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
If you're a new teacher you're probably wondering how to teach essay writing skills to your students. If you're a seasoned teacher, you're still probably wondering how to teacher essay writing skills to your students. Though they are one of the most basic foundational elements a student needs for success, finding ways to communicating those … Continue reading How to Teach Essay Writing Skills
Student work so often dies on the teacher’s desk. A project that took dozens of hours, and led to the creation of a beautiful artefact is handed in, given a mark, and discarded. Every year hundreds of student hours, per teacher, create meaningful projects only to see them recycled or thrown out, never given a … Continue reading Making Projects Meaningful
LITERACY SKILLS are the key, transferable skills required to process, and understand the multitude of TEXTS we encounter every day. From VISUAL to AUDITORY, from video games to novels, we rely on our skills to make meaning and ascertain messages. Like all skills, they must be developed, honed, and practiced. One of the best ways to INTRODUCE or REINFORCE these skills with your students in … Continue reading Literacy Skills: Short Stories
There are few things more important than teaching students to view the world through a critical lens. "How individuals construct their social identities, how they come to understand what it means to be male [or] female ... is shaped by commodified texts produced by media for audiences that are increasingly segmented by the social constructions … Continue reading Teaching Gender Representation in the Media
Choose Our Way tales (COWtales) are stories where the reader gets to make a choice about the direction the story will follow. By being an active participant in the story, readers are more engaged and willing to press forward through the text. COWtales have a number of branching plot threads, as well as a variety of endings. … Continue reading Introduction to Choose Our Way Tales
In traditional classrooms the entire class reads one novel, as the teacher guides their students through the text. This is not the case with Literature Circles. Literature Circles allow students to choose texts that resonate with them; choice allows for ownership, which heights student engagement with their text. In literature circles, small groups of students … Continue reading Literature Circles – An Introduction
