Before reworking your entire class to accommodate a new project, you will need to know why it's worth your time and effort. I get that. So, before I tell you why this matters we need to hear from the truly important voices. What the students have to say There's nothing more important than student voice. … Continue reading The Creation and Publication Project: A Brief Introduction
A curated list of online Professional Development opportunities for engaged and engaging educators.
When students are working hand out highlighters to students so they can annotate their text. Choose who you give what colour to, hand them out randomly or let them pick from a box. The important thing is that you have five or six different colours to choose from. As they are writing, students will mark … Continue reading SUPER Strategy #1: Use Highlighters to Create Groups
Revising a rough copy is one of the most important aspects of writing a strong essay. It's not enough to know how to GO FROM OUTLINE TO ESSAY, one must be ready to revise, revise, and then revise some more. Often times students find themselves struggling to add a paragraph or two to meet the … Continue reading Student Learning Through Digital Essay Editing and Revision Using Google Docs
Pressing the subtitle button on your remote control or streaming video player can make all the difference from students with hidden disabilities, difficulties with oral processing, and those distracted by environmental noises. SEE ALL THE S.U.P.E.R. STRATEGIES There are a number of Super Strategies you can use together, increasing the effectiveness of your practice, while … Continue reading SUPER STRATEGY #2: Turn on the Subtitles
S.U.P.E.R. Strategies are quick ideas that both new and experienced teachers can use to increase student success while also simplifying classroom workload. These are the secrets we'd all wished we'd known years ago. It has been said that teachers loves their acronyms. There's definitely some truth to that. The Toronto District School Board has an … Continue reading SUPER Strategies
Having taught your students how to PROPERLY EMBED QUOTATIONS it's now time to jump into the actual process of writing an essay. There are a number of ways to demonstrate this process. The most helpful of which is to give students a clear exemplar of the essay writing process. A Step by Step guide to … Continue reading Teaching how to go from Text, to Outline, to Essay
Learning how to fully embed quotations into your essay is a skill that needs to be explicitly taught. Teaching students how to embed quotations into their essay must be explained from the ground up. Without a solid foundation to build on your students will continue to struggle with the concept. We will look at the … Continue reading Embedding Quotations as Supporting Evidence
When writing an essay it's not enough to simply make claims; you need to support your claims with evidence. Supporting evidence can take many forms, but it often comes in the form of embedded quotations. English courses typically rely on MLA standards when using quotations in papers. While many students are aware that they need … Continue reading The Importance of Supporting Your Claims with Evidence
The Five Paragraph Essay is an artificial construct that does not exist in the wild. No one will ask you to write a five paragraph essay outside of high school. No author sits around writing five paragraph essays. It doesn't matter if you call them hamburger essays, or nacho essays. The five paragraph essay does … Continue reading The Problem with Five Paragraph Essays: Understanding they do Not Exist in the Wild
