If you teach any form of close reading, you are using a formal lens of literary analysis. Formal lens in the secondary classroom most likely uses the principles of New Criticism, a school of literary criticism. In this post, I’m going to explain how you can use a formal lens to engage your ELA ...
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How to Design a Successful British Literature Curriculum for High School ELA
When you’re preparing to teach over 2,000 years' worth of British literature to high schoolers, you’re going to have to make some tough decisions about how to do it. Sometimes, the choices are made for you (i.e. a prescribed curriculum or a textbook). On the other hand, you might have absolute ...
How to Develop Engaging and Effective Curriculum for any ELA Class
Designing and creating ELA curriculum can be both challenging and frustrating because there are so many variables to consider. What books will you teach? What essays will your students write? Will you follow certain standards? Does your school's curriculum have requirements? Will you use a textbook? ...
How To Engage Your ELA Students with Reader Response Lens
In this article series, I'm going to outline different literary lenses that you can use in your English classroom to engage your secondary ELA students with multiple perspectives. Start by reading this article about what are literary lenses and why you should use them in your classroom. Today's ...
Yoga Ed. Review: Strategies for Using Yoga in the ELA Classroom
One of the most valuable literary lenses in my classroom is the reader response, or reader, lens. This lens encourages reflections and connections to the reading. As a lesson planning framework, I connect learning lenses to engaging activities that help students apply the lens to the work. ...
5 Ways To Increase Engagement In A Remote Lesson
Several years ago, I read the book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking” by Susan Cain. Although it wasn’t initially written with a classroom management spin, it is one of the most influential books for my classroom management strategy. This book opened my ...