2013, I grieved. After teaching “Dead Men’s Path” and Things Fall Apart for my entire career, I felt like I had lost someone personally. My lesson plans for the novel in particular changed over the years, and my approach moved from…
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teacher plans for rigor

Rigor in the Classroom: What it is and isn’t

After decades of throwing around the word rigor, we still can’t seem to come to agreement about what it is. I see in private school marketing materials institutions that offer “a rigorous course of study.” The average parent interprets that to mean that this school will be a challenge in…
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