Sep 10 2024 Ashley Anderson Source This school year is very different for me. I am still in the classroom, but on a different campus. I am working mainly with students who are trying to graduate early, but have not passed one or both of their state-mandated English tests. These students are juniors and […]
I heard Dance Monkey for the first time after watching the NYT analysis. My response was limited to “catchy and cool”. All my mentor texts are new to my ELLs and they read them for the first time when I bring them to class. Their response is similarly limited to “nice and good”.
I know that I am “preaching to the choir” as we say in the South, but the start of school gets earlier and earlier every year. So let’s get moving quickly into something you can start working on DAY ONE with students. Most state tests ask students a variety of questions rooted in analysis, specifically […]
A guaranteed speed breaker when I enter a new school year, and meet a new batch of students with renewed enthusiasm is old errors. Do it enough over the years, and you might begin to realize that part of an old-timer’s stoicism in the face of annoying errors lies in foreseeing obstacles and being ready for them as opposed to being taken by surprise.
More importantly, however, the book blurbs and the discussions that followed served as excellent book talks. After each lesson, I saw students quietly picking up many of the books on the slides. I pretended not to look, of course.
I didn’t give them the definitions in the beginning this time. This allowed them to use the learning from the last two lessons and hypothesise what the differences ought to be. The book blurbs on the slides, much like last time, were our opportunities to discuss, argue, ask questions and share our confusion. Towards the end, when clarity was just within reach, I provided the definitions.
My main aim in this lesson is to get students comfortable with identifying boundary conditions of a genre in the face of ambiguity.
In this series, I share one such set of 5 lessons that help students identify genres more accurately. The lessons are:
L1: Prior Knowledge Check
L2: Genre – Meaning and Types
L3: Realistic Fiction vs. Fantasy vs. Historical Fiction
L4: Fantasy vs. Science Fiction
L5: Science Fiction vs. Dystopia.
Last summer, Matthew Johnson, Angela Stockman, and I dreamed of a different kind of professional development. Something fun. Something authentic. Something that didn’t include the worship of educelebs. Something that felt like summer camp. We loved our time at Camp Rewrite last summer, and so it’s back for a second year! And YOU can get […]
Source The end of the school year is here and I could not be more excited. I am not sure how you have been feeling this year, but this has not been my banner year. In fact, Taylor Swift’s Anti-hero – “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me”- has definitely felt like the era […]
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