By the time students get to their junior and senior years of high school English, they often feel like they have been there, done that. Because of Common Core, we have New Criticism-ed them to death. So teaching them how to use other styles of literary theory is a must
Sometimes in our high school classes we need to help students to access difficult texts, difficult skills or difficult concepts. This is where paired texts come into play. There are so many reasons to use text pairings in high school English. They can help to fill out units that
Looking to expand both engagement and rigor in your high school English classroom, consider using Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics” along with three different types of literary criticism to encourage them to read deeply and explore different lines of thinking while applying it to the same text. Why Teach Raymond Carver’s
Teaching poetry in high school English is often a challenge. Students, even students in AP® Literature, think they do not like poetry. So here are some options to help them gain confidence in poetry analysis and have some fun while they are at it. Teaching Poetry Through Collaborative Annotations Check
Teaching poem analysis through Poem of the Week is my favorite way to teach students how to do poetry analysis in AP® Literature. So often, students arrive in my class saying that they do not like poetry. Often it’s because of how they have been exposed to poetry in prior
I read once that if students misread the tone for literature, they have misread the text. And my AP® Language students were really struggling with both tone in literature and tone in nonfiction. So I had to come up with a plan. And it turns out that limiting the words
I can’t remember exactly when I learned about the 12 steps in the journey of the hero, but I do remember that I knew immediately that I needed to share it with my students and I have been including lessons on the Hero’s Journey ever since. Why the Journey of
Teaching Macbeth is hard. Teaching Shakespeare is hard. That’s why I have started a new blog series in which I share themes, essential questions and supplemental texts to help you plan your Macbeth unit plan. This blog series includes Frankenstein, Hamlet and Of Mice and Men. If there is
My Sonnet in Poetry Mini Unit is one of my favorite poetry units of all time. It is so quick and yet, at the end, kids have a really clear sense of what a sonnet is and why it matters. There was a time when sonnets appeared on the AP®
When I went to college (in the dark ages 😂), we were not yet talking about backward design of essential questions, but we did create units around themes: pairing texts to build on the big ideas. This post is part of a series that now includes Frankenstein and Hamlet that
I help AP Literature and High School English teachers create engaging classrooms so that students will be prepared college and beyond.
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